Recently, Amber Premium, the digital wealth management platform of Amber Group, officially merged with iClick Interactive, a U.S.-listed company, and the merged company was renamed as “Amber International Holding Limited”. The merged company was renamed “Amber International Holding Limited” and started trading on NASDAQ yesterday under the new ticker symbol “AMBR”.
AMBR closed yesterday’s trading session 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 completed an IPO on the Nasdaq since the beginning of this year, and Circle plans to complete an IPO this year.
Several other crypto companies are moving forward with plans to go public. Last week it was revealed by Bloomberg that Gemini has filed for a secret IPO and is working with Goldman Sachs and Citigroup on the offering. And crypto exchange Kraken is actively preparing for an IPO in the first quarter of 2026.
The Trump administration’s crypto-friendly environment is expected to propel 2025 into the year of the crypto “IPO”.
Amber Finally Goes Public After Raising Over $600 Million in 8 Years
Back in October 2021, Amber Group co-founder and CEO Michael Wu said in an interview with the South China Morning Post that he was actively considering an IPO in the next two years, with the United States as the preferred location.
Although a little later than the earliest expected listing, Amber Group also finally completed the merger and listing in the United States as expected.
Amber DWM, the subject of the merger, is the holding entity for Amber Premium, Amber Group’s digital wealth management business, which provides asset management solutions to high net worth clients and institutions.
Amber DWM underwent an asset reorganization prior to the merger, including the acquisition of the entire stake 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, a co-founder of Amber Group, will serve as chairman of the board of directors at the merged company, Amber International, providing strategic direction. Another co-founder, Wayne Huo, has been named CEO and director, responsible for the day-to-day operations of the company.
As a veteran crypto capital management company, Amber Group has a huge product matrix from 2017 to the present day, and its core business focuses on providing customized digital wealth management services for high-net-worth individuals and institutions, helping users manage their 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 clients.
In terms of asset management scale and revenue, Amber Group has seldom disclosed specific financial data in the past two years. The latest publicly available data stops at 2022, when Amber says it has more than $5 billion in assets and $250 million in revenue for the first half of 2022.
2020 to 2022 is also a year of rapid expansion for Amber Group, and in addition to a significant rise in AUM, during that time Amber Group has cumulatively completed at least four rounds of financing totaling nearly $630 million, with a blend of traditional investors such as Temasek, Sequoia China, Tiger Global, Tiger Securities, as well as distributed capital, Pantera Capital, Paradigm, Coinbase Ventures and other Web3 investment institutions.
The valuation had reached $3 billion in 2022 when it closed a $200 million Series B led by Temasek.
But then FTX crashed and the market went into a deep bear, and Amber Group saw a major correction.
Amber Group was frozen on the FTX platform in the amount of about $60 million, although Amber said that this part of the funds only accounted for 10% of its total trading capital, did not cause too much impact. However, the market still had trust issues with Amber Group and other management platforms, and certain specific products faced significant “pullbacks” as a result of the FTX default.
Amber Group has had to make strategic and organizational changes, cutting its workforce from a peak of around 1,100 to around 300, and suspending its meta-universe projects and C-suite business.
Amber originally planned to continue to expand at a valuation of $ 3 billion B + round to raise another $ 100 million, also due to the market crash and the company’s internal adjustments, had to turn to the C. Michael Wu in an interview with Bloomberg admitted that the C round of valuation is lower than $ 3 billion, but did not disclose the specific figures.
Amber Group’s IPO was also delayed due to a wave of market crashes, encryption and a period of strict regulation, as well as the impact on Amber’s own business.
Now, with Trump in power to unbundle the regulation of crypto, the trend of traditional finance and crypto finance fusion, it is a good window for Amber to go public.
By going public, Amber Group has more capital and can also fit into the compliance trend, attracting more institutional clients through higher standards of transparency and regulation, while also providing an exit route for early investors.
According to Amber’s press release, after listing on Nasdaq, Amber International will focus on four areas of expansion, strengthening compliance is one of the key focuses, Amber will launch tokenized RWAs and institutional-grade compliant investment products, and expand cooperation with asset management companies, private banks and regulated financial entities.
CeFi Dominates Crypto IPO Wave as More Than 10 Listings Lined Up
After the election of Donald Trump, Wall Street institutions such as Goldman Sachs and JPMorgan Chase began to focus on crypto market clients seeking IPO opportunities, and ARK Invest has said that the Trump administration may reopen the IPO window for U.S. crypto companies.
In fact, several crypto companies have gone public in the U.S. since Trump’s election. Going through a SPAC (Special Purpose Acquisition Company) is also the fastest way for crypto companies to go public as favored by them.
Japanese cryptocurrency exchange Coincheck has completed a merger on December 11, 2024 to go public. So far this year, two crypto companies, Amber and Fold Holdings, have also completed their U.S. IPOs.
A number of leading crypto companies that have previously experienced a number of ups and downs in their IPOs are also seizing the window to move forward with their IPO plans.
According to incomplete statistics, recently there are more than 10 crypto companies to promote the IPO program, 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, Bloomberg reported last week. Kraken's plans to go public have been hampered by the Biden administration's strict regulation of the crypto industry.
Gemini: Gemini has secretly filed for an IPO and is working with Goldman Sachs and Citigroup to move forward, possibly as early as within 2025, according to multiple sources on Bloomberg and the X platform. The company previously reached a $5 million settlement with the CFTC and announced the end of the SEC's investigation into it, clearing some of the regulatory hurdles for an IPO.
Circle: Circle relaunched its IPO last January and is still awaiting regulatory hearings.Circle's IPO was very choppy, with plans to go public via SPAC in 2021 canceled due to deteriorating market conditions. According to Polymarket's prediction market data, there is now a 59% probability that Circle will complete its IPO in 2025.
Bgin Blockchain : Crypto mining equipment maker Bgin Blockchain has filed for an IPO in February and expects to raise $50 million.
BitGo : BitGo is considering an IPO as early as the second half of 2025, according to Aggr News.
Bullish Global : Bullish Global (the Peter Thiel-backed crypto exchange and parent company of CoinDesk) is exploring an IPO in partnership with Jefferies, with plans to move forward during 2025, according to CoinGape and Bloomberg. This follows its unsuccessful SPAC plan (2021).
eToro : eToro has secretly filed for a U.S. IPO, targeting a valuation of over $5 billion, with plans to be managed by Goldman Sachs, Jefferies, and UBS, and is expected to go public in New York in the second quarter of 2025, according to Crypto Briefing and other reports.
Ionic Digital : Last October 21, Ionic Digital announced that it was re-launching 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 is still undetermined.
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 an IPO, but with no specific timeline.Bankless also mentioned Digital Currency and Consensys as possible contenders for an IPO this year. Crypto asset management firm Bitwise has said that infrastructure provider Anchorage Digital, tokenization firm Figure and analytics service Chainalysis are also leading candidates for an upcoming IPO.
In terms of crypto companies that have gone public or are planning to do so, the dominant crypto IPO wave is still centered on the head exchanges, CeFi Capital Management.
