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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

Uncategorized

Week of September 23 – September 29

Todd White
October 2, 2024
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22 Crypto Private Financings Raised: ~$160M 

Rolling 3-Month-Average: $186M

Rolling 52-Week Average: $207M

 

 

Blockchain processing congestion has long challenged the scalability needed for mass adoption of web3 and blockchain based solutions. For example, Bitcoin was originally posited as an alternative currency to store and transact for value, although the 6 minutes or so required to validate individual blocks proved too slow for convenient use. Solutions such as the Lightning Network attempted to fix this by bundling transactions into aggregated blocks, allowing something closer to instantaneous transactions while still operating on the Bitcoin blockchain. But the throughput problem has remained a barrier for many traditional blockchains, including Ethereum, which must process its consensus mechanism, supporting data, and execution on a single layer. This can lead to major bottlenecks which impair speed and efficiency, increase costs, and hamper usability and adoption.

 

 

Enter Celestia Foundation, a modular network that launched on Mainnet last October. Celestia offloads data requirements by separating consensus and data availability from execution. This helps layer-2 developers manage congestion in order increase speed and efficiency, reduce costs, and ultimately improve scalability. Celestia claims to be the first, but they are not alone in developing modular data solutions – others include EigenLayer’s EigenDA and Polygon’s Avail – although they do not claim the same data capacity as Celestia. Celestia aims to achieve 1 GB blocks, which would allow for transactions to be processed several times faster than the Visa network.

 

 

Though somewhat technical in a hyper-technical sector, Celestia’s solution could indeed help scale blockspace “from the dial-up era to the broadband era”, in the words of co-founder and chairman Mustafa Al-Bassam. Apparently some sophisticated investors agree, as evinced by last week’s $100m funding round led by Bain Capital Crypto, with support from 1kx, Syncracy and Robot Ventures. We have long applauded developers who continue to build critical infrastructure in the down market; those at Celestia may have developed a key component to drive a market resurgence.

 

 

 

 

Meet Architect Partners at these upcoming events:

  • Permissionless (Oct 9 – Oct 12)
  • Money2020 (Oct 27 – Oct 30)

 

 

Contact ryan@architectpartners.com to schedule a meeting.