Original author: flowie, ChainCatcher
Recently, Amber Premium, a digital wealth management platform under Amber Group, officially completed its merger with iClick Interactive, a US-listed company. The merged company was renamed Amber International Holding Limited and began trading on the Nasdaq yesterday with the new stock code AMBR.
AMBR closed at $11 yesterday, with a total trading volume of $3.06 million and a total market value of $960 million.
In addition to Amber Group, Bitcoin reward financial services company Fold Holdings (FLD) has also completed its listing on Nasdaq since the beginning of this year, and Circle also plans to complete its IPO this year.
Several other crypto companies are pushing forward their plans to go public. Last week, Bloomberg reported that Gemini has secretly applied for an IPO and is working with Goldman Sachs and Citigroup on the offering. 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.
After 8 years of financing and over $600 million, Amber finally went public
As early as October 2021, Amber Groups co-founder and CEO Michael Wu said in an interview with the South China Morning Post that he was actively considering going public within the next two years, and the preferred location was the United States.
Although it was slightly later than the earliest expected listing time, Amber Group finally completed its merger and listing in the United States as it wished.
Amber DWM, the entity participating in the merger and listing, is the holding entity of Amber Premium, the digital wealth management business of 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 shares of its exchange platform WhaleFin Markets Limited. According to the merger agreement, Amber DWMs shareholders will hold approximately 90% of the shares of the merged company and 97% of the voting rights.
Michael Wu, co-founder of Amber Group, will serve as chairman of the board of directors of the combined company, Amber International, providing strategic direction. Wayne Huo, another co-founder, has been appointed as CEO and director, responsible for the companys daily operations.
As an established crypto asset management company, Amber Group has a huge product matrix since 2017. Its core business is to provide customized digital wealth management services for 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, Amber Groups cumulative trading volume has reached 1 trillion US dollars, and it has more than 2,000 institutional clients.
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 in 2022. In 2022, Amber said that its asset scale exceeded US$5 billion and its revenue in the first half of 2022 was US$250 million.
2020 to 2022 was also a year of rapid expansion for Amber Group. In addition to a substantial increase in asset management scale, Amber Group has completed at least 4 rounds of financing during this period, with a total financing amount of nearly US$630 million. Investors include 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 it completed a US$200 million Series B financing round led by Temasek in 2022, its valuation had reached US$3 billion.
But then FTX collapsed, the market entered a deep bear market, and Amber Group also ushered in a major adjustment period.
Amber Group has about $60 million frozen on the FTX platform. Although Amber said that this part of the funds only accounted for 10% of its total trading capital and did not cause much impact, the market still has trust issues in asset management platforms such as Amber Group, and some specific products are facing obvious retreats due to FTXs default.
Amber Group had to make strategic and organizational adjustments, reducing its employee headcount from about 1,100 at its peak to around 300, and suspending its Metaverse project and C-end business.
Amber originally planned to continue to expand the B+ round with a valuation of US$3 billion and raise another US$100 million, but due to the market crash and internal adjustments of the company, it had to turn to the C round. Michael Wu admitted in an interview with Bloomberg that the valuation of the C round was less than US$3 billion, but did not disclose the specific figure.
Perhaps due to the market crash and the crypto market entering a period of strict regulation, coupled with the impact on Ambers own business, Amber Groups IPO plan has also been delayed.
Now, with Trump taking office and relaxing crypto regulation, and the trend of integration between traditional finance and crypto finance, it is a good window for Amber to go public.
By going public, Amber Group will have more funds and can also keep up with compliance trends, attracting more institutional clients through higher standards of transparency and standardization, while also providing an exit channel for early investors.
According to a press release released by Amber, after listing on the Nasdaq, Amber International will expand in four areas, with strengthening compliance being one of the key focuses. Amber will launch tokenized RWAs and institutional-level compliant investment products, and expand cooperation with asset management companies, private banks and regulated financial entities.
More than 10 companies may be lined up for listing, CeFi leads the crypto IPO wave
After Trump’s election, Wall Street institutions such as Goldman Sachs and JPMorgan Chase began to pay attention to crypto market clients seeking IPO opportunities. ARK Invest has also stated that the Trump administration may reopen the IPO window for US crypto companies.
In fact, since Trump was elected, many crypto companies have been listed in the United States. SPAC (Special Purpose Acquisition Company) is also the fastest way for crypto companies to go public.
Japanese cryptocurrency exchange Coincheck completed its merger and listing on December 11, 2024. So far this year, two crypto companies, Amber and Fold Holdings, have completed their U.S. stock listings.
Several leading crypto companies that have previously experienced multiple setbacks in their listing attempts are also seizing the window of opportunity to advance their IPO plans.
According to incomplete statistics, more than 10 crypto companies have recently promoted IPO plans. 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, Krakens listing plan was once hindered due to the Biden administrations strict regulation of the crypto industry.
Gemini: According to Bloomberg and multiple sources on the X platform, Gemini has secretly submitted an IPO application and is working with Goldman Sachs and Citigroup to advance it. It may be listed as early as 2025. The company previously reached a $5 million settlement with the CFTC and announced that the SEC had ended its investigation into it, clearing some regulatory obstacles for its listing.
Circle: Circle restarted its IPO in January last year and is still awaiting regulatory review. Circles IPO has been very bumpy, and its plan to go public through SPAC in 2021 was canceled due to deteriorating market conditions. According to Polymarkets forecast market data, there is currently a 59% probability that Circle will complete its IPO in 2025.
Bgin Blockchain: Crypto mining equipment manufacturer Bgin Blockchain applied for an IPO in February and expects 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 (Peter Thiel-backed crypto exchange, CoinDesk parent company) is working with Jefferies to explore an IPO, with plans to move forward in 2025. Its previous SPAC plan (2021) was unsuccessful.
eToro: According to reports from Crypto Briefing and others, eToro has secretly submitted an IPO application in the United States with a target valuation of over US$5 billion. It is planned to be managed by Goldman Sachs, Jefferies and UBS, and 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 yet been determined.
Blockchain.com: Last October, CoinDesk reported that the company was interviewing investment banks for an IPO, including Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley, suggesting that it was still moving forward with preparations for a listing, but no specific timeline had been set.
In addition, Bankless also mentioned Digital Currency and Consensys as possible competitors for IPO this year. Crypto asset management company Bitwise has said that infrastructure provider Anchorage Digital, tokenization company Figure and analysis service Chainalysis are also major candidates for upcoming listings.
Judging from the crypto companies that have gone public or are planning IPOs, the leaders of this round of crypto IPOs are still concentrated in leading exchanges and CeFi asset management companies.
