Anthony Pompliano strikes deal to create publicly-traded Bitcoin treasury company
Crypto investor and financial influencer Anthony Pompliano’s Bitcoin-native financial service company has made plans to go public via a special-purpose acquisition company (SPAC).
ProCap BTC will merge with Columbus Circle Capital Corp. I, a SPAC affiliated with financial services firm Cohen & Company Inc, according to a statement from Columbus Circle on Monday. As part of the agreement, the new company formed through the merger—ProCap Financial—will be headed by Pompliano, and establish a treasury with up to $1 billion in Bitcoin once the merger closes. The Bitcoin treasury will be used to generate revenue and profit through various strategies, according to the statement, although it did not disclose exactly what those would be.
ProCap Financial plans to list on the Nasdaq after gaining regulatory approval from the Securities and Exchange Commission, Constantine Karides, chief legal counsel on the deal, told Fortune.
“Our objective is to develop a platform that will not only acquire Bitcoin for our balance sheet, but will also implement risk-mitigated solutions to generate revenue and profits from our Bitcoin holdings,” Pompliano said in a statement.
Ahead of the merger, ProCap BTC and Columbus Circle Capital Corp. have raised more than $750 million in equity and debt financing from investors, including crypto prime brokerage FalconX, financial services company Blockchain.com, and investment company Off The Chain Capital.
The merger announcement along with its crypto investment ambitions comes as a growing number of companies move to establish their own Bitcoin treasury. The trend was pioneered by Michael Saylor’s Strategy, formerly Microstrategy, a veteran software company that pivoted to Bitcoin buying in 2020. Since then, the company has acquired nearly 600,000 Bitcoins, worth over $60 billion at its current price. Over the past five years, Strategy’s stock price has increased more than 3,000% as the value of Bitcoin continues to appreciate.
In April, Cantor Fitzgerald announced a plan to use a SPAC to create a Bitcoin acquisition company called Twenty One Capital in partnership with three other companies. Last month, the company behind President Donald Trump’s social media platform Truth Social, Trump Media and Technology Group, announced a plan to buy $2.5 billion worth of Bitcoin. Even GameStop, the embattled video game retailer, has pivoted its investment strategy to include Bitcoin acquisitions.
This story was originally featured on Fortune.com