Amber's "$300 Million" Series C Raises Questions About Whether Debt to Equity?

Dec 17, 2022

Amber Group’s recent $300 million Series C funding round has sparked much discussion, such as the possibility of a partial debt-for-equity swap. There are many oddities and indecibbles. Fenbushi Capital US led a $300 million round, but it is rare for Fenbushi to be the only publicly disclosed investor in a round of this magnitude.

Bo Shen, founder of Fenbushi, tweeted his strong support: “They have proved their great resilience and strength as one of the best teams to work with, who come from the legacy finance industry and understand crypto. I admire their vision and technology-driven institutionalized solutions.”

However, there is also something very strange about the use of the “$300 million”.

In the Bloomberg interview, Amber said that the “$300 million” from the Series C round would be used for customers who suffered losses on Amber’s platform products due to the FTX implosion; some specific products may have suffered significant drawdowns after the FTX default, such as products that were arbitrated between exchanges. The description here is also very strange. If, for example, a condominium account suffers a loss on FTX, the liability, the bonds, should belong to the funders and not Amber. why would Amber need to use the newly financed money to compensate or support its clients?

Finally, Amber says that less than 10% of the funds are trapped in FTX, but exactly how much finance is not disclosed. TheBlock previously revealed that Amber owed Vauld about $130 million and had to pay it back by June 2023. vauld went bankrupt after taking in user money and owed creditors about $400 million. Amber is angry about this and will take legal action (sue) for misinformation.

Amber has cut its staff from 1,300 to 600 and said it will abandon its retail business.Amber’s previous major mistakes include blindly expanding its staff, expanding into different areas such as the DeFi meta-universe NFT, and making large marketing expenditures for soccer teams such as Chelsea. The true nature of this $300 million round of funding remains to be investigated.

Bloomberg report

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-12-16/crypto-firm-amber-raises-300-million-to-tackle-damage-from-ftx

Amber announcement