In brief
- Former Tether and Blackstone executives seek to raise $1 billion to build a digital assets treasury.
- They are aiming to take the crypto treasury vehicle public via a SPAC deal with M-3 Brigade Acquisition V Corp.
- Their plans come amid a boom in both SPAC deals and publicly traded crypto treasuries.
A Tether co-founder and former Blackstone dealmaker are aiming to raise $1 billion to build a digital asset treasury for a company they aim to take public, according to a Bloomberg report.
The duo, ex-Blackstone executive Chinh Chu and stablecoin titan Reeve Collins, will raise the capital through their special-purpose acquisition company M-3 Brigade Acquisition V Corp., the publication reported Wednesday, citing sources familiar with the matter. The firm’s treasury would hold several digital assets, including Bitcoin, Solana and Ethereum.
The number of publicly traded crypto treasuries has mushroomed in recent months as the prices of Bitcoin and other assets have soared amid a more favorable political environment for the crypto industry. Strategy, formerly MicroStrategy, first pioneered the model of building a crypto treasury after pivoting its focus from software development to Bitcoin in 2020.
The firm holds more than 592,000 Bitcoin valued at roughly $63.6 billion based on current prices. Strategy’s stock price has surged 165% over the past year.
More than 250 entities, including 141 publicly traded firms, hold Bitcoin on their balance sheets as of publication time, according to bitcointreasuries.net data. The number of entities with Bitcoin holdings has increased 13% over the past month.
Several public companies have begun establishing corporate treasuries based on other cryptocurrencies, including XRP and Solana. In late May, gambling marketing firm SharpLink Gaming announced a $425 million private share sale to raise funds for an Ethereum treasury, leading investors to bill it the “Strategy of Ethereum.”
Reeve Collins co-founded stablecoin giant Tether, leading the firm from 2013 to 2015. He later sold the USDT issuer to Bitfinex’s operators. Chinh Chu served as a senior leader at Blackstone for more than two decades, and he has led the creation of five SPACs since 2016.
M-3’s plans also come amid a SPAC issuance surge across multiple industries.
In the year to date, 61 SPAC offerings have debuted, raising roughly $12.3 billion, according to SPACanalytics.com data. That’s compared with 57 companies raising $9.6 billion across all of 2024, the same data shows.
On Monday, crypto investor and influencer Anthony Pompliano unveiled his plans to take his blank-check firm ProCap public via a more than $750 million SPAC deal.
Edited by James Rubin
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