The majority shares of the new combined holding company called Coincheck Group, N.V would be owned by Coincheck’s parent company Monex Group Inc.
Coincheck Inc., a Japan-based crypto exchange with over 1.5 million verified customers, is eyeing Nasdaq listing after a special purpose acquisition company (SPAC) merger with Thunder Bridge Capital Partners IV, Inc.
The combined holding company would be called Coincheck Group, NV and is expected to be listed on Nasdaq after the deal is finalized by the second quarter of 2022 with a symbol “CNCK”.
SPACs are publicly traded corporations that do not conduct business. They sell their stock to the public to obtain funding for the future acquisition of a private company.
The merger agreement is valued at $1.25 billion for 125 million shares and upon completion, the combined holding company will receive $237 million in cash held in trust by Thunder Bridge IV. The deal has been approved by the Board of Directors of Coincheck, the parent company of Coincheck Monex Group, Inc. and Thunder Bridge IV.
Coincheck and Thunder Bridge didn’t respond to requests for comments from Cointelegraph at the time of publishing.
After a data breach in 2018, crypto exchange Coincheck was acquired by Monex Group for $33.5 million and the combined new holdings would act as a subsidiary of the crypto exchange’s parent company. Monex Group, Inc. currently owns 94.2% of Coincheck and will retain all of its shares at closing. The parent company is expected to own 82% of the merged company.
Coincheck won’t be the first firm eyeing a public listing via a SPAC merger, in fact, in 2021, several renowned crypto services providers and mining firms took the SPAC merger deal. Bakkt went public with a SPAC while a $3.3 billion mining company chose the SPAC merger along with several others.
Many market experts claim that the reason for the high popularity of SPAC mergers is its distinct advantages over other types of funding and liquidity. SPACs often offer higher valuations, less dilution, faster access to funding, more certainty and fewer regulatory requirements than traditional IPOs.
Japanese crypto exchanges aim to catch up with coin listings: Report
The JVCEA will release a “green list” of 18 cryptocurrencies that will no longer be subject to screening by Japanese crypto exchanges before listing.
Japanese cryptocurrency exchanges are reportedly moving to increase competition with foreign crypto trading platforms by planning to simplify the process of listing new cryptocurrencies.
The Japan Virtual and Crypto Assets Exchange Association (JVCEA), a self-regulatory body of 31 local crypto exchanges, is preparing to release a “green list” of 18 widely-accepted cryptocurrencies in late March, local news agency Nikkei reported on Tuesday.
The green list aims to spare Japanese crypto exchanges from having to screen cryptocurrencies with the JVCEA each time before listing coins on their trading platforms. The digital assets included in the green list will no longer be subject to screening, the JVCEA reportedly said in an online presentation.
The upcoming green list will feature some of the most-traded cryptocurrencies in Japan including Bitcoin (BTC), Ether (ETH), Ripple (XRP) and Litecoin (LTC). According to the report, the conditions for being added to the green list include being listed on three exchanges in Japan, with at least one trading platform having to list that digital asset for at least six months.
The JVCEA’s latest initiative aims to provide crypto investors with more options to trade on regulated Japanese cryptocurrency exchanges. “Some industry executives said sophisticated traders have flocked to exchanges that do not have a license in Japan, such as Binance, partly due to the lack of options,” the report said.
According to the latest official list of traded coins on Binance, the crypto exchange supports more than 80 cryptocurrencies as of mid-March 2022. Coinbase, the United States’ largest crypto exchange that officially launched operations in Japan last year, has listed about 160 cryptocurrencies so far, according to its official website.
In contrast, Japanese crypto exchanges have collectively listed only about 40 cryptocurrencies so far, according to Nikkei. GMO Coin crypto exchange is the largest Japanese crypto exchange in terms of supported coins and handling 20 cryptocurrencies, a JVCEA official reportedly said.
BitFlyer, one of the largest crypto exchanges in Japan, was trading only five cryptocurrencies as of Tuesday morning, according to data from CoinGecko.
As previously reported, the JVCEA was established back in March 2018 as a self-regulatory body following a series of hacking incidents that triggered intense scrutiny from regulators. In February, the JVCEA complained that Japan’s strict screening rules were significantly impeding the $1 trillion Japanese crypto industry from g
