If anything has been a controversial financial topic in recent times, it’s the ‘SPAC’ phenomenon. This stands for Special Purpose Acquisition Corporation, a popular way to take over a company and often to take it public. But there is a lot of criticism of these types of takeovers. In 2022, the number of successful SPACs has fallen sharply. Now the Peter Thiel-backed crypto exchange Bullish is also throwing in the towel.
SPAC for bitcoin exchange Bullish also stops
The exchange writes that in a press release. Bullish had a deal with Far Peak Acquisition Corporation, who wanted to take over the very young crypto exchange earlier. Only at the end of November 2021, almost at the very top of the bull market, did the company go live.
However, you cannot just create an account with the company, it is exclusively for institutions. At Bullish you can currently only buy and sell seven cryptocurrencies. Because customers are large companies, it wants to offer as much liquidity as possible.
If the acquisition were completed, the company would be worth about $9 billion. Bullish CEO Brendan Blumer said in the statement: “Our goal to become a public company is taking a little longer than expected, but we respect that the SEC [werkt aan nieuwe regulaties] and to new accounting requirements.” In addition to the SPAC, PayPal co-founder Peter Thiel and the well-known investors Alan Howard and Louis Bacon in Bullish.
Bullish not the only one: Circle is not going public either
But this SPAC is no longer an exception. This year the interest is in SPACs hard shrunk. They are also calledblank check companiesbecause as an investor you can get out if the deal isn’t what you expect. But the bear market also applies to stocks, which means that investors appear to have much less desire to continue with such acquisitions. Stablecoin publisher Circle also wanted to go public via such a SPAC. But also this deal is truncated.