jakiro
Author: Bao Yilong, Wall Street News
Well-known investor Cathie Wood joins forces with the UAE to inject $300 million into a Nasdaq-listed football company, which will transform into a treasury company that specializes in stockpiling Solana tokens.
On September 18, Brera Holdings, which holds stakes in football clubs from Italy to Mongolia, announced that the company will begin hoarding Sorana tokens after receiving a $300 million private investment led by Abu Dhabi Pulsar Group and ARK Invest.At the same time, the company will be renamed Solmate.
New company plans to double list in the UAE, using “UAE relations to enhance SOL hoarding capabilities”.After the news was announced, the Nasdaq listed company’s share price soared 592% to $52.95, and its closing price still reached 225%.
This transaction reflects the continued expansion of the concept of digital asset treasury, but the differentiation of stock prices of such companies has recently intensified, with some companies falling below the value of their holdings of cryptocurrencies, and the market’s premium to this business model is being re-evaluated.
Celebrity investors join heavyweight executives
To inject strong momentum into this transformation, Solmate has formed a compelling team of executives and directors.
Marco Santori, a legal pioneer in the crypto industry, will become CEO of the new company.Santori said in an interview that he believed Solmate’s differentiation advantage lies in its ability to get close to capital, saying:
Where is the capital city of the world today?It’s the UAE.This is what attracted me in the first place.
Santori was previously a general partner of blockchain investment group Pantera Capital and served as chief legal officer for crypto exchange Kraken for five years, making it famous in the industry for creating the “Simple Agreement on Future Tokens” (SAFT).
Even more striking is that Arthur Laffer, an economist who is famous for proposing the “Laffer Curve” theory and received the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2019, will join the company’s board of directors.
According to reports, a person close to Brera said that after Laffer confirmed his joining, Wood quickly decided to invest in Solmate.Sister Mutou used to describe Laffer as a “mentor”.
Sister Mutou’s entry further enhanced Solmate’s star aura.
Solana’s “Treasury” track is becoming increasingly crowded
Despite the blessing of heavy characters, Solmate will still enter a seemingly crowded track.Transforming listed companies into “treasury companies” that are specific crypto tokens has become a trend, especially in the Solana field.
Santori’s former employer Pantera Capital just reportedly helped a medical device company raise $1.25 billion this week, which also plans to stockpile SOL tokens.
Earlier, another crypto investment company, Galaxy Digital, announced that it co-led the $1.65 billion private placement of Solana Holdings, a Solana holding company called Forward Industries.Santori himself also revealed that he has seen about 80 financing plans for the treasury company recently.
In order to stand out from the competition, Solmate has reached in-depth cooperation with the Solana Foundation.
According to Santori, the Solana Foundation will sell some of its tokens to Solmate at a discount and acquire two board seats.In return, Solmate will work with the Foundation to carry out projects in the UAE and share related revenue.Santori even predicted:
I think Wall Street will be building on Solana, not Ethereum.
Follow the precedent of “stopping coins”, but the market has shown signs of weakness
Solmate’s business model is essentially a successful precedent for following MicroStrategy’s transformation into a “bitcoin treasury company”.
Accumulate cryptocurrencies by issuing stocks or bonds, which aim to drive their share price to rise more than the value of the crypto assets they hold.According to statistics, more than 100 companies have adopted this strategy.
However, this model that was once sought after by the market is facing test.
Some critics believe this is nothing more than a “trick of marketing and financial engineering.”The stock prices of many well-known crypto treasury companies have seen a sharp decline in recent weeks, and some companies’ market value has even fallen below the value of their crypto assets, indicating that investors are reevaluating the premiums of such stocks.
A stark example is that the Eightco packaging company mentioned earlier announced that it would buy Worldcoin, a world currency related to OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, whose share price soared 3,000% in a single day, but the increase has since fallen sharply to 714%.
It is worth noting that the consulting services provided for the two private placements, Solmate and Eightco, are both brokerage firm Cantor Fitzgerald controlled by the family of U.S. Commerce Secretary Lutnik.
