Amber logs on Nasdaq, more than 10 companies are queuing up for listing, and the first year of encryption "IPO" begins

Author: flowie, ChainCatcher

Recently, Amber Premium, a digital wealth management platform under Amber Group, officially completed a merger with US-listed company iClick Interactive. The merged company was renamed "Amber International Holding Limited" and started trading on Nasdaq under the new stock code "AMBR".

AMBR closed at $11 yesterday, with a total turnover of $3.06 million and a total market value of $960 million.

In addition to Amber Group, from the beginning of this year to the present, Bitcoin reward financial services company Fold Holdings (FLD), has also completed its listing on Nasdaq, and Circle also plans to complete its IPO this year.

There are also several crypto companies that are promoting their listing plans. According to Bloomberg last week, Gemini has applied for a secret IPO and is working with Goldman Sachs and Citigroup to conduct the issuance. Crypto exchange Kraken is actively preparing for an IPO in the first quarter of 2026.

The crypto-friendly environment after Trump took office is expected to push 2025 to become the first year of crypto-IPO.

****Founded in 8 years, it raised more than US$600 million in financing,

and**** Amber was finally listed

As early as October 2021, Michael Wu, co-founder and CEO of Amber Group, said in an interview with the South China Morning Post that he is actively considering going public in the next two years, and the preferred location is the United States.

Although it was a little later than the earliest expected launch, Amber Group finally completed its merger and listing in the United States as expected.

Amber DWM, the entity involved in the merger listing, is a holding entity of Amber Premium, a digital wealth management business under Amber Group. Amber Premium mainly provides asset management solutions for high-net-worth clients and institutions.

Amber DWM carried out asset restructuring before the merger, including the acquisition of all equity in its exchange platform WhaleFin Markets Limited. According to the merger agreement, shareholders of Amber DWM will hold approximately 90% of the combined company's shares and 97% of the voting rights.

Michael Wu, co-founder of Amber Group, will serve as chairman of the board of directors at the merged company Amber International, providing strategic direction. Another, Wayne Huo, was appointed CEO and director, responsible for the company's daily operations.

As a veteran crypto asset management company, Amber Group has a huge product matrix since 2017 and its core business is mainly to provide customized digital wealth management services to high-net-worth individuals and institutions, helping users manage digital assets through quantitative trading and professional strategies, as well as market-making services and cryptocurrency derivatives trading services.

According to the official website, the cumulative transaction volume of Amber Group reached US$1 trillion, with more than 2,000 institutional customers.

Specifically in terms of asset management scale and revenue, Amber Group has rarely disclosed specific financial data in the past two years. The latest public data is still stuck in 2022. In 2022, Amber said its asset size exceeded US$5 billion, and its revenue in the first half of 2022 was US$250 million.

2020 to 2022 is also a year for Amber Group to expand rapidly. In addition to the sharp increase in asset management scale, Amber Group has completed at least four rounds of financing during this period, with a total financing of nearly US$630 million. Investors have integrated traditional investment institutions such as Temasek, Sequoia China, Tiger Global, and Tiger Securities, as well as Web3 investment institutions such as Distributed Capital, Pantera Capital, Paradigm, and Coinbase Ventures.

When Temasek-led round B financing led by Temasek in 2022, the valuation has reached US$3 billion.

But then FTX burst, the market entered Shenzhen Bear, and Amber Group also ushered in a period of major adjustment.

The amount of Amber Group was frozen on the FTX platform is about $60 million, although Amber said that this part of the funds only accounts for 10% of its total transaction capital and did not have much impact. However, the market still has trust issues in asset management platforms such as Amber Group, and some specific products face obvious "retracement" due to FTX defaults.

Amber Group had to make strategic and organizational adjustments, reducing its employee base from about 1,100 at peak to about 300, and suspended its Metaverse project and C-end business.

Amber originally planned to continue to expand its B+ round of raising another $100 million at a valuation of $3 billion, but also had to turn to a C round due to market crash and internal adjustments of the company. Michael Wu admitted in an interview with Bloomberg that the Series C valuation was below $3 billion, but did not disclose the specific figures.

Perhaps due to the market storm, encryption has entered a period of strict supervision, and Amber's own business has been affected, Amber Group's IPO plan has also been delayed.

Now with Trump taking office to unbundle crypto supervision, under the trend of integration between traditional finance and crypto finance, it is a good listing window for Amber.

Through listing, Amber Group has more funds, which can also conform to compliance trends, attract more institutional customers through higher standards of transparency and normativeness, and also provide an exit channel for early investors.

According to a press release from Amber, after the listing of Nasdaq, Amber International will expand in four aspects, and strengthening compliance is one of the key points. Amber will launch tokenized RWAs and institutional-level compliant investment products to expand cooperation with asset management companies, private banks and regulated financial entities.

****More than 10 companies may line up to go public, and CeFi will

dominate**** the wave of encrypted IPOs

After Trump was elected, Wall Street institutions such as Goldman Sachs and JPMorgan Chase began to pay attention to crypto market customers who are seeking IPO opportunities. ARK Invest also said that the Trump administration may reopen IPO windows for US crypto companies.

In fact, since Trump was elected, several crypto companies have been listed in the United States. SPAC (Special Purpose Acquisition Company) is also the fastest way to go public for crypto companies.

Japanese cryptocurrency exchange Coincheck completed its merger and listing on December 11, 2024. To date, two crypto companies, Amber and Fold Holdings, have completed listings in the US stock market.

Many leading crypto companies that have experienced many twists and turns in listing have also seized the window period and promoted their IPO plans.

According to incomplete statistics, more than 10 crypto companies have recently promoted IPO plans, and the relevant progress is as follows:

• Kraken: According to Bloomberg last week, cryptocurrency exchange Kraken is actively preparing for an initial public offering (IPO) in the first quarter of 2026. Previously, Kraken's listing plan was once hindered due to the Biden administration's strict regulation of the crypto industry.
• Gemini: According to multiple sources on Bloomberg and X platforms, Gemini has secretly submitted an IPO application and is working with Goldman Sachs and Citigroup to promote it. It may be listed as early as 2025. The company previously reached a $5 million settlement with CFTC and announced that the SEC would end its investigation into it, clearing some regulatory hurdles for listing.
• Circle: Circle restarted its IPO in January last year and is still awaiting regulatory review. Circle's IPO has been very ups and downs, and the plan to go public through SPAC in 2021 was cancelled due to deteriorating market conditions. According to Polymarket's forecast market data, there is currently a 59% probability that Circle will complete its IPO in 2025.
• Bgin Blockchain: crypto mining equipment maker Bgin Blockchain applied for an IPO in February and is expected to raise $50 million.
• BitGo: According to Aggr News, BitGo is considering an IPO as early as the second half of 2025
• Bullish Global: According to CoinGape and Bloomberg, Bullish Global (a crypto exchange supported by Peter Thiel, the parent company of CoinDesk) is working with Jefferies to explore the IPO, which is planned to advance within 2025. Previously, its SPAC plan (2021) failed.
• eToro: According to Crypto Briefing and other reports, eToro has secretly submitted a US IPO application with a target valuation of over $5 billion. It is planned to be managed by Goldman Sachs, Jefferies and UBS. It is expected to be listed in New York in the second quarter of 2025.
• Ionic Digital: On October 21 last year, Ionic Digital announced the restart of its IPO plan. It said in November 2024 that it expected to become a publicly traded company in the first or second quarter of 2025, but the specific date has not been determined.
• Blockchain.com: Last October, CoinDesk reported that the company was "interviewing investment banks" for its IPO, including Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley, hinting that it is still promoting listing preparations, but the specific timetable is not yet determined.

In addition, Bankless also mentioned that Digital Currency and Consensys are likely to be competitors for IPO this year. Crypto asset management company Bitwise has said infrastructure provider Anchorage Digital, tokenization company Figure and analytics service Chainalysis are also major candidates for the upcoming listing.

Judging from the crypto companies that have been listed or planned to IPO, the wave of leading crypto IPOs is still concentrated in leading exchanges and CeFi asset management companies.