Crypto investment firm CoinShares said it will begin trading on Nasdaq on Wednesday through a merger with a special purpose acquisition company (SPAC).
The company merges with Vine Hill Capital to establish the holding company CoinShares PLC. The deal closed late Tuesday, CNBC has learned. It was first announced in September and values the company at about $1.2 billion, including a $50 million investment from institutional investors. The shares trade under the ticker symbol CSHR.
CoinShares is a 12-year-old European asset manager focused on crypto assets, serving both institutional and retail investors. It offers structured investment products and funds – including the US-listed CoinShares Bitcoin ETF – and manages $6 billion in assets.
“We have many [assets under management] “In Europe, we don’t have a lot of assets under management in the US,” said Jean-Marie Mognetti, CEO and co-founder of CoinShares, in an exclusive interview with CNBC. “We could build this organically, but it will take too long, so the only way we can grow in the US is by leveraging the equity currency we develop through a US listing.”
“We want to be a much larger company and we need to grow so that at some point our success will be measured by our ability to grow in this American market,” Mognetti said.
“The company is ready for it”
The listing follows the crypto custodian’s successful IPO BitGo in January and an explosive year of crypto IPOs in 2025, including Circle Internet Group, Figure technique, Gemini space station And Bullish.
Crypto investors have been expecting a healthy IPO market since President Donald Trump’s return to office given his administration’s friendly stance toward the industry.
Still, the timing of CoinShares’ listing comes at a difficult time for investors. Their sentiment has turned risk-averse as the war in Iran drags on into a fifth week and sent three major indexes into corrections last week.
Crypto stocks have suffered from a sharp industry-wide decline over the past six months, prompting crypto exchange Kraken to recently postpone its highly anticipated debut. The price of Bitcoin is 40% below its peak in October.
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Crypto stocks have been hit by a sharp downturn across the industry over the past six months.
“We don’t believe in time frames, we believe in when the company is ready,” Mognetti said. “Bear markets are when service companies are listed, bull markets are when hype companies are listed. We list not because the market is easy, but because the company is ready for it.”
CoinShares is based in the British Crown Territory of Jersey and was previously listed on the Nasdaq Stockholm Stock Exchange in Sweden.
“We want people to own Bitcoin”
He also said CoinShares has been profitable every year since its founding in 2014, through both the crypto boom and bust.
A crypto asset management company could potentially be more attractive to investors than exchanges because revenue is typically driven by recurring fees for assets under management, which can be more stable across market cycles. In contrast, transaction-related revenue that platforms such as Coinbase, Bullish or Gemini rely on can decline sharply during periods of low trading activity and market uncertainty.
CoinShares operates across three business areas: its ETF business, active strategies and, as of last week, on-chain asset management (where crypto and real-world assets are managed directly on a blockchain).
“We want people to own Bitcoin, digital assets through different types of products that we can offer,” Mognetti said. “We make money when people own it…no matter where the market goes.”
When CoinShares began its journey in 2014, market demand in Europe was driven entirely by retail investors. He said it was only in 2017 that “curious” institutional investors began entering the market.
Meanwhile, in the US, institutional participation was limited due to a lack of high-quality investment vehicles until the launch of Bitcoin ETFs in early 2024. Since then, there has been a clear catch-up process in institutional participation.
In the USA, BlackRockFidelity and Grayscale dominate crypto fund assets under management. Bitwise Asset Management, a cryptocurrency-focused company, and VanEck, which is also heavily involved in cryptocurrencies, are also major issuers of cryptocurrency ETFs.
CoinShares is still led by its two co-founders, Mognetti and Daniel Masters, who is also a director of the company.
“We continue to operate this company with an incredible level of fiduciary duty, care and responsibility for both our customers and our shareholders,” Mognetti said. “Our shareholder base has been extremely stable over the years and we are coming to the market to strengthen that transparency.”
Given that technology and financial services make up the largest equity allocations in the U.S., “there is a more natural audience for what we do, and we are very interested in being able to showcase this great company to the market and let the market dictate how we can continue to grow in the U.S.,” he said.
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