Coincheck, a popular Japanese crypto exchange, recently revealed that it plans to get listed on the US-based Nasdaq stock exchange as part of its goal to hold a public stock offering. The move will grant it access to the US’ highly lucrative capital markets and expose it to all of Nasdaq’s investors.

The confirmation came yesterday, October 28th, in the documents filed with the US SEC. Monex Group, which is the majority owner of Coincheck, stated that it had started the Nasdaq listing procedure, which was possible thanks to a merger with a company called Thunder Bridge Capital Partners IV. According to the Group’s expectations, the listing should officially take place on July 2nd next year.

Thunder Bridge Capital Partners IV is a SPAC (Special Purpose Acquisition Company), and Coincheck said that the merger with it would also allow it to expand its crypto business and gain access to the US capital markets at the same time. As for Nasdaq, it is one of the largest stock exchanges in the world by market cap and volume alike, so the fact that Coincheck chose it for the listing comes as no surprise.

Coincheck to expand to the US market

Coincheck originally announced its intention to get publicly listed earlier this year in March. The exchange has been doing well in Japan, but the $1.25 billion dollar merger and the announcement revealed that it has greater ambitions. The exchange has around 1.75 million verified accounts, which is approximately 27% of Japan’s total crypto trading market.

The exchange was never a part of any controversy, but it did start experiencing trouble when the bear market pushed the prices down. Its total operating revenue started crashing alongside it, seeing a decline of roughly half, quarter-on-quarter.

Now, it decided to try and turn things around through the SPAC agreement that will, hopefully, allow it to go public. Of course, it is not the only one to do this, especially when it comes to cryptocurrency-related firms.

Another example is PrimeBlock, which is a Bitcoin mining firm that announced its own intention to go public only a month after Coincheck, in April 2022. PrimeBlock also found a SPAC to be the best way to go about it, and it spent $1.25 billion to complete a merger. Then, in August, that same price tag was paid by W3BCloud for its own SPAC merger. eToro, on the other hand, is going even further beyond, planning a merger worth $10 billion.