By
Steve Muchoki
April 4th, 2024
Following “frustrating” process of receiving the final approval from Canada’s regulators, Novogratz’ cryptocurrency merchant bank Galaxy Digital gets listed on Toronto’s TSX Venture Exchange.
According to the latest report from Bloomberg, Mike Novogratz’s cryptocurrency merchant bank Galaxy Digital is all set to trade on the Toronto’s TSX Venture Exchange from the 1st of August, 2018. Mike Novogratz, who has an ambitious plan to make this bank the ‘Goldman Sachs of crypto’ told BNN Bloomberg Toronto that they have finally received an approval from the Canadian regulator to begin trading.
Earlier this year in February, CoinSpeaker reported that the Galaxy Digital merchant bank had raised $250 million. This was just the time when the crypto market’s downfall had only begun. Having received the huge capital funding, Novogratz unveiled his plans to get listed on Toronto’s TSX Venture Exchange (TSX-V). In his latest interview, however, Novogratz noted that the process to get listed was quite “frustrating” owing to the demands of the Canadian regulators that had dragged the listing process for months. He said:
“If I knew what I know now, knew the crypto markets were going to swoon as much, and it was going to take so long, I might have stayed private for another year or so and then gone public. But I don’t think it’s a mistake.”
However, the long-time-crypto-bull is not one of those who would regret his decisions as Novogratz continues to remain bullish on the future of cryptocurrencies and the potential that blockchain will unlock in the financial space.
One of the key reasons for this delay in the listing was that Galaxy Digital planned to undergo a reverse takeover while merging the merchant bank with a TSX-listed shell company. This caused the regulators to analyze the deal more closely and ultimately push back the final approval from April to August. Commenting this Novogratz said:
“There was a surge of companies that listed in Canada and they all traded really poorly. I think the regulators got a little bit more nervous and said, ‘Hey, wait a minute, let’s make sure we know what we’re seeing here’.”
However, Novogratz thinks that we have already touched the bottom and the crypto market is set to rebound from here with Bitcoin touching $10000 in a very short time. He said:
“I think we actually [are] in the bottom of the market. Part of this is the anticipation of an ETF that will hopefully get approved. If that ETF gets approved in a few weeks, we will go to $10,000. I don’t think we get through $10,000 cause there is a big ceiling over there.”
Novogratz further continued explaining that investors need better tools to trust the developments in the crypto space:
“A lot of retailer investors got caught by bad prices last November and December. I don’t think we will get through $10,000 until we get custody solutions announced implemented by trusted names.”
Just yesterday, Coinspeaker reported that the crypto investors have overcome the pessimism created by the rejection of Bitcoin ETF by Winklevoss twins as the price of Bitcoin quickly regained its lost ground to trade above $8000. Concerning the arrival of CBOE Bitcoin, the optimism continues to grow further as SEC is more likely to throw light on its decision in the next month of August.
The announcement of a public listing of Galaxy Digital comes just at a time when the merchant reported a loss of $130 million during the Q1 of 2018. This can certainly create some sort of bullish momentum at the time of listing or probably would witness low trading volumes.
“Unfortunately, the Canadian capital markets aren’t roaring anymore. I have faith that they will come back,” said Novogratz in his interview. However, he is here to stay for long and doesn’t seem much worried about the short term movements: “We’re going to be a global company; we want to be globally traded.”