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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

Insights

Week of January 27 – February 2

Todd White
February 5, 2025
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January 27 – February 2 (Published February 5th)

PERSPECTIVES by Todd White

 

29 Crypto Private Financings Raised: $249.3M

Rolling 3-Month-Average: $162.7M

Rolling 52-Week Average: $202.7M

 

The concepts of security, identity management, and privacy are in many ways interlinked, and the potential for vast improvements in each has been woven throughout the story of blockchain and Web 3.0 technologies. While so-called Web 2.0—characterized by user-generated content, interactivity, and collaborative online experiences such as social media—dominates current internet usage thanks to established infrastructure and user-friendly interfaces, proponents of Web 3.0—characterized by decentralization, user-centric online experiences built on blockchain, AI, and machine learning, “trustless” interactions, and ubiquitous connectivity—believe that the underlying philosophies of decentralization, security, and, most of all, privacy will drive an inevitable transition and integration with all things Web 2.0.

 

Yet this transition has been hampered by the complexity of the underlying technologies and the notorious difficulty of using them. Two of the largest financiers this week, in their own way, are seeking to address this complexity to facilitate and expand adoption.

 

D3, the developer of a fully Domain Name System (DNS)-compliant blockchain purpose-built to transform and tokenize Web 2.0 domains as “digital real estate,” secured $25M in Series A funding at a $104M valuation from Paradigm and a collection of their industry notables. Their unique thesis would bring the usual benefits of tokenization—fractional ownership, financial innovation and liquidity, and enhanced ownership options—to perhaps the original digital “real estate”: internet domains. Their goal is to bridge the Web 2.0 DNS and Web 3.0 name systems to more easily connect Web 2.0’s user volume and ease of use with Web 3.0’s structural benefits.

 

And finally, Irreducible, a startup building zero-knowledge proof (ZKP) infrastructure for transaction and identity verification, locked a $24M early-stage round, also led by Paradigm with support from Fenbushi Capital, L2 Iterative Ventures, and Robot Ventures. Focused on the efficiency of ZKPs—a cryptographic method that allows one party to prove a statement’s validity without revealing any underlying data—the company was inspired by the high-frequency trading world’s success in combining specialized hardware with software-enabled trading algorithms. By matching the hardware in their own data center, using field-programmable gate array (FPGA) chips that can be customized for specialized computations, with co-designed software and ZKP protocols, they seek faster execution with lower power consumption to ultimately achieve the precise privacy benefits that ZKP technologies provide.

 

Contact ryan@architectpartners.com to schedule a meeting.