Animoca Brands halts Nasdaq reverse-merger talks and targets Hong Kong stablecoin market

Animoca Brands has suspended talks to list on Nasdaq through a reverse merger with Currenc Group, redirecting its focus toward regulated financial infrastructure in Hong Kong and artificial intelligence. The Hong Kong-based blockchain company said it remains “fully committed to relisting on a major public exchange” after reviewing “projected closing timelines and evolving market conditions.”

Its new financial-services push is taking shape through Anchorpoint, a joint venture with Standard Chartered and telecom provider HKT. The partners have begun a phased rollout of a Hong Kong dollar (HKD) stablecoin, with retail adoption targeted by the end of the year. The project puts Animoca among the first applicants admitted to Hong Kong’s stablecoin sandbox.

The Hong Kong Monetary Authority (HKMA) selected only two of 36 applicants in April: Anchorpoint and HSBC, the city’s largest bank. Under the licensing regime, issuers must hold at least HK$25 million ($3.2 million) in paid-up capital and back every circulating token 1:1 with segregated, highly liquid reserve assets such as government bonds.

The Hong Kong dollar has been pegged to the U.S. dollar since 1983. While global stablecoin volume is overwhelmingly dominated by U.S. dollar-pegged tokens, including Tether (USDT) and USD Coin (USDC), an HKD token would offer the stability of the greenback while operating outside the direct oversight of U.S. financial regulators.

“We’re not trying to be the next Tether,” said Evan Auyang, president of Animoca Brands. “We’re trying to be one that says: we want to be the regulated rails, be there first, to enable this region of Greater China and the capital markets here to be on-chain.”

Auyang said the company needed partners with experience navigating financial regulation. “You guys understand regulation, you can work with the Hong Kong Monetary Authority, and you understand how to get something like this approved and done,” he said. “We need adults in the room. So we built a team of adults.”

The shift comes as Animoca, once a poster child of the speculative Web3 boom, faces a cooling global venture market and U.S. regulatory gridlock. A brief upswing in early 2025, driven by hopes for a crypto-friendly regulatory environment under the Trump administration, faded after the U.S. Senate stalled passage of the CLARITY Act, a legislative framework designed to regulate stablecoins. Institutional venture capital has increasingly moved toward artificial intelligence, while Animoca’s corporate bookings fell 30% between 2022 and 2023.

The company’s public-market history has also been difficult. It was delisted from the Australian Securities Exchange (ASX) in March 2020 over governance concerns and compliance issues connected to its extensive cryptocurrency holdings. Animoca released its audited 2023 financial reports in July and is still preparing its 2024 accounts.

Alongside the stablecoin project, Animoca is pursuing consumer-facing AI. In May, it launched Minds by Animoca Brands, a decentralized service that lets people without technical expertise build and run persistent AI agents on platforms including Telegram and email.

Auyang described the AI work as an “extension of capability,” not a retreat from the metaverse concept that helped drive Animoca to a peak valuation of $5.9 billion in mid-2022. He acknowledged that the company’s expectations for consumer Web3 adoption had been too optimistic. “In 2021, I was a gamer,” he said, describing his belief that digital property rights would rapidly transform the internet. “It didn’t pan out at the speed we wanted it to.”

Animoca does not plan to compete with Silicon Valley technology giants in training massive Large Language Models (LLMs), Auyang said, instead focusing on the deployment layer. “There will be winners in LLMs. It’s not going to be Animoca,” he said.

The company’s move from speculative retail token launches toward regulated utility reflects differing views among its leaders. Executive Chairman and co-founder Yat Siu remains a public, flamboyant advocate of decentralized digital ownership. Auyang, a former McKinsey consultant and deputy managing director of the Kowloon Motor Bus Company (KMB), brings a public-utility perspective shaped by his time overseeing 4,000 buses carrying 2.5 million passengers daily.

“A bus lowers the cost for every single person going to the right destination,” Auyang said. “It’s public service that is for profit… You can deploy a bus anywhere. And you don’t have to have every single bus route be profitable.” He said blockchain networks should function as regulated, low-cost public infrastructure, serving a broad population that includes an estimated 1.3 billion people without bank accounts.

Auyang has argued that the crypto industry has focused too heavily on rapid financialization at the expense of social utility. “The for-profit motive is extremely strong. But there needs to be a reward-obligation balance,” he said, criticizing Web3 projects that issued speculative tokens and left founders “rewarded with capital that you’re not supposed to do anything with, to buy Ferraris with.”

He also takes issue with the Web3 market’s current interest in decentralized prediction markets, where trading volume has surged. Recalling his early career in derivatives at Bankers Trust and Citigroup, Auyang said: “It’s very much gambling. We were like: Oh my God, this stuff can really do a lot of damage.”