Public Keys: Circle and Coinbase Get GENIUS Bump, Bitcoin Treasuries on Shaky Ground?

Public Keys is a weekly roundup from Decrypt that tracks the key publicly traded crypto companies.

This week: Circle and Coinbase surge on stablecoin legislation movement, the Bitcoin treasury model raises concerns, and sources tell Decrypt that another crypto firm is eyeing an IPO this year.

Stroke of GENIUS

It makes sense that this week’s Senate vote in favor of the GENIUS Act was great for stablecoin issuers—but Circle has gone above and beyond.

The company’s CRCL shares, which trade on the New York Stock Exchange, opened at $156.36 on Tuesday—the day of the Senate’s historic vote. Since then, the stock has skyrocketed, hitting a new peak just shy of $249 on Friday and finishing the day above $240.

For those keeping track, that means the company’s share price peaked at eight times that of its $31 IPO. It’s been just over two weeks since CRCL started trading.

Circle has been helped along by the fact that Wall Street analysts can’t help but rate the company highly. Jeff Cantwell, a senior analyst at Seaport Research Partners, initiated coverage on CRCL today with a buy rating and $235 price target.

Circle made it to that target before the bell even rang, dipped, and then shot past it.

“Circle’s strategy is to build the largest, most widely used stablecoin network in the world… This strikes us as a ‘TAM/adoption’ story,” Cantwell wrote in a note shared with Decrypt. TAM is Wall Street shorthand for total addressable market. And Cantwell reckons most of his peers are underestimating just how big the stablecoin market will become.

“We think the overall stablecoin market cap will reach $500 billion by the end of next year; longer-term, we think it ultimately can reach $2 trillion,” he said. That would mean the $260 billion stablecoin market will double in the next six months.

Buckle up, kids.

For what it’s worth, Coinbase, which trades on the Nasdaq under the COIN ticker and co-founded USDC with Circle, has received its own GENIUS-inspired gains. Its stock rose about 30% this week and closed Friday above $308, up more than 4% on the day.

Not an exact science?

Michael Saylor, Strategy co-founder and chairman, famously quipped about Bitcoin, “There is no second best.” It’s even been turned into a song.

But it’s starting to look like Stategy’s Bitcoin treasury company blueprint is really difficult to follow—and that’s not for lack of Saylor & Co. trying to spread the gospel.

Earlier this week, Nasdaq-listed healthcare firm Semler Scientific appeared to be flashing warning signs to investors. On Tuesday, the company was valued at a razor-thin premium compared to its Bitcoin holdings. Its mNAV, or multiple-to-net asset value had fallen to 1.07.

mNAV is a rough measure of how much premium investors assign to its Bitcoin holdings.

Since Tuesday, Semler’s mNAV has improved slightly to 1.23, according to the company’s website.

That’s after the company said Friday morning that it wants to amass 105,000 Bitcoin by 2027. That pushed the stock to a closing price of $36.14, or 13% higher than its Wednesday close. But the company’s shares are still way below the $55.05 they were at the start of the year and half what they were in December, when shares were trading above $78.

Now financial services firm Fold is selling $250 million worth of shares in an effort to turn that cash into a BTC treasury. The company’s shares were trading for $4.57 when it made its announcement on Tuesday. By Friday afternoon, they had slipped to $4.50.

Funny enough, the Bitcoin treasury companies with the best unrealized gains are Tesla and Block, Inc.. The companies have an average cost basis of $33,539 and $30,405, respectively, which means their holdings have net unrealized gains that are more than three times what they paid.

Block has never sold any of its Bitcoin, but Tesla’s unrealized gains could have been even higher. Remember: The company sold 75% of its BTC in 2022, when BTC was trading around $24,000.

Other Keys

• Tron goes public the Trump way—maybe: Justin Sun is taking Tron public by way of a reverse merger with Nasdaq-listed SRM Entertainment. The company has ties to Eric Trump. Or at least it seemed that way, until the President’s son denied “public involvement”—though he’s on the advisory board of Domnari Securities, which is brokering the deal. The deal values the combined firm at $210 million and includes a $100 million token purchase from SRM.
• Bitdeer in headlights: Bitcoin miner Bitdeer’s share price plummeted after upsizing its most recent capital raise to $330 million. The raise was not to buy Bitcoin, but rather to pay $129.6 million in zero-strike call options, $36.1 million to pay cash considerations, and the rest for data center expansion. The sale is expected to close Monday, so we’ll know soon how many investors took them up on the offering. BTDR finished the week down 12%.
• FalconX wants to FlyPO. Crypto prime broker FalconX is in early talks for an IPO. Sources familiar with the discussions told Decrypt reporter Liz Napolitano that the company has already spoken to investment bankers and other experts about the public listing process, but hasn’t actually hired an investment bank just yet.

Edited by James Rubin