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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 June 10 – June 16

Glenn Gottlieb
June 19, 2024
DOWNLOAD FULL REPORT

35 Crypto Private Financings Raised ~$129M 

Rolling 3-Month-Average: $253M

Rolling 52-Week Average: $195M

 

This week, once again, we saw the dominance of early-stage investments.   And while there were multiple interesting companies, we’re going to focus on the growing importance of zero-knowledge proofs. 

 

By aligning with blockchain principles like decentralization, transparency, and privacy preservation, zero-knowledge proofs are an important innovation that has found a natural home in the crypto space. The unique challenges and opportunities presented by blockchain networks have accelerated the research, development, and adoption of ZKP technologies to enhance scalability, security, and functionality.

 

Zero-knowledge proofs (ZKPs) are a powerful cryptographic technique that enables one party to prove to another that a statement is true without revealing any additional information. This enhances security and privacy by allowing verification of data integrity and validity without exposing the underlying sensitive data itself. ZKPs eliminate the need to share passwords or personal information during authentication, reducing attack surfaces and risks like identity theft.

 

ZKPs have numerous applications for enhancing security across various domains – blockchain/crypto for enabling private transactions and scaling, secure multi-party computation, identity management, voting systems, supply chains, and more. In blockchain, ZKPs underpin critical scaling solutions like zk-rollups that batch transactions off-chain while preserving trust and privacy. ZKPs are a key enabler for bringing enhanced privacy, trust, and scalability to decentralized systems.

 

There are many approaches to the ZKP market, with Nexus Laboratories being one of the pioneering companies focused on making zero-knowledge cryptography more accessible and scalable for developers. Their core product is a zero-knowledge virtual machine that optimizes and parallelizes verifiable computation across a network of machines. Nexus recently raised $25M (co-led by Lightspeed Venture Partners and Pantera Capital, with participation from Dragonfly Capital, Faction Ventures, and Blockchain Builders Fund) to expand their cutting-edge ZKP tools and support early production deployments, especially for zk-rollup scaling solutions on Ethereum, although the company says their solution is designed to work across different blockchain chains and zero-knowledge (ZK) rollup ecosystems.

 

With techniques like compact proof aggregation, Nexus aims to drive down the costs of ZKP generation by orders of magnitude compared to current solutions. By lowering the barriers to adoption, Nexus can enable more widespread use of ZKPs across decentralized networks, AI, cloud computing, and any application requiring robust data integrity and privacy. Nexus is building key infrastructure to unlock the full potential of ZKPs for securing the next generation of internet services and applications.