By Niket Nishant
(Reuters) -ReserveOne, a new crypto venture with ties to industry veterans and a former U.S. commerce secretary, will list on the Nasdaq through a merger with blank-check firm M3-Brigade Acquisition V Corp and is expected to raise more than $1 billion.
The company will manage a portfolio of cryptocurrencies including bitcoin, ethereum and Solana, while aligning its holdings with the U.S. strategic crypto reserve, it said on Tuesday.
The deal, expected to close in the October-December quarter, is the latest in a series of efforts to wrap crypto assets into equity and make them more appealing for traditional investors.
The exponential stock price growth of Michael Saylor’s Strategy, which pivoted to a bitcoin-focused business model in 2020, has also popularized the playbook.
While ReserveOne is joining a crowded space, its CEO Jaime Leverton said the company’s investment strategy and leadership give it an edge. Leverton previously led crypto miner and computing provider Hut 8.
“Our management team and anticipated board of directors bring a really unique pedigree and diversity of background between Wall Street and regulatory and crypto,” Leverton told Reuters.
Sebastian Bea, a former executive at asset managers BlackRock and Coinbase Asset Management , will serve as ReserveOne’s president and head of investment.
Its board will be chaired by stablecoin giant Tether’s co-founder Reeve Collins and will include former Blackstone dealmaker Chinh Chu and Wilbur Ross, the Secretary of Commerce in the first Trump administration.
“Wilbur was a skeptic. But over the last number of months, he’s really opened up to this space,” Leverton said.
The company also plans to generate returns by offering some assets for lending and institutional staking — a practice where crypto is locked up in exchange for periodic payouts.
Blockchain.com and Kraken are among the investors in the blank-check deal, contributing up to $750 million through a combination of equity and convertible debt offering.
Blank-check firms such as M3-Brigade are shell entities that raise capital through an IPO with the sole purpose of merging with a private company, which then becomes publicly traded.
(Reporting by Niket Nishant in Bengaluru; Editing by Sahal Muhammed)
