Bithumb, one of South Korea’s leading cryptocurrency exchanges, has transformed its now-defunct subsidiary, Bithumb Meta, into Bithumb Partners.
As reported by BizWatch today, the rebranding is interpreted as a major strategic change. Apart from the name, the focus has changed to investment operations, forming a new entity within Bithumb.
In the fourth quarter of 2024, Bithumb rebranded and injected another 1 billion KRW or 6,80,099 USD, bringing the total capital for the subsidiary under 100% ownership of Bithumb to around 2 million dollars. In 2023, previous investors in Bithumb Meta-such as LG CNS, CJ OliveNetworks, and SK Square-have now officially departed, given that the subsidiary did not live up to its expectations from NFT and metaverse projects.
Bithumb Partners will now officially be led by an external recruit named Im Tae-seong. Accordingly, management at Bithumb will occupy all key positions, just like the internal directory and audits. The shake-up also ended with the departure and dissolution of the founding management team of Bithumb Meta.
Bithumb Partners shall, therefore, be a short-term investment vehicle into themed deals of stocks and bonds employing Bithumb internal funds. This is in contrast to Bithumb Investment, which mostly engages in external investments. Moreover, Bithumb has historically invested in convertible bond investments in KOSDAQ-listed companies Iwin, Barunson, and T&R Biofab. For the time being, Bithumb Partners is looking to continue overseeing existing short-term stationary investments in addition to potentially extending into a full-fledged strategic or financial investor.
There was a common sentiment among industry experts regarding Bithumb Partners, and the intended ‘spinoff’ Bithumb has been reported in the first half of 2023. There was a vision to set up an investment company used for holding operations to manage investments and real estate through leasing. Nevertheless, Bithumb Partners is the brainchild of the previous vision but takes on a more streamlined process than the initial plan.
“We restructured Bithumb Meta into Bithumb Partners to streamline operations and focus on managing assets like stocks and bonds, as well as short-term financial investments. Creating a new entity from scratch and liquidating the old one would have been time-intensive.”
Bithumb spokesperson.
Bithumb’s IPO positioning
This development coincides with an announcement made by Bithumb that it intends to undertake an IPO in 2025. Forming an investment-centric subsidiary will likely fall under a wider optimization effort of its corporate structure and financial works toward the planned IPO.
Some of them said your company reorganized Bithumb Meta into Bithumb Partners to streamline operations more easily and focus on asset management related to stocks and bonds and short-term financial investments. Creating a new asset from scratch and liquidating the old one would take way too long.
This follows in parallel with Bithumb’s proposal and announcement to go for an initial public offering in the United States by 2025. Forming an investment-focused subsidiary forms such a great effort to put corporate structure and operations into order before the IPO itself.
