In brief
- Bitcoin miner Core Scientific and AI powerhouse CoreWeave announced a $9 billion all-stock merger, one of the largest crypto-adjacent M&A deals ever.
- Bitcoin spot ETFs recorded $1.17 billion in net inflows Thursday, marking their second-largest day since launch.
- BIT Mining stock surged 83% after the company announced a $300 million pivot to begin a Solana treasury.
Public Keys is a weekly roundup from Decrypt that tracks the key publicly traded crypto companies.
This week: CoreWeave and Core Scientific plan to make it official, Bitcoin ETFs are booming, a BTC and Dogecoin miner embraces Solana, and Bitcoin's biggest treasury holder takes a week off from the buying grind.
Core fusion dance
Bitcoin miner Core Scientific and newly public AI powerhouse CoreWeave have decided to do the fusion dance in a staggering $9 billion all-stock transaction.
Unfortunately, they are not changing the ticker to DBZ.
The Bitcoin miner trades on Nasdaq under the CORZ ticker, and CoreWeave, the newly public AI powerhouse, trades on the same exchange under the CRWV ticker.
The deal between the two companies looks to be one of the largest crypto-adjacent M&A deals ever. But investors liked the look of it at the start of the week more than they do now.
CORZ rose to $15.71 when the news was announced Monday. But shares for the newly-acquired Bitcoin miner have since sunk to $12.51. That’s not the kind of trajectory you normally see for a miner the same week Bitcoin continues pushing to new all-time highs. And CRWV, which peaked above $160 on Monday, has since sunk to $125.84.
Needham’s John Todaro was one of six analysts this week to downgraded Core Scientific. Macquarie analysts Paul Gooding and Marni Lysaght cut their CORZ rating from outperform to neutral, while maintaining their $15 price target.
That’s in part because investors had already gotten wind of the deal and had started pricing it in before it was announced, they wrote.
“Prior to this, both tickers were pricing in a deal coming to fruition after media reports suggesting a high likelihood,” they wrote in the note shared with Decrypt. The analysts added that because this is a definitive—not non-binding—deal that already has approval from Core Scientific CEO Adam Sullivan, it’s unlikely a better bid will materialize.
One billy for Bitcoin ETFs
Bitcoin spot ETFs cleared $1.17 billion worth of net inflows on Thursday, marking the second largest day for the funds since they launched.
This is the kind of institutional momentum that has so many analysts gleefully pointing at falling Bitcoin volatility. And no small surprise that BlackRock’s iShares Bitcoin Trust, or IBIT, accounted for nearly half—$448.5 million, to be exact—of the cash flowing into the funds.
IBIT has yet to give up the crown as the fastest-growing ETF in the industry’s 32-year history. The fund has now surpassed $80 billion in assets under management, roughly a month after it inched past the $70 billion mark.
Turning towards the SOL
BIT Mining saw its stock get a big lift after the Bitcoin and Dogecoin miner revealed a $300 million Solana treasury pivot.
BIT Mining, which trades on the New York Stock Exchange under the BTCM ticker, was having an otherwise placid week. But when the Solana pivot was announced on Thursday, its shares opened at $7.01 after having closed at $2.42 on Wednesday.
What’s gone up hasn’t crashed all the way back down to Earth, but BTCM shares have lost some of their levity. As of this writing, the stock is changing hands at $4.34 after having gained 83% over the past 5 days, but losing 29% compared to yesterday’s standout performance.
Even if the announcement turned heads from the Solana crowd, it wasn’t enough of a catalyst for HC Wainwright, the only equities research firm that covers the company, to issue new guidance. The firm has maintained its “neutral” rating on BTCM since it initiated coverage in 2022.
Bye week strategy
Yes, even the Buy Bitcoin button at Strategy gets some time off. At least, it did last week, skipping a weekly BTC purchase for the first time in three months.
Bitcoin giant Strategy has seen its BTC treasury swell to a $70 billion valuation thanks to Bitcoin playing footsie with $120K late this week.
In lieu of adding even more of the world’s first cryptocurrency to its coffers, Strategy rolled out a new $4.2 billion preferred stock offering of STRD.
Strategy founder and chairman Michael Saylor has previously called the STRD preferred stock the company’s “fourth gear,” because it grants investors a high yield—but with less sensitivity to the price of Bitcoin.
By the end of June, Strategy capped off a $7 billion Bitcoin buying spree during the second quarter. The company began the year with 446,400 BTC and has now increased its treasury to 597,325 BTC as of this writing.
But hey, enough with the Sat counting. Saylor says, “Just get in.”
Other Keys
- Tokenized equities boom: Robinhood CEO Vlad Tenev said he wants “thousands” of private companies tokenized on the company’s platform. But as we saw last week, not all of those private companies are keen on the idea.
- Coinbase’s “10x unlock”: If you think the GENIUS Act is bullish for Coinbase, wait until you get a look at how it’s planning to supercharge trading with AI. CEO Brian Armstrong said on X he’s “most excited to see crypto wallets fully integrated into LLMs one day,” while announcing the crypto exchange’s partnership with Perplexity AI.