Bitcoin Standard Treasury Co. (BSTR), a bitcoin

treasury vehicle led by cryptography pioneer Adam Back, sees itself as a company with a mission to accelerate real-world bitcoin adoption.

But it might be setting out on another milestone: becoming one of the biggest corporate bitcoin holders.

The company, which is preparing to go public on Nasdaq by merging with Cantor Equity Partners (CEPO), already has 30,021 BTC on its balance sheet, with plans to grow its stack beyond 50,000 coins.

This will set it on the path of potentially overtaking MARA Holdings (MARA) as the second-largest corporate holder of BTC behind Strategy. MARA has more than 50,600 BTC, according to bitcointreasuries.net. Strategy has just under 629,000.

Currently, MSTR, MARA, and BSTR collectively hold roughly 710,000 bitcoin, which represents about 3.38% of bitcoin’s fixed supply of 21 million.

‘Liquidity, security, and scale’

Unlike some corporate treasuries that sit on bitcoin passively, BSTR intends to use techniques that include selling puts to accumulate BTC at lower prices, using bitcoin-backed revolvers and placing collateral with regulated tri-party custodians.

“We’re not interested in chasing DeFi yield or taking on counterparty risk we can’t manage. This is about liquidity, security, and scale,” Back said exclusively with CoinDesk. “Bitcoin was created as sound money and BSTR is being created to bring that same integrity to modern capital markets.”

The SPAC deal with Cantor combines, for the first time, traditional Wall Street financing with a bitcoin-denominated private placement of equity (PIPE).

In addition to 25,000 BTC contributed by the company’s founders, another 5,021 BTC will be raised from the bitcoin community.

The company is also raising up to $1.5 billion in fiat financing, the largest PIPE ever announced alongside a bitcoin treasury SPAC merger.

• $400 million in common equity at $10 per share.
• Up to $750 million in convertible senior notes (30% conversion premium, $13 per share).
• Up to $350 million in convertible preferred stock with a 7% dividend and a $13 per share equivalent conversion price.

CEPO could add up to $200 million from its trust, subject to redemptions.

“By securing both fiat and bitcoin funding on day one, we are putting unprecedented firepower behind a single mission: maximizing bitcoin ownership per share while accelerating real-world bitcoin adoption,” Back said.

A first for bitcoin treasuries

The in-kind PIPE allows investors to deliver BTC at closing and potentially capture upside before settlement. Back said the approach was designed to appeal to both crypto-native players and traditional managers seeking exposure without waiting for post-close market buys.

The firm’s CIO Sean Bill, who previously helped a U.S. pension fund make one of the first institutional allocations to BTC, said the strategy resonated with traditional investors. “We’re building the Berkshire Hathaway (BRK) of Bitcoin, an actively managed Treasury that will pursue yield and alpha strategies, and strategic acquisitions within the Bitcoin ecosystem”.

“We’re flipping the script on Wall Street as we seek to fuse Bitcoin into Finance and Capital Markets, unlike other Treasury companies we’re not coming to Wall Street seeking fiat currency to buy Bitcoin, we’re showing up with a 25,000 Bitcoin commitment and more importantly we issued the first ever Bitcoin in kind Equity PIPE in the United States, raising another 5,021 Bitcoins from OG Bitcoiners. We’re brining the Bitcoin to Wall Street. We believe that the future of finance runs on Bitcoin”,” Bill told CoinDesk exclusively.

Bridging bitcoin and Wall Street

The leadership team sees BSTR as a bridge between the bitcoin ecosystem and institutional capital markets.

“We’re bringing the traders, we’re bringing the bitcoiners to Wall Street,” Back said, noting the potential for the U.S. market’s liquidity to amplify the success of bitcoin-denominated convertibles that have already gained traction in Europe.

The deal is expected to close in the fourth quarter, with the company trading under the reserved ticker BSTR. If the raise is fully subscribed, the launch could set a new scale record for corporate bitcoin treasuries and offer a template for others looking to merge sound money with modern market instruments.

Bitcoin miner MARA Holdings (MARA) stock outperformed peers on Friday, even after its first quarter results missed Wall Street’s estimates, as the company’s focus on lowering costs is seen as positive by analysts.

Jefferies analysts said that with the bitcoin BTC$103,407.25 price improving in the second quarter of this year and MARA focusing on more sustainable energy sources such as solar and flared gas-driven data centers, power costs should come down in the coming quarters and help margins.

“MARA is expanding infrastructure at its 114 MW wind farm and has fully energized its 25 MW micro flared gas data center, both of which should drive down power costs,” said analyst Jonathan Petersen in a note.

If the mining firm continues to buy up more of such power sources, it would help the company’s profitability, Petersen wrote. “Continued acquisition of power assets is expected to further reduce energy costs, expand margins, and better prepare the firm for the next halving.” Peterson reiterated his hold rating on the stock, while raising the price target to $16 from $13.

Bitcoin mining, once a very profitable business, has seen its profit margins crash drastically during the last bear market and even more so after the recent halving that cut the rewards by half. To make matters worse, rising power costs for mining have continued to plague the margins.

This squeeze has forced most miners to diversify their business into other sources of revenue, including hosting artificial intelligence (AI) and high-performance computing (HPC) data centers. MARA was among the few miners that didn’t jump into the AI sector right away, but rather focused on other avenues of diversification, such as transaction revenue services, mining pool, buying bitcoin in the open market and lowering power costs via green energy sources.

The last point about lower power cost seemed to have struck a chord with the market.

H.C. Wainwright analyst Kevin Dede said that this is what separates MARA from its mining peers: “Commentary last night made it clear the company remains focused on technology development in its core vertical of power conversion … with a peeled eye on driving energy costs to zero.”

“We rehash this here in distancing MARA’s strategy against mining competitors gently or forcefully migrating their mining businesses to address the rapidly evolving HPC opportunity,” he said.

Dede, who has a buy rating and price target of $28, also seemed to echo the sentiment that MARA will be able to lower costs by focusing on these types of power sources.

“Our opinion on that aside for now, we agree with MARA’s overarching objective to create opportunities by exploiting unused power or improving the efficiency of used power,” he said.

MARA’s shares rose as much as 9% on Friday, while the CoinShares Valkyrie Bitcoin Miners ETF (WGMI) has fallen about 0.3%.

Read more: MARA Holdings Cut to Sell at Compass Point Ahead of Earnings, Citing Cash Burn

Bitcoin mining company MARA Holdings (MARA) is launching a fresh $2 billion stock offering to buy more bitcoin, continuing its plan of buying BTC in the open market through capital raise while sticking to its “Hodl” strategy.

According to a Form 8-K and a new prospectus filed with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), MARA entered into an at-the-market (ATM) equity program with a group of investment banks including Barclays, BMO Capital Markets, BTIG, Cantor Fitzgerald, and others. The proceeds of the offering, which will see brokers selling shares of the miner from time to time, will be used mainly for the acquisition of bitcoin in the open market.

“We currently intend to use the net proceeds from this offering for general corporate purposes, including the acquisition of bitcoin and for working capital,” MARA said in its prospectus.

This new fresh stock sales plan follows a previous ATM offering that targeted up to $1.5 billion for the miner.

MARA has adopted Michael Saylor’s strategy of raising funds through equity and convertible bond offerings and buying bitcoin in the open market. The miner now holds 46,376 BTC in its treasury, making it the second-largest bitcoin stash among publicly traded companies, behind Strategy’s 506,137 BTC.

The plan to buy bitcoin in the open market was adopted by the miner last year, even though a miner can theoretically mine bitcoin at a discount to the spot price. The industry became challenging after last year’s halving cut mining rewards by half, squeezing profit margins on the back of rising costs. This made buying bitcoin in the open market, alongside mining, a relatively better strategy for the miners.
Read more: Bitcoin Mining Is So Rough a Miner Adopted Michael Saylor’s Successful BTC Strategy

Mara Holdings (Mara) said in a shareholder’s letter that after the next harving event in 2028, Bitcoin miners still pulling power from the power source that touched the grid will struggle.

“For miners who still rely on the attached power of the grid, text is on the wall, and energy costs rise.

The statement comes as mining has already struggled to maintain profitability following the recent half-event in which Bitcoin’s pay cut in half, forcing some miners to diversify revenue streams into high-performance computing (HPC) and artificial intelligence (AI).

Read more: AI is here, but that doesn’t mean that Bitcoin Miner is over: BlockSpace

Mara, one of the biggest bitcoin miners, said in such a competitive market, there is a risk that miners will need to distinguish themselves or will struggle to stay behind and stay profitable. “Those who fail to differentiate are forced to become people who take prices in an increasingly competitive market.”

The miner solution, which already claims to employ “early leads,” is to ensure low-cost energy, vertically integrate operations and expand beyond the traditional Bitcoin mining business. It implies that miners need to meet other computing needs such as AI and HPC.

“The ability to acquire sites, generate low-cost energy, activate depreciated hardware and energy assets, and run vertically integrated models, from software and hardware to now energy generation, provides greater control over costs.” To this end, Mara recently purchased a Texas wind farm that reduces electricity costs for miners.

Mara said it will also increase the development and sales of data center infrastructure, becoming the foundational layer of infrastructure to meet computing needs.

“Whether it’s Bitcoin mining or AI reasoning, our technology will activate and build other technologies, and we believe Mara will provide picks and shovels to deploy new systems and services such as energy management, load balancing, infrastructure,” Mara said.

Miner also reported fourth quarter revenue, with $224.4 million in revenue shattering an average analyst estimate of $187.8 million, according to FactSet data. Marastock rose more than 8% in post-market trading, while Bitcoin fell 4.2% on Wednesday.
Read more: Bitcoin hashrate growth slows amid tough market conditions for small miners