Key Takeaways:

• Animoca Brands has raised $360 million in a new funding round that values the company at $5.4 billion
• Company was booted from Australia’s main stock exchange in 2020 for noncompliance, but could seek a new listing as soon as this year, most likely in New York

Move over, Bitcoin (CRYPTO: BTC) miners.

A Hong Kong company called Animoca Brands Corp. Ltd. has become the latest hot ticket for super-speculators, carving a niche for itself on recent crazes involving online gaming, non-fungible tokens (NFTs) and the metaverse. You name it, this company has added all the latest buzzwords to its portfolio.

That buzz has helped it to attract both mom-and-pop investors as well as big institutions, as the company tries to decide if it’s a venture-style startup, or a publicly-listed company.

We’ll return shortly to that broader and important issue of who exactly is backing this company. But first we’ll delve into the latest headlines, which have Animoca announcing it has just raised a fresh sum of about $360 million that values it at $5.4 billion. The round was led by New York-based Liberty City Investors, and includes big names likes Gobi Partners, L2 Capital, Mirae Asset and Sequoia China, among many others.

The sum of Animoca’s latest fundraising certainly isn’t small. But the long list of investors also suggests that most of these firms are putting up relatively small amounts, probably $5 million or less. That would certainly sync with our earlier premise that this company is trying to decide whether it’s a startup or a more-mature company that belongs on a stock exchange.

NFTs are cyber assets that can be used to represent items like artworks and real estate, employing blockchain technology to give them unique identification codes. They have become a hot property these days among speculators looking to make some quick bucks.

One such speculator among Animoca’s investors is Justin Sun, the self-made crypto magnate who made headlines in 2019 when he placed the winning $4.6 million bid in the annual auction for a chance to have lunch with celebrity investor Warren Buffett. Seeking to put itself at the center of the buzzword universe, Animoca describes itself as “driving digital property rights via NFTs and gaming to build the open metaverse.”

Exploding valuation

With all those buzzwords and other hype as background, it’s not difficult to understand why Animoca’s value has exploded over the past year – much the way bitcoin was all the rage earlier.

The bitcoin companies we mentioned earlier all moved on a similar trajectory around this time last year, going from relatively small players to companies worth more than $1 billion, before falling back to their current levels.

Of course, Animoca differs from the crypto companies in that it’s not publicly traded. Or not exactly.

The situation may be similar to what happened to Luckin Coffee, which was kicked off the Nasdaq not long after it was exposed for fabricating massive amounts of non-existent sales in 2020. Luckin’s shares still trade over-the-counter in New York, and a recent media report indicated the company was considering applying to re-list on the Nasdaq’s main board after cleaning up its act.

So, does Animoca have similar plans?

As to if and when the company will float up on a major stock exchange anytime soon, the recent funding frenzy certainly seems to signal that’s a strong possibility. If and when that happens, our bets would be on the U.S. as the most likely listing ground, since many of its backers are based there. What’s more, the U.S. seems like the most receptive to this kind of highly speculative company than more conservative destinations like Hong Kong and Singapore.