Hong Kong-based Animoca Brands is preparing for a listing in New York, citing US President Donald Trump’s relaxed regulatory stance on digital assets as a window of opportunity to enter the world’s biggest capital market.

Animoca executive chair Yat Siu told the Financial Times that an announcement may be made soon, with the company currently evaluating various shareholding structures.

Siu said the decision to pursue a US listing would not hinge on market conditions but rather on timing and strategic positioning.

Animoca, which was delisted from the Australian Securities Exchange in 2020 over governance concerns and the status of some cryptocurrencies, has since built a robust investment portfolio, including stakes in OpenSea, Kraken and Consensys.

The company reported unaudited earnings of $97 million from $314 million in revenue for the year ending December 2024, a sharp increase from the previous year.

Source: Animoca Brands

Siu told the FT that Animoca is the largest non-financial crypto firm globally, with $300 million in cash and stablecoins and over $538 million in digital assets.

He also hinted that other Animoca portfolio companies, including US-based Kraken, may follow suit with listings in the US in 2025 or 2026.

Related: Deribit eyes US expansion under crypto-friendly Trump admin: FT

Crypto firms consider US comeback

Under former President Joe Biden, federal agencies launched numerous lawsuits and enforcement actions against digital asset firms. Siu said this regulatory hostility stifled innovation and discouraged overseas companies from entering the US market.

In contrast, Trump’s return to office has been accompanied by pledges to support the crypto sector and a rollback of enforcement activity. Siu described this as “a unique moment in time,” adding that not taking advantage of it “would be one heck of a wasted opportunity.”

Since Trump’s election victory, the US Securities and Exchange Commission has dropped or paused over a dozen enforcement cases against crypto companies.

Additionally, the Department of Justice recently announced the dissolution of its cryptocurrency enforcement unit, signaling a softer approach to the sector.

This hands-on approach appears to be boosting industry confidence. OKX, for example, has announced plans to establish a US headquarters in San Jose, California, just months after settling a $504 million case with US authorities.

On April 28, Nexo, which left the US at the end of 2022, citing a lack of regulatory clarity, revealed that it is reentering the US market.

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A British High Court has issued a restraining order against computer scientist Craig Wright, preventing him from filing further defamation suits. 

In a May 12 judgment, High Court Judge Edward Mellor said Wright’s repeated false claims and aggressive legal actions created legal “hell” for individuals and developers in the Bitcoin (BTC) community, adding that Wright sought to “weaponise legal systems” to intimidate and silence critics.

His lawsuits forced people into costly and time-consuming legal defenses, often based on fabricated evidence, the judge added as he handed out a General Civil Restraint Order or injunction against Wright, prohibiting him from filing any more civil claims or applications in the High Court. 

The court highlighted how this strategy was part of a pattern of abusing the legal system to assert false claims of being Satoshi Nakamoto.

“It is apparent that Dr Wright had substantial financial backing from the start of his campaign, and his defamation claims were deliberately unequal battles,” said Judge Mellor.  

The Crypto Open Patent Alliance (COPA) brought the claim in 2021, seeking negative declarations and injunctive relief because of the threats Wright had made against its members, including crypto blogger Peter McCormack and Magnus Granath (aka Hodlonaut).

His defamation claims “put each man through five years of personal hell,” Mellor wrote, adding that allegations were “part of a deliberate strategy whereby Dr Wright and his backers sought to establish the claim [that Dr Wright was Satoshi] by unequal contests.”

COPA is a nonprofit community formed to encourage the adoption and advancement of crypto technologies and to remove patents as a barrier to innovation.

Justice Mellor says Wright put defendants through personal hell. Source: bailii.org

Related: Crypto group COPA launches bid to stop blockchain ‘patent trolls’

The threats its members received “were having a serious chilling effect on development and innovation in the cryptocurrency industry,” said Judge Mellor. 

“Dr Wright’s actions have not only affected the individuals he has sued,” he continued. “They have also caused significant disruption to innovation in an important technology industry.” 

Craig Wright slapped for contempt of court 

Last March, the British High Court ruled that Craig Wright was not the author of the Bitcoin white paper, did not operate under the pseudonym Satoshi Nakamoto and was not involved in the creation of Bitcoin.

In July, Wright issued a legal disclaimer on his website, emphatically stating that he was not the pseudonymous creator of Bitcoin.

In December, the Australian computer scientist was given a one-year suspended sentence in the United Kingdom for contempt of court.

Wright has also filed libel lawsuits against Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin and Bitcoin pioneer Adam Back during the almost decade-long “faketoshi” saga. 

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The lawyer for a group of Caitlyn Jenner memecoin buyers said they will continue their legal fight against the ex-Olympian after a judge threw out the case for failing to adequately support the securities and fraud claims it brought.

Jenner had escaped a class-action lawsuit from buyers of her self-titled memecoin, Caitlyn Jenner (JENNER) after California District Court Judge Stanley Blumenfeld Jr. said in a motion filed on May 9 that it was “sufficient to conclude that all nine causes of action are deficient” and sided with Jenner in dismissing the suit in its entirety for failure to state a claim.

He allowed the class group to amend its suit, which must be filed by May 23, but warned it had “to be more focused and judiciously pleaded” than the original.

A lawyer for the class group, Fitzgerald Monroe Flynn PC partner Jack Fitzgerald, told Cointelegraph it was “pleased the Court recognized we may be able to state some claims against the defendants, and intend to amend and press forward with the case.”

Jenner and her manager, Sophia Hutchins, were sued in November by a group that bought the JENNER token and accused them of having “fraudulently solicited financially unsophisticated investors” to the token, which they alleged was an unregistered security.

Lee Greenfield, a UK citizen, was added as the lead plaintiff in January and claimed he lost over $40,000 buying JENNER. But the court found, for a start, that claims of securities law violations couldn’t stand as it wasn’t alleged that his JENNER buys took place in the US, as the law requires, and gave “scant details” about the purchases.

The court didn’t allow the class to swap its lead for a US-based member, adding it must report by May 16 on how the suit will proceed (highlights added for emphasis). Source: PACER

Court dismisses all claims by JENNER tokenholders

In all, Judge Blumenfeld dismissed a further eight claims the class group brought in an amended complaint filed in February, which included accusations that Jenner and Hutchins either made misleading statements, sold unregistered securities, or committed various fraud.

Judge Blumenfeld said the suit failed to allege that Jenner sold the token through a prospectus that contained an untrue statement, as “Greenfield admits that the $JENNER tokens were not sold through a prospectus.”

The court also tossed a common-law fraud accusation, saying the complaint alleged omitted information and noted various X posts by Jenner “stating that she would continue to support the tokens,” but it did not identify which of the statements related to the fraud claim.

The group also accused Hutchins of aiding and abetting Jenner’s allegedly fraudulent conduct, but Judge Blumenfeld said that claim failed as the complaint “does not adequately allege any viable fraud claim.”

In a footnote, Judge Blumenfeld said Jenner and the class group disputed whether the JENNER token was a security, but he was not going to decide at this stage as the “securities claims fail on other grounds.”

Related: Top TRUMP whales hold $174M in tokens ahead of dinner with US president 

“Because the determination of whether the tokens are securities is fact-dependent and may be affected by an amended pleading, the Court declines to resolve that issue at this stage and instead assumes without deciding that the tokens are securities subject to the federal securities laws,” he wrote.

JENNER first launched in May 2024 via Pump.fun on the Solana blockchain but was soon embroiled in controversy after Jenner and other memecoin launching celebrities claimed collaborator Sahil Arora scammed them. 

Jenner relaunched the token on Ethereum, which the class group claimed tanked the value of the original Solana token, but gave Jenner the benefit of collecting a 3% fee on every transaction.

JENNER has lost essentially all its value since launch. CoinGecko shows its market value has crashed to around $58,775 from a June 3 peak of nearly $7.5 million. The token has seen just $61.10 worth of trading volume over the last day.

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