The technology acquisition that iCandy suspended its shares over in November is not going ahead — but it’s making a cryptocurrency-compatible MasterChef app instead.

iCandy (ASX:ICI) went into a trading halt on November 13, foreshadowing “a material acquisition in the technology sector to be undertaken by the company”.

The shares are still suspended, but the acquisition — about which further details are unknown — was scrapped in early January.

Chief executive Kin Wai Lau says there were cross-border jurisdictional issues, although he hasn’t ruled out returning to it.

iCandy’s shares can’t come out of suspension until a separate issue is resolved by the Federal Court of Australia.

iCandy issued shares in October. But because its stock had been suspended from trade for more than five days in the prior 12 months, it couldn’t issue a cleansing notice — a document that keeps the market informed and allows the stock to be freely traded instead of having to issue a prospectus.

It was not able to issue a notice before some of the $1.3 million worth of shares were sold, and had to apply to the Federal Court to tidy the situation up.

Some investors have voiced their irritation to Stockhead that the company missed the crypto and blockchain hype train.

iCandy launched a project to make its own crypto-coins in October, just before going into the current trading halt.

Mr Lau hopes the company will return to trading “soon”.

During the trading halt iCandy bought a casual games division from Animoca Brands (ASX:AB1) and arranged to make a MasterChef game with them, to be sold on its crypto-coin platform NITRO Interactive.

MasterChef is one of the world’s most popular TV reality shows produced in more than 40 countries and broadcast in some 200.

Animoca shares have since soared — almost trebling this month alone. The shares jumped another 20 per cent today  to 8.4c at 1pm AEDT.

The app development will be funded 50 per cent by Animoca and 25 per cent each by iCandy and iCandy’s cryptocurrency-based gaming marketplace partner Nitro.

“This agreement paves the way for the first games to be funded through the recently launched NITRO Project, a revolutionary blockchain cryptocurrency initiative that completed its first ICO [initial coin offering] round at the end of 2017,” the announcement said.

“The MasterChef app will be among the first games to accept NOX Tokens for in-game purchases.”

NOX is Nitro’s in-house cryptocurrency which can be used to pay for games in the Nitro gaming marketplace.

iCandy made $170,000 in the last quarter, with negative cashflows of $341,000.

It has only $141,000 left this quarter to fund its 50 per cent share of the Masterchef game and company costs. It expects these will cost $224,000.

iCandy last traded at 16c.

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