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Swyftx Acquires Caleb & Brown
Swyftx Acquires Caleb & Brown

Transaction Overview

On July 1st, 2025, Swyftx, one of the largest Australian cryptocurrency exchanges, announced a definitive agreement to acquire Caleb & Brown, a high-net-worth-focused crypto brokerage, for an undisclosed amount.

 

Target: Caleb & Brown

Caleb and Brown is a Melbourne-based, high net worth focused crypto brokerage that specializes in personalized trading services across the digital asset landscape. Caleb & Brown focuses on the relationship model used successfully across traditional  financial services – every client that comes onto their platform gets assigned a broker to assist them in executing trades  and handling all customer service needs. Caleb and Brown’s core services include 1) Brokerage Services, which provide personalized 24/7 trading support for 250+ digital assets, 2) an OTC Desk, which provides high volume trading solutions with deep liquidity and competitive pricing, 3) the Caleb and Brown Asset Management, an actively managed crypto asset fund for accredited investor, 4) crypto custody. 

 

The business has more than AUD $2 billion of digital assets under custody and was founded by Rupert Hackett and Dr. Prash Puspanathan in 2016. C&B is led by CEO Jackson Zeng and has 64 team members across both Australia and the US. Caleb & Brown has not raised any outside capital. 

 

Architect Partners’ Observations

Architect Partners acted as the exclusive financial advisor to Caleb & Brown. 

 

Swyftx’s acquisition of Caleb & Brown marks the largest acquisition targeting high net worth crypto investors. It also reflects two important shifts in the evolution of crypto exchanges, particularly within the ANZ region.

 

First, high-net-worth client service is becoming a strategic differentiator. Exchanges are beginning to recognize that personalized brokerage and deep client relationships offer a competitive advantage while greatly reducing attrition. This is a model that high-net-worth clients are accustomed to in their financial lives. Caleb & Brown’s approach, which assigns a dedicated broker to every client, stands apart from the high-volume, low-touch models that dominate the market. Swyftx gains access not only to clients but also to an established business model that emphasizes trust, service, and retention in a way few crypto exchanges have pursued.

 

Second, this is a milestone moment for ANZ crypto M&A. While there have been many plays for global expansion by exchanges, this is the first of its kind in Australia moving into the US, signaling that the region is entering a more active phase of market maturity. 

 

We believe this transaction will serve as a catalyst for further strategic activity to expand globally and to augment services as companies seek differentiation in both product and customer segments.

 

Strategic Rationale

Swyftx is acquiring Caleb & Brown to expand into the United States via C&B’s regulatory framework, and to acquire the relationship model inherently required with a higher-tier customer base. This acquisition will grant Swyftx entry into the U.S. 12 to 24 months faster than otherwise possible organically. Furthermore, the acquisition diversifies Swyftx’s primarily retail client base to include 25k+ high net worth individuals in numerous countries. 

 

“Caleb & Brown has quietly established one of the most impressive brokerage offerings in the world, with a heavily differentiated private client service. We see enormous growth potential.” – Jason Titman

Alerts

Coinbase Completes $375M Acquisition of Echo, Expanding On-Chain Capital Formation Capabilities

Eric Risley
October 26th, 2025
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Transaction Overview

On October 21, 2025, Coinbase Global (NASDAQ: COIN), a U.S.-based cryptocurrency exchange and financial technology company, announced the acquisition of Echo, an on-chain capital-raising platform, for approximately $375 million in cash and stock.

 

Target: Echo
Echo is a decentralized capital formation platform enabling startups and institutions to raise funds natively on-chain. Founded in 2024, Echo provides infrastructure for on-chain fundraising and investor management. The platform supports private rounds for qualified investors and project-hosted public token sales via Sonar.

 

Echo’s core offerings include: 1) on-chain fundraising for startups and token projects through private group raises on Echo and self-hosted public token sales via Sonar with a reusable Sonar ID, allowing projects to run sales on their own sites; 2) investor onboarding and eligibility controls with KYC and AML checks, plus sale-level criteria and a verification API that projects can plug into; 3) smart-contract pooling and non-custodial settlement that aggregates early-stage backers into a single Echo-managed entity; and 4) a compliance layer for identity verification and jurisdictional gating using a verified profile that can be reused across supported sales.

 

Echo has already completed around 300 deals, helping projects raise over $200M. Platforms like Cryptorank, at the time of writing, have placed Echo as the number 2 overall launchpad (a metric they determine by summing and comparing average values on ROI, all-time HIgh ROI, Comparative raised amount, stock price stability post-launch, and number of tokens sold to tokens released). 

 

The company was boot-strapped and as such it has no funding or investor history. 

 

Buyer: Coinbase
Coinbase Global, Inc. (NASDAQ: COIN), founded in 2012 and headquartered in Wilmington, Delaware, is a leading cryptocurrency exchange and financial infrastructure provider. The firm operates regulated trading, custody, and payment platforms that serve retail investors, institutions, and developers in over 100 countries.

 

Coinbase’s core products include its exchange, Coinbase Wallet, Coinbase Prime for institutional clients, and Base, an Ethereum Layer-2 network for on-chain applications. The company earns the majority of its revenue from transaction fees on its exchange and interest income from stablecoin reserves. It also provides enterprise custody and blockchain analytics services to financial institutions and government clients.

 

As of October 21, 2025, Coinbase maintains a market capitalization of ~$87 billion and an enterprise value of ~$84.5B billion. The firm reported $7.0 billion in TTM revenue, $3.2B in Adjusted EBITDA and an operating income of $1.9 billion. This represents a 11.9x Enterprise Value-to-Revenue multiple and a 28.8x Enterprise Value-to-Adjusted EBITDA multiple.

 

Over time, Coinbase assembled the core pieces of an on-chain capital-markets stack: Tagomi added institutional distribution (2020), Routefire added execution (2021), Bison Trails added blockchain infrastructure (2021), Skew added market data (2021), and Unbound Security strengthened MPC-based custody (2021). It then expanded into regulated derivatives with FairX (2022) and added an asset-management arm with One River Digital (2023). In 2023, Coinbase launched Wallet-as-a-Service for investor onboarding and brought Base to mainnet as a low-cost settlement rail. Project Diamond followed in late 2023, executing a first digital debt instrument and debuting as an institutional tokenization platform with an ADGM RegLab path. With those layers in place, the Oct. 2025 acquisition of Echo adds the remaining origination and investor-management layer, connecting issuance to Base settlement, Prime custody, and distribution across Coinbase channels.

 

Transaction Parameters

Coinbase announced its acquisition of Echo for approximately $375 million, paid in a mix of cash and stock, subject to customary purchase price adjustments.

Notable similar transactions include Coinbase | LiquiFi (source), Circle | SeedInvest (source), Republic | Seedrs (source), Securitize | Onramp Invest (source), and INX | Openfinance (source).

 

Strategic Rationale
The acquisition of Echo advances Coinbase’s strategy to build a unified, end-to-end infrastructure for on-chain capital markets, covering the full lifecycle of token creation, fundraising, and secondary trading. The goal is to make capital formation more efficient, transparent, and accessible, both for early-stage builders and institutional investors.

Echo directly complements its earlier acquisition of Liquifi, which provides infrastructure for token creation and cap-table management for emerging projects. While Liquifi enables founders to launch and structure their tokens, Echo extends that workflow into capital raising and community participation. Integrating Echo’s compliant fundraising tools with Coinbase’s existing strengths, including exchange listings, custody, staking, and institutional trading, completes a full-stack platform for digital asset issuance and liquidity.

As part of Coinbase’s strategic roadmap, the acquisition delivers value across key stakeholder groups. For Builders, Echo provides easier access to capital through community-aligned fundraising tools, using Echo for private investment groups and Sonar for self-hosted public token sales. For Investors, it offers new, differentiated investment opportunities that were previously out of reach. Echo enables investors to participate directly in vetted token sales via a trusted, compliant platform. 

In short, the acquisition of Echo positions Coinbase to expand beyond trading into regulated, on-chain capital markets. By integrating Echo’s fundraising infrastructure, Coinbase strengthens its ability to support compliant token issuance and investment activity within a single ecosystem. The combined platform improves efficiency in fundraising, enhances transparency in private markets, and enables broader participation in digital asset finance worldwide.

 

Architect Partners’ Observations

The phenomenon of tokens and token markets has demonstrated the potential for a different model, with the ability to operate at a massive global scale already proven. This is a more direct way for both companies (or projects in crypto parlance) to raise capital and for investors to invest. Perhaps most importantly, it is open to all and global. Neither really exists today in traditional capital markets.

 

Sources

Coinbase, Bloomberg, Pitchbook. Crunchbase, Yahoo Finance, Echo