Li Lin moves Avenir team into Bitfire to raise 10,000 BTC

Bitfire said it agreed to buy Avenir Group’s investment team and trading systems for $1.6 million and will bring the personnel and infrastructure into its Hong Kong operations. Li Lin is the largest shareholder of the listed company.

The firm plans to raise more than 10,000 bitcoins within a year to back a regulated, bitcoin-denominated asset management product called Alpha BTC. The strategy will use derivatives trading, including options, with either physical bitcoin or the IBIT exchange-traded product as the underlying asset.

Bitfire intends to market Alpha BTC to crypto-native investors and Hong Kong-based companies that hold bitcoin on their balance sheets. The company estimates at least 40 Hong Kong-listed firms already report bitcoin holdings and could be potential clients. Bitfire’s chief executive, Livio Weng, called market demand “huge.”

Li built the Huobi exchange, now HTX, and sold a controlling stake to Justin Sun in 2022 for about $1 billion before focusing on his family office, Avenir. Mainland China banned retail cryptocurrency trading in 2021; Hong Kong has been developing a regulatory framework for virtual assets.

Hong Kong regulators have issued the city’s first stablecoin licences this month and continue drafting rules for digital-asset dealers and custodians. Eric Yip, executive director of intermediaries at the Securities and Futures Commission, urged expanding international exposure and noted Hong Kong had been “in the spotlight” at global conferences.

Duncan Chiu Tat-kun, a Legislative Council member for the Technology and Innovation constituency, said US legislative progress has slowed. He warned that disputes in the US Senate over stablecoin yields and other issues could push action on bills such as the Genius Act and the Clarity Act into late 2027.

Bitfire described the acquisition as a way to offer institutional-style bitcoin exposure within Hong Kong’s regulatory framework. The company set a one-year target to gather the bitcoin backing for Alpha BTC and said it will engage corporate holders and other investors to meet that goal.