Anthony Pompliano has raised $750 million to take his crypto firm, ProCap, public in the US by merging with the blank-check firm Columbus Circle Capital Corp.
The combined companies will debut as ProCap Financial Inc. with $1 billion in Bitcoin (BTC) on its balance sheet after the merger, which is expected to close before the end of this year, the companies said on Monday.
Pompliano, who will lead the firm when it goes public, said on X that ProCap Financial “will focus on acquiring bitcoin for its balance sheet, while also developing products and services to produce revenue and profit from the bitcoin on our balance sheet over time.”
Columbus is a Special Purpose Acquisition Company (SPAC), a shell company created to acquire or merge with an existing private company to bring it public, which the the Financial Times reported on June 13 would take Pompliano’s ProCap public.
ProCap Financial raises $750 million
ProCap and Columbus said they raised over $750 million for the deal, pulling in $516.5 million in equity and $235 million in convertible notes.
The raise was backed by the likes of crypto brokerage FalconX, crypto financial services firm Blockchain.com and Eric Semler, the chair of medical company and Bitcoin-buying firm Semler Scientific, among others.
ProCap to join list of Bitcoin-buying companies
ProCap Financial will join dozens of public companies that have bought and hold Bitcoin, a model inspired by software firm Strategy, formerly known as MicroStrategy, which has the largest Bitcoin holdings of any company at 592,345 BTC worth $62.3 billion.
ProCap’s plan to hold $1 billion worth of Bitcoin would, as of today, place its holdings as the eighth largest among public firms, knocking down current spot holder Coinbase, which has 9,267 BTC worth nearly $974 million, per Bitbo data.
It could also be among the likes of Donald Trump’s media conglomerate, Trump Media, which plans to buy $2.5 billion worth of Bitcoin to join the growing list of companies looking to offer Wall Street exposure to crypto.
Rush of crypto IPOs
Other firms are looking to quickly go public as market appetite is seemingly ready to eat up crypto-related and adjacent offerings.
Twenty One Capital, a Bitcoin-focused markets infrastructure firm led by Strike founder Jack Mallers, also plans to soon go public via a SPAC merger with Cantor Fitzgerald’s Cantor Equity Partners.
Related: New Bitcoin treasuries may crack under price pressure
Justin Sun’s crypto platform Tron said earlier this month it too would go public via a reverse merger with the Nasdaq-listed toy maker SRM Entertainment, which would change its name to Tron Inc. and invest $210 million into the Tron (TRX) token.
The slated public companies are hoping to ride on the success of stablecoin issuer Circle Internet Group, which went public on June 5 and whose shares have surged over 670% since.
Magazine: US risks being ‘front run’ on Bitcoin reserve by other nations — Samson Mow
