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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

Naver Is Rumored to Be Acquiring Dunamu / Upbit in All-Stock Swap

Serene Zhang
September 28th, 2025
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Transaction Overview

On September 25, 2025, Naver, South Korea’s leading internet platform, announced plans to acquire Upbit, operated by Dunamu and the country’s largest cryptocurrency exchange, through a landmark share-swap transaction. 

 

Target: Dunamu

Dunamu is a South Korean fintech company specializing in securities trading platforms and blockchain services, serving over 9 million registered users and more than 80% of domestic crypto trading volume. It primarily operates Upbit, founded in 2017 and headquartered in Seoul, South Korea, which is the country’s largest cryptocurrency exchange by volume and user base. The firm also has licensed entities in Singapore, Thailand, and Indonesia. Upbit ranks among the top five global exchanges by daily trading volume.

 

Upbit’s core offerings include: 1) Spot and derivatives trading across major tokens 2) Futures and margin products 3) A mobile-first user experience integrated with KakaoTalk login and payment functions 

 

Beyond Upbit, Dunamu runs Stockplus and Stockplus Unlisted for listed and private-share investing; Maplus for robo/discretionary portfolios; Lambda256/Luniverse for enterprise blockchain; the UBCI indices; Upbit NFT; the UDC developer conference; Upbitcare for investor protection; 2ndblock for social/metaverse; and Dunamu & Partners as its venture arm.

 

Through its parent company Dunamu, Upbit most recently raised $95M in January 2025 in a late-stage financing round backed by Kakao Ventures, Woori Technology Investment, and Hanwha Investment & Securities. 

 

Separately, in January 2022, a $126M secondary transaction implied a valuation of more than $12.5B, providing a benchmark for Dunamu’s potential valuation.

 

In 2024, the exchange reported record earnings despite regulatory headwinds, with operating profit rising to $682M.

 

Buyer: Naver 

Naver, founded in 1999 and headquartered in Seongnam, South Korea, is the country’s largest internet company, with operations in search, maps, e-commerce, webtoons, cloud, and fintech services. Its fintech arm, Naver Financial, operates Naver Pay, a digital wallet with over 30 million users, alongside with consumer credit and digital banking products.

Most relevant to this transaction, the focus is Naver’s expansion to financial technology infrastructure to compete with Kakao and other Korean super-app players. Naver Pay provides digital payments and merchant services, and the company is exploring stablecoin initiatives in partnership with crypto infrastructure providers. Notably, Naver is already a client of Magic Wallet (Magic Labs), integrating embedded wallet solutions that simplify crypto onboarding within consumer apps.

Naver has expanded its fintech footprint through targeted acquisitions and partnerships. It linked Naver Pay with Samsung Pay for on-site payments and unified rewards at Samsung Pay–affiliated offline merchants; broadened cross-border QR acceptance via UnionPay and Alipay+, and added a WeChat Pay QR integration across mainland China; and continued SME credit programs for Naver merchants with Woori Bank, JB Bank, and Mirae Asset Capital. Finally, in 2025, Naver also acquired a 70% stake in “Securities Plus,” an unlisted-stock trading platform, and moved to acquire Asil, a real-estate data platform.

Naver Corporation is currently valued at roughly $27.2 billion market capitalization as of September 24, 2025. For the second quarter of 2025, Naver reported $8.1 billion in TTM revenue and approximately $4 million in operating profit, underscoring its profitability and capacity to support large-scale fintech expansion. 

Transaction Parameters

Naver announced the acquisition at an undisclosed value. While the deal is still in the final stages of negotiations, the deal is anticipated to be a stock swap deal. 

 

Industry analysts suggest the deal will value Upbit (Dunamu) at multi-billion-dollar levels, consistent with its role as South Korea’s dominant exchange and global top-five trading venue by volume. 

 

Recent deals provide benchmarks for valuing exchanges and brokerages. Robinhood acquired Bitstamp for $200 million (8x EV / Revenue), while IG acquired Independent Reserve for A$109.6 million (3.1x EV/Revenue).  

 

Notable similar transactions include Coinbase | Deribit (M&A Alert), Swyftx | Caleb & Brown (M&A Alert), IG Group | Independent Reserve (M&A Alert), Robinhood | Bitstamp (M&A Alert). 

 

Strategic Rationale

The strategic rationale of the transaction has not been publicly discussed at this point in time, but if Architect Partners can speculate:


We view it as complementary. Naver is primarily payments, but has crypto trading embedded. Upbit is primarily crypto trading, but has select payments embedded. So each main product is augmented by the other. 

 

Upbit contributes the hard plumbing: liquidity and price discovery, custody and wallet tech, and mature KYC and AML. That lets consumers top up, pay, and cash out while merchants receive KRW quickly with fewer intermediaries. 

 

Naver Pay Wallet adds the user-facing Web3 layer. It is a non-custodial wallet inside Naver Pay where people can hold tokens and NFTs, and, when policy allows, store KRW-denominated stable value. Users keep their keys and digital assets in Pay Wallet. Meanwhile, Upbit handles conversion, hedging, and fiat settlement behind the scenes. The result is KRW-native checkout for the mass market.

 

The bigger move is owning the stack end to end. From LINE, the Kaia network provides an issuance layer and a large consumer footprint. From Dunamu, the new GIWA Layer-2 supplies a low-cost, high-throughput settlement rail that is compatible with the EVM ecosystem.

 

In short, Naver would control issuance, settlement, and distribution in one coherent platform: Pay Wallet as the consumer gateway, Upbit as the market and compliance engine, and Kaia plus GIWA as the programmable payments fabric.

 

Architect Partners’ Observations

As bankers, we tend to love complexity. A cash deal is pretty straightforward:  set a price, shake hands and everyone celebrates. A stock deal, such as this one, has many variables to consider. First, if a seller is getting paid in stock, then they should be rewarded with extra premium considering the higher risk of stock vs. cash payment. Second, the valuation moves around because a stock price is not fixed. Third, selling for liquidity is restricted so it has to be managed carefully. Fourth, the big liquidity event happens later when the entire entity goes through a deal.  Overall stock deals can be effective, they  just need some additional calculations. But a stock deal can also bridge gaps in valuation and headline numbers.

 

For this deal, there are some wrinkles but seems a standard deal (caveat that all information is not public yet). All things considered, it seems to be a fair deal for both sides.

 

Sources

PitchBook, Korean News Release (The Chosun Daily), Coindesk, Yahoo Finance, CryptoSlate, Architect Insights