Animoca Brands Pauses Currenc Merger and Nasdaq Listing Plan

Animoca Brands and Currenc Group have mutually suspended talks on a proposed reverse merger that would have returned the Hong Kong crypto gaming and investment company to public markets through a Nasdaq listing, Animoca announced on Sept. 22, 2026. The two companies said the expected time needed to close the deal no longer fit their short- and medium-term goals after a review of projected timelines and market conditions. The announcement added that the parties may revisit the combination if conditions permit.

Under the proposed terms, Nasdaq-listed Currenc Group would have acquired all of Animoca through an Australian scheme of arrangement, leaving Animoca shareholders with about 95 percent of the merged company and Currenc holders with the remaining 5 percent. The announcement described the suspension as a mutual decision. The non-binding term sheet behind the deal was signed in November 2025, and the companies later extended their exclusivity period to June 30, 2026 without reaching a definitive agreement, crypto.news reported in its account of the pause.

Yat Siu, the co-founder and executive chairman of Animoca Brands, said the company held the proposed Currenc combination in high regard but that corporate agility had to come first, according to the announcement: "While we hold our proposed merger with Currenc Group in high regard, our corporate agility must take precedence." He added that Animoca would keep pursuing what he called optimal routes to a public listing while working through the audit steps needed to meet the compliance standards of a major exchange. Cointelegraph reported the same commitment to relisting, noting that the companies could resume discussions if conditions allow.

The audit workload is the stated reason the timeline mattered. Animoca published audited financial statements for fiscal 2023 on July 17, 2026, its second set of audited accounts released this year after its fiscal 2022 report in January, and work on its fiscal 2024 accounts is now underway, the company said. Completion of the reports counts as an important staging post in its financial compliance roadmap. crypto.news wrote that the releases clear part of a multi-year backlog, with accounts for 2021, 2020 and 2019 issued in June 2025, June 2023 and July 2022 respectively.

Animoca was previously listed on the Australian Securities Exchange and left the board in March 2020, a history Cointelegraph recounted in its coverage of the pause. The delisting followed scrutiny of the company's crypto-related activities, and in 2022 the Australian Securities and Investments Commission convicted and fined the firm over failures to lodge annual reports for 2019 through 2021 plus certain half-year reports, according to a detailed history of the company's path back toward public markets.

The company operates from Hong Kong as an investor and builder across gaming, digital assets and artificial intelligence. Its public about page puts the investment portfolio at more than 600 companies and digital assets, spanning consumer products such as Moca Network, Open Campus, Anichess and The Sandbox alongside institutional platforms and services, the company says. Industry data for the first half of 2026 ranked the firm among the most active crypto investors with 19 startup bets in the period, the same report noted.

Currenc, a Singapore-based fintech working on AI services for financial institutions and remittance infrastructure, has kept building outside the deal. In April it became one of the first Nasdaq-listed companies to put representations of its own ordinary shares on Ethereum and Solana through Securitize, and earlier in September its Currenc Capital unit signed a consulting agreement to support tokenization of part of Nasdaq-listed Mint Incorporation's Class A ordinary shares on the same two networks. Mint said no trading market for the tokens currently exists and gave no assurance that one would develop or receive permission to operate, according to the same account.

Neither company named a replacement transaction or an alternative exchange for Animoca's planned listing. The company said it would continue preparing its accounts and searching for a public-market route, leaving the Currenc combination suspended rather than cancelled. The original plan carried a Dec. 31 long-stop date, extendable by up to six months by mutual agreement, which remains the outer marker from a timetable both sides have now set aside.