Amber landed on NASDAQ, the first year of crypto "IPO" opened?

Original author: flowie, ChainCatcher

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

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

In addition to Amber Group, Fold Holdings (FLD), a bitcoin rewards financial services company, has also completed its listing on the Nasdaq year-to-date, and Circle is also planning to complete its IPO this year.

There are also a number of crypto companies that are moving forward with their plans to go public. Last week, Bloomberg broke the news that Gemini had secretly applied for an IPO and was working with Goldman Sachs Group Inc. and Citigroup Group 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 into the first year of crypto "IPOs".

years after its establishment and raising more than $600 million, Amber finally went public

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 it was actively considering going public in the next two years, and the preferred location was the United States.

Although the IPO was slightly later than expected, Amber Group finally completed its merger and listing in the United States.

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

Prior to the merger, Amber DWM underwent a restructuring of its assets, including the acquisition of the entire equity interest in its exchange platform, WhaleFin Markets Limited. According to the merger agreement, Amber DWM's shareholders will hold approximately 90% of the combined company's shares, as well as 97% of the voting rights.

Michael Wu, co-founder of Amber Group, will provide strategic direction as Chairman of the Board of Directors of Amber International, the combined company. Another co-founder, Wayne Huo, has been appointed CEO and Director to take charge of the company's day-to-day 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 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 Group's cumulative trading volume has reached $1 trillion, with more than 2,000 institutional customers.

In terms of assets under management and revenue, Amber Group has rarely disclosed specific financial data in the past two years. The latest publicly available data is still stuck in 2022, where Amber said it had more than $5 billion in assets and $250 million in revenue in the first half of 2022.

From 2020 to 2022, Amber Group also expanded rapidly, in addition to a significant increase in assets under management, during which Amber Group completed at least 4 rounds of financing, with a total financing of nearly US$630 million, with investors integrating traditional investment institutions such as Temasek, Sequoia China, Tiger Global, and Tiger Brokers, as well as Fenfen Capital, Pantera Capital, Paradigm, and Coinbase Web3 investment institutions such as Ventures.

At the time of the closing of a US$200 million Series B funding round led by Temasek in 2022, it was valued at US$3 billion.

But then FTX crashed, the market entered a deep bear, and Amber Group also ushered in a big adjustment period.

The Amber Group was frozen about $60 million on the FTX platform, although Amber said that this part of the funds only accounted for 10% of its total trading capital, which did not have much impact. However, the market still has a trust problem with asset management platforms such as Amber Group, and some specific products are facing significant "drawdowns" due to FTX's default.

Amber Group had to make strategic and organizational adjustments, cutting its headcount from about 1,100 at its peak to around 300 at one point, and suspending metaverse projects and C-side operations.

Amber had planned to continue to expand its Series B+ to raise another $100 million at a $3 billion valuation, but had to pivot to Series C due to market crashes and internal adjustments. In an interview with Bloomberg, Michael Wu acknowledged that the Series C valuation is below $3 billion, but did not disclose specific numbers.

Amber Group's IPO plan may also be delayed due to the market's thunderstorm crypto entering a period of strict regulation, and Amber's own business being affected.

Now, with Trump's rise to power and the unbinding of crypto regulation, the convergence of traditional finance and crypto finance is a good listing window for Amber.

By going public, Amber Group has more capital and can also follow the compliance trend to attract more institutional clients through higher standards of transparency and discipline, while also providing an exit path for early investors.

According to Amber's press release, after the listing on the NASDAQ, Amber International will focus on four areas, strengthening compliance is one of the key points, Amber will launch tokenized RWAs and institutional-level compliant investment products, and expand cooperation with asset management companies, private banks and regulated financial entities.

Or more than 10 companies lined up to go public, CeFi led the wave of crypto IPOs

After Trump's election, Wall Street institutions such as Goldman Sachs and JPMorgan Chase began to pay attention to crypto market customers seeking IPO opportunities. ARK Invest has also said that the Trump administration may reopen the IPO window for U.S. crypto companies.

In fact, since Trump's election, several crypto companies have been listed in the United States. Going through a SPAC (Special Purpose Acquisition Company) is also the fastest way for crypto companies to preference.

Japanese cryptocurrency exchange Coincheck has completed its merger listing on December 11, 2024. So far this year, two crypto companies, Amber and Fold Holdings, have completed their U.S. stock listings.

A number of leading crypto companies that have experienced many listing twists and turns before are also seizing the window period to promote IPO plans.

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

• Kraken: Cryptocurrency exchange Kraken is actively preparing for an initial public offering (IPO) in the first quarter of 2026, as reported by Bloomberg last week. Previously, Kraken's IPO plan was blocked for a while due to the Biden administration's strict regulation of the crypto industry.

• Gemini: According to multiple sources on Bloomberg and the X platform, Gemini has secretly submitted an IPO application, is working with Goldman Sachs and Citigroup to advance, and could go public as early as 2025. The company previously reached a $5 million settlement with the CFTC and announced that the SEC had concluded its investigation into it, clearing some of the regulatory hurdles to the listing.

• Circle: Circle restarted its IPO in January last year and is still awaiting regulatory review. Circle's IPO has been very choppy, with plans to go public via SPAC in 2021 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 filed for an IPO in February, which 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 Peter Thiel-backed crypto exchange and CoinDesk's parent company) is partnering with Jefferies to explore an IPO, with plans to move forward within 2025. Previously, its SPAC plan (2021) was unsuccessful.

• eToro: According to Crypto Briefing and others, eToro has secretly filed a US IPO application with a target valuation of more than $5 billion, which is planned to be managed by Goldman Sachs, Jefferies and UBS, and is expected to go public in New York in the second quarter of 2025.

• Ionic Digital: On October 21 last year, Ionic Digital announced the relaunch of its IPO plans. It had said in November 2024 that it expected to become a publicly traded company in the first or second quarter of 2025, but the exact date has not yet been determined.

• Blockchain.com: Last October, CoinDesk reported that the company was "interviewing investment banks" for the IPO, including Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley, suggesting that it was still moving forward with IPO preparations, but the exact timeline was undecided.

In addition, Bankless also mentioned Digital Currency and Consensys as contenders for a possible IPO this year. Bitwise, a crypto asset manager, has said that infrastructure provider Anchorage Digital, tokenization firm Figure and analytics service Chainalysis are also prime candidates for the upcoming listing.

From the perspective of crypto companies that have been listed or plan to IPO, the wave of crypto IPOs that dominates this round of crypto IPOs is still concentrated in top exchanges and CeFi asset management companies.