(Bloomberg) -- Crypto trading platform Abra said it had acquired several private cryptocurrency trusts from Valkyrie Investments, shortly before it settled with 25 US state financial regulators for operating without appropriate licenses.
Abra Capital Management LP took over a number of active trusts from Valkyrie in May, Abra’s head of asset management Marissa Kim said in an emailed response to questions by Bloomberg News on Friday. The deal included Valkyrie’s Tron and Zilliqa trusts, Kim said, as well as several trusts that have not yet been launched.
The Zilliqa Trust had sold a total amount of $21.3 million in assets as of October last year, according to a filing by Valkyrie with the US Securities and Exchange Commission. Its Tron trust had sold a total of $50 million in assets as of September 2022. The terms of the deal were not made clear.
“This acquisition will provide ACM with a way to expand its current offering of spot and DeFi products to a new audience of investors,” Kim said. Abra may consider filing to make some of the trusts publicly traded in future, she added, “depending on market appetite.”
Valkyrie didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment on the sale.
Abra settled with a working group of regulators in June over claims it had operated its business without the required state licensing to handle cryptoasset activities. Abra is set to return $82.1 million in cryptoassets to US customers as part of the deal, according to a statement by the Conference of State Bank Supervisors, having already halted offering services in the country last year. Abra Capital Management is a SEC-registered investment advisor, the firm said.
Abra was accused of securities fraud by a Texas regulator in June 2023. The Texas State Securities Board had alleged that Abra misled investors through sales of two crypto interest account products. It also claimed Abra had been insolvent or nearly insolvent. Texas was among the states included in the settlements last month.
Valkyrie has steadily offloaded portions of its business in 2024, including its primary exchange-traded funds business which was sold to CoinShares International Ltd. earlier this year. Its private trusts business had included funds tied to cryptocurrencies like Algorand, Avalanche, BitTorrent, Dash, Polkadot and Bitcoin, according to past SEC filings.
Leah Wald, a Valkyrie co-founder and its then-chief executive, resigned from the company last month.
(Adds in the sixth paragraph that Abra Capital Management is a SEC-registered investment advisor.)
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