The race to create publicly traded bitcoin treasuries is accelerating — and so is the capital pouring in.
ProCap Monetary, the exercise advice entrant, has raised greater than $750 million and goes public by way of a particular objective acquisition firm, or SPAC, with Columbus Circle Capital Corp. I, in response to an announcement Monday.
Led by investor and podcast host Anthony Pompliano, ProCap raised greater than $750 million in its funding spherical, together with $235 million in convertible debt, with fairness making up the remainder. The brand new agency goals to carry as much as $1 billion in bitcoin on its stability sheet and generate income by way of a full-stack, bitcoin-denominated monetary companies platform.
The frenzy into bitcoin treasuries — inflated by low cost capital, yield guarantees, and model identify endorsements — is beginning to resemble a bubble.
“There’s an previous George Soros quote that goes, ‘After I see a bubble forming, I rush in to purchase, including gasoline to the hearth,'” Pompliano mentioned. “There is a motive the bubble varieties — as a result of the development works.”
ProCap joins a rising cohort of bitcoin-heavy ventures utilizing reverse mergers and blank-check automobiles to faucet into public markets.
From Trump Media‘s $2.5 billion bitcoin treasury plan to Jack Mallers’ Twenty-One and the Nakamoto fund, a rising variety of companies are racing to supply inventory market publicity to bitcoin.
Some, like Tron founder Justin Sun, are utilizing reverse mergers to take crypto companies public — in Solar’s case, folding his blockchain platform right into a Nasdaq-listed toy producer. Others, like Mallers, are launching purpose-built bitcoin holding companies backed by heavyweight buyers together with Tether and SoftBank.
Whereas Trump Media is not a crypto-native agency, it has embraced the playbook of elevating cash to purchase bitcoin and selling the asset by way of affiliated ventures.
All are following a path blazed by Strategy‘s Michael Saylor: Turning public corporations into bitcoin proxies.
However ProCap says it is pushing past that mannequin, aiming not simply to carry bitcoin however to construct a monetary companies platform on high of it.
“Most different companies raised capital that is simply sitting in money whereas they anticipate offers to shut,” Pompliano advised CNBC. “We’re shopping for bitcoin instantly.”
He added that ProCap’s fairness buyers are getting direct publicity from day one.
The construction provides ProCap a uncommon first-mover edge in an area the place many offers are nonetheless weeks or months from closing, with some but to even file their S-4s — the regulatory paperwork required to finish a merger. It additionally units the stage for a brand new section of the bitcoin proxy commerce: not simply holding bitcoin, however producing yield from it.
“We need to construct the main bitcoin-native monetary companies firm,” Pompliano mentioned. “Like a standard Wall Road agency, however on high of a bitcoin stability sheet as an alternative of {dollars}.”
ProCap plans to supply companies like lending, buying and selling, and capital markets — all denominated in bitcoin. The purpose is to recreate the structure of a Goldman Sachs or Cantor Fitzgerald, rebuilt from the bottom up in crypto.
“The purpose is to feel and appear like a standard monetary establishment,” he added. “That resonates very otherwise with capital allocators.”
ProCap’s pitch to buyers is that it isn’t simply chasing momentum. It is constructing the infrastructure for what Pompliano calls a brand new monetary system — one which runs on bitcoin, however appears to be like and feels acquainted to the establishments nonetheless sitting on the sidelines.
“Many corporations do not care about the price of capital. We do,” he added. “We’re conventional capital allocators — we care about constructing a sustainable enterprise that generates money circulation.”
