Cryptocurrency investment firm CoinShares announced Wednesday that it will begin trading on the Nasdaq through a merger with a special acquisition purpose company (SPAC).
the company will merge with Vine Hill Capital Established holding company CoinShares PLC. The deal was completed late Tuesday, according to information from CNBC. First announced in September, the business is valued at approximately $1.2 billion, including a $50 million investment from institutional investors. The stock trades under the ticker CSHR.
CoinShares is a 12-year-old European asset management company that serves both institutional and retail investors with a focus on crypto assets. The company offers structured investment products and funds, including the U.S.-listed CoinShares Bitcoin ETF, with $6 billion in assets under management.
“We have a lot of[assets under management]in Europe, but we don’t have a lot of AUM in the U.S.,” Jean-Marie Mognetti, CEO and co-founder of CoinShares, told CNBC in an exclusive interview. “We could build it organically, but it would take too long, so the only way we can grow in the U.S. is by leveraging the equity currency we are developing through a U.S. listing.”
“We want to be a bigger company, we need to grow, and at some point our success will be measured by our ability to grow in this American market,” Mognetti said.
“We’re ready for business.”
The listing follows the successful initial public offering of the cryptocurrency custodian. bitgo In January, there was a sudden increase in virtual currency IPOs, and in 2025, the following virtual currency IPOs will increase explosively. circle internet group, figure technology, gemini space station and strong.
Cryptocurrency investors have been hoping for a healthy IPO market since President Donald Trump returned to office, given his administration’s friendly stance toward the crypto industry.
Nevertheless, the timing of CoinShares’ listing comes at a difficult time for investors, with investor sentiment turning risk-averse as the Iran war dragged on for five weeks, and three major indexes went into corrections last week.
Cryptocurrency stocks have suffered a sector-wide selloff over the past six months, with cryptocurrency exchange Kraken recently postponing its widely anticipated debut. price of Bitcoin It is down 40% from its peak in October.
Cryptocurrency stocks have suffered a sharp sector-wide decline over the past six months.
“We don’t believe in timing frames. We believe in when the company is ready,” Mognetti said. “Bear markets are when service companies go public; bull markets are when hype companies go public. They’re not going public because the market is easy; they’re going public because their business is ready.”
CoinShares is based in the British Crown Dependency of Jersey and was previously listed on the Nasdaq Stockholm Exchange in Sweden.
“We want people to own Bitcoin.”
He also said that CoinShares has been profitable every year since its founding in 2014, including both crypto booms and busts.
Crypto asset management companies may be more attractive to investors than exchanges because their returns are typically driven by regular fees on assets under management and can be more stable across market cycles. In contrast, the transaction-driven revenue that platforms like Coinbase, Bullish, and Gemini rely on can decline sharply during periods of low trading activity and market uncertainty.
CoinShares has three businesses: ETF business, active strategies, and as of last week, on-chain asset management (where cryptocurrencies and real-world assets are managed directly on the blockchain).
“We want people to own Bitcoin and own digital assets through the different types of products that we can offer,” Mognetti said. “If people own it, we can make money… wherever the market goes.”
When CoinShares started its journey in 2014, European market demand was driven entirely by retail investors. He said it was only in 2017 that “curious” institutional investors started entering the market.
Meanwhile, in the US, participation by institutional investors was limited as there were no high-quality investment vehicles available until Bitcoin ETFs hit the market in early 2024. Since then, institutional investor participation has caught up significantly.
In the United States, black rockFidelity and Grayscale account for the majority of crypto fund assets under management. Bitwise Asset Management, a specialist cryptocurrency company, and VanEck, which is also strongly involved in cryptocurrencies, are also prominent cryptocurrency ETF issuers.
CoinShares is still run by its two co-founders, Mognetti and company director Daniel Masters.
“We continue to run this company with incredible fiduciary responsibility, care and stewardship to both our customers and shareholders,” Mognetti said. “Our shareholder base has been very stable over the years and we are entering the market to enhance this transparency.”
Given that tech and financial services make up the largest equity allocation in the U.S., “there are people who understand more naturally what we’re doing. We really want to show the market this great company and let the market decide how we continue to grow in the U.S.,” he said.
