Cryptocurrency trading company Amber Group has put its expansion plans on hold even though the FTX contagion has “not disrupted” its day-to-day operations, according to a senior executive.
Amber has scrapped its expansion plans in Europe and the United States as a result of its exposure to the defunct FTX exchange and will focus on institutional clients in Asiaaccording to managing partner Annabelle Huang.
Huang also claimed that Amber has been forced to de-prioritize her new metaverse project due to the FTX contagion, the Financial Times reported on December 9.
In addition to abandoning its expansion plans, the company has been cutting back recently. After laying off up to 40% of its workforce in September, the company went back to lay off employees in December.
According to Huang, Amber had about 10% of her trading capital locked up in FTX, which is not a problem for the company’s day-to-day operations. In line with its plans to continue serving clients in Asia, Amber has continued to work to secure new financing and make new acquisitions.
The company, backed by Temasek, has secured some $50 million in financing from a new sovereign wealth fund, the deal for which will be announced in January. Like Amber’s previous $200 million round, the new financing values the company at $3 billion. The amount raised is twice what Amber originally hoped to get.
In Huang’s opinion, Amber doesn’t consider her ongoing fundraiser to have been unsuccessful. “We are not under pressure to raise capital,” she said, adding that Amber will also announce a major acquisition of a Singapore-licensed company in December.
The news comes shortly after Huang denied Amber’s insolvency allegations. the executive answered on Twitter on December 6 to accusations that Amber was “on the verge of bankruptcy”:
“We continue to operate as usual. If you have any concerns, withdrawals are open as usual.”
The allegations were made by on-chain analyst Lookonchain, who detected some significant discrepancies between the wallets allegedly owned by Amber and the reported funds and trading volumes.
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