One of the oldest operating cryptocurrency exchanges, Bitstamp Ltd., has been acquired by Belgian investment firm NXMH.

The price of the deal was not disclosed, but CCN reported Monday that Bitstamp was seeking as much as $400 million and was in the final stages of inking an agreement with a South Korean investment firm before the acquisition by NXMH was announced. NXMH is a Belgium-based subsidiary of South Korean company NXC Corp., the owner of cryptocurrency exchange Korbit.

Founded in a Slovenian garage in 2011 before moving its head office to the U.K., Bitstamp is currently the 29th largest cryptocurrency exchange by volume. Coingecko noted noting the company deals with about $32 million in cryptocurrency buys and sells per day, although Reuters put the figure at $100 million.

“The sale wasn’t planned,” founder Nejc Kodrič said in an interview. “There was no active effort to go around and solicit buyers. The vibrant industry last year sparked potential interest from buyers to make a footprint in the industry. We started to get approached by buyers in the middle of last year.”

NXMH said that Bitstamp will remain a standalone company and will be operated independently of Korbit. Notably, along with interests in cryptocurrency, parent company NXC also has extensive gaming interests and is the owner of video game company Nexon Co. Ltd., a Korean-Japanese video game firm that specializes in online games for personal computers and mobile devices.

The fact that Bitstamp is still going strong in 2018 and has been acquired is somewhat remarkable, since the company suffered a significant hack in 2015. Reports at the time questioned whether it might be a repeat of Mt. Gox, the infamous Japanese cryptocurrency exchange that went out of business in 2014 after allegedly being hacked.

Bitstamp had raised $12.4 million in funding. Investors included Pantera Capital and Gabriel Jarrosson. Under the acquisition deal, Kodrič retains a 20 percent stake in the company, with NXMH owning the remaining 80 percent.

Image: Marco Verch/Flickr