The crypto shop Amber supported by Temasek stops expansion plans in a rocky market

The Amber Group has only raised half of a planned $ 100 million financing round and stopped expansion plans, since the crypta group supported by Temasek combats concerns that they were drawn into the market turbulence that was triggered by the collapse of FTX.

crypto retailers became nervous this week in view of the prospects for Amber after industry analysts expressed concerns about how the FTX failure had affected the trading shop.

The group, which is also supported by Sequoia China and Tiger Global Management, gives Token and wraps customer transactions on cryptoma markets. The company founded by former Morgan Stanley dealers has built top-class sponsorship partnerships with the football clubs Chelsea and Atlético Madrid through its Whalefin trade app.

The failure of Sam Bankman-Frieds FTX exchange and Alameda Research, his trade company, sends shock waves by the industry, whereby investors fear that an infection will spread and other companies will devour.

While Amber said it had no commitment to Alameda, it was an active dealer to FTX and had experienced delays in processing his withdrawals. Personnel has also released in the past few weeks, although it has refused to confirm a total number.

The company's problems were brought to light in the days after the 30-year-old co-founder Tantian Kullander, a former Morgan Stanley dealer, on November 23.

Amber's Hong Kong office was filled with the visit to the Financial Times on Thursday. On a closet, arrangements from withered white flowers, the color of grief in Chinese culture.

In an interview on Thursday in the headquarters of the group in Singapore, the managing partner Annabelle Huang said that there was "no interruption of the daily company", and rejected the reports of analysts and media as "predatory and wrong".

Amber said that around $ 50 million of funds from a new state fund collected, whereby the deal is to be announced in January. The company evaluates the new capital with USD 3 billion (4 billion s $), unchanged compared to February and far from the USD 10 billion that wanted to raise it at the beginning of the year.

"I wouldn't say it [The Fining Round] was unsuccessful," said Huang. "We are not under pressure to get capital." The crypto finance company will later also announce a larger takeover of a licensed company in Singapore in December.

Huang said that less than 10 percent of his commercial capital hang on FTX, but the company admitted that the “flowing dynamics” of the market meant that it would focus on institutional customers in Asia. Plans for expansion in Europe and the United States were put on hold, while projects such as a new Meta-Verse platform were "depriorized". The company also confirmed that it made "ongoing adjustments to the number of employees and the team composition".

crypto-focused hedge fund managers said that they believed that Amber FTX FTX and the collapse of the popular crypto tokens Luna hit significantly at the beginning of this year. "We all know that Amber was burned quite a bit, especially at FTX," said a manager. Amber previously invested in crypto companies together with Alameda Research, the fund connected to FTX.

At the beginning of this week, the web3 analysis provider Lookonchain said that there were recent major transfers from Amber to external accounts and that the group had a fortune of only $ 9.46 million based on a review of public blockchain records. Huang said that a large part of his business took place privately.

An employee who said that he worked for the Amber Group in Shenzhen, a technology center in southern China, said that he had lost his job as part of a round of discharge in November, where he estimated that around 60 employees in Shenzhen, Beijing and Beijing lost their work.

The employee who refused to be identified said that the company had released employees since June, and the remaining employees had been instructed to work from home from December 1st because the company had terminated its office generation contracts.

The employees, including the employee, are still waiting for the full payment of a severance payment promised for December 5, but they were informed that there was "a bank problem". "We will take legal action to protect our rights," said the employee.

Huang said the problem stirring from the currency conversion before the Chinese New Year, which is six weeks away.

According to media reports, Amber had closed offices in China, but Huang said Amber had no branches in China, and developers who are building their platform had been stopped through a third party. However, a number of employees on Maimai, China's version of LinkedIn, state the Amber Group as their employer. Cryptocurrency transactions are prohibited within the mainland.