Assets under management grew more than 7-fold year-on-year: BITFIRE GROUP (01611) officially discloses operating data for the first time, as its strategic transformation is being realized in business scale.

On October 26, BITFIRE GROUP (01611) disclosed its operating data for September and the third quarter of 2026 for the first time in an announcementthis is the first complete "report card" the company has delivered since announcing its strategic transformation at the end of August 2025. Half a year ago it was US$85 million; now it is US$221 million. The capacity of New Fire Asset Management's pool has grown 1.6-fold in two quarters and 7-fold in a year; custody amount jumped from US$9.47 million to US$52.68 million, 5.6-fold in half a year; quarterly trading volume was US$342 million, a compound growth of 66.0%; according to statistics, the group's client count rolled from 156 to 2,082, 12.3-fold in a yearon average, every single day, this company writes 5 more names into its roster. Coupled with the steep growth curve in the 2026 interim report, in which gross profit increased a net 141.8%Q3 may still maintain strong growth momentum. On the map of Asia's digital asset finance, BITFIRE GROUP is using a set of impressive operating data to send a clear signal to the secondary market: the strategic transformation from a low-gross-margin OTC trader to digital asset wealth management has entered the harvest period. When AUM becomes the main axis: trading and trust are both accelerating Unpacked, New Fire's growth is not a one-man show of a single business, but a resonance across multiple lines including asset management, trading, and trust. The asset management business is the brightest line: asset management AUM increased from US$85 million to US$221 million, AUM compound growth in half a year was 60.8%, and asset management clients increased from 41 to 71. In terms of product matrix, Hong Kong's first compliant BTC-denominated asset management service, Alpha BTC, focuses on steady appreciation, while the neutral quantitative arbitrage strategy, with an annualized return of 15.66%, a Sharpe ratio of 7.22, and a maximum drawdown of only 0.82% in live trading records, has become a scarce variety in a volatile marketthis set of data is decoupled from coin price movements and is precisely the "ballast stone" high-net-worth clients need most in volatile cycles. The crypto asset trading business is also speeding up: third-quarter trading volume was US$342 million, with quarterly compound growth of 66.0%. The steepest growth came from the trust and custody businesscustody amount jumped from US$9.47 million to US$52.68 million, with a compound growth rate of 135.9%, and the number of custody clients nearly doubled in half a year to 756. Custody is the front station of asset management: clients first entrust assets to the company on the basis of trust before entrusted management can even be discussedthis indicator leads AUM. From the perspective of the chain, this is not the victory of each business line separately, but the beginning of a positive cycle: "trading brings trafficcustody builds trustasset management takes on assets." The successive rotation of the three flywheels stems from BITFIRE GROUP's strategic transformation in August 2025. At that time, New Fire announced its transformation into a "private-banking-grade digital asset steward," and subsequently completed milestone arrangements in succession in 2026: in March, it officially changed its name and launched the international brand "Bitfire"; in April, it acquired Avenir's investment and trading operating system; in May, it launched Hong Kong's first compliant BTC-denominated asset management product, "Alpha BTC"; in August, it entered the RWA integrated operations business. It is worth mentioning that in October, Euromoney 2026 awarded "Best Digital Prime Broker in Asia-Pacific" to BITFIRE GROUP. The institutions on the same list are all established financial giants such as HSBC, UBS, and DBS Bank, while New Fire became the only Hong Kong Web3-native financial institution selected. These moves are not scattered attempts, but a complete strategic puzzlerooted in the Hong Kong Securities and Futures Commission's Type 1, 4, and 9 licenses and the TCSP trust license, plus licenses in the United States and Canadaproviding compliance assurance for global digital asset circulation and building a full-chain compliant service system covering trading, asset management, custody, and trust. Gross profit doubles: revenue structure actively reshuffled, financial inflection point may have appeared Scale is running forward at high speed, but profit realization lags. At this stage, the group's financial inflection point may not yet have arrived, but from the latest business and financial data it can be seen that the group's revenue structure has begun to undergo profound changes, and the transformation is still in the process of continuous advancement. Behind a set of seemingly contradictory data in the 2026 interim report is the group's active reshuffling of its business structure: the 2026 interim results show revenue of HK$1.966 billion, down 43.1% year on yearwhat shrank was low-gross-margin trading revenue; gross profit was HK$27 million, up 141.8% year on yearwhat grew was high-gross-margin new businesses such as asset management and custody. The revenue structure is being actively reshuffled. Loss before tax was HK$245 million, but HK$154 million of that was a book loss from changes in the fair value of crypto assets, which does not generate cash outflow; what truly reflects the will to invest is R&D expenses up 139.8% year on year and administrative expenses up 210.3%licenses, systems, and teams are all upfront investments. Note that there is an obvious time lag between operating data and financial data: AUM, custody scale, and client count are all leading indicators, while revenue recognition from management fees and performance fees lags behind scale growth. In other words, scale is already running ahead, and reported profit is a lagging realization variable. Doubling gross profit is precisely the watershed signal of the switch from the investment period to the harvest period. Sustainability of growth: four barriers The next thing the market wants to ask is whether growth can continue and how deep the supporting foundation is. The first barrier is licensing and product platformization. New Fire is the only listed company in Hong Kong that simultaneously holds SFC Type 1, 4, and 9 licenses and a TCSP trust license, and is also the first licensed institution authorized to provide discretionary account management for virtual assets, with additional MSB licenses in the United States and Canada and dual licenses in Japan, forming a full-chain compliance loop covering trading, asset management, custody, and trust. In Hong Kong's market where "a license is a barrier," these four licenses together represent the trust ceiling for client acquisition and the compliance moat for scale expansion. The second is an all-star management team. In August 2025, core executives from the former Huobi and HashKey, including Weng Xiaoqi, Xing Yue, and Guo Wenbin, known as "Qi Ye," officially announced their joining of New Fire, and in the same year the company completed a series of major moves including the acquisition and consolidation of Japanese exchange BitTrade, the release of its new strategy, and a brand upgrade; in April 2026, New Fire brought in about a 20-person investment research, trading, and risk control team and the entire AvenirX system from Li Lin family office Avenirthis team has long engaged in large-block OTC, funding rate arbitrage, basis arbitrage, dynamic hedging, and option enhancement, and has weathered multiple rounds of extreme market conditions. In June, well-known economist Fu Peng joined as chief economist to build a macro research and institutional strategy system. The former provides practical Alpha, while the latter completes the macro research skeleton, enabling products to move from "being able to make money" to "being explainable, replicable, and institutionalizable." The third is two-market depth. Hong Kong provides an asset management highland and institutional capital, while Japan's BitTrade provides retail traffic and a compliant fiat channel306,000 users and US$113 million in custody and wealth management assets. It is both a cash flow cushion and a replicable template for the Hong Kong model. The fourth is a platformized revenue ladder. The first layer is exchange trading revenue (BitTrade), providing stable cash flow; the second layer is fee-based revenue from asset management and custody (Bitfire Premium), opening up high-gross-margin space; the third layer is RWA, prime brokerage, and platformized operating revenue. Once the three-level leap runs smoothly, New Fire's revenue will shift from "weather-dependent trading commissions" to a financial services model of "continuous fees based on AUM." Conclusion Viewed from a higher dimension, BITFIRE GROUP's strategic narrative maps the broader trend of the digital asset industry evolving from "wild growth" to "compliant institutionalization." As global financial infrastructure accelerates its reconstruction toward tokenization, compliance is no longer optional but the ticket to entry. With Hong Kong as its fulcrum and licensed permits as its lever, New Fire is building not only a digital asset wealth management company, but also a set of institutional-grade service infrastructure connecting traditional finance and the Web3 world. For institutional investors in the secondary market, paying attention to BITFIRE GROUP is essentially betting on a larger propositionin the process of digital assets moving from marginal innovation to the mainstream financial architecture, whoever can first secure a position in compliant infrastructure will seize the initiative in the next round of value revaluation.