Biotech firm Portage Biotech is the latest publicly traded firm to shift its focus to a digital asset treasury, securing around $100 million to build a treasury centered on Toncoin (TON)—the asset linked to popular messaging app Telegram and its digital ecosystem.
As part of the strategy shift, the firm will be renamed AlphaTON Capital Corp. and will shift its ticker from PRTG to ATON on the Nasdaq, effective Thursday.
“At AlphaTON Capital, we see investing in TON as the biggest opportunity for the mass adoption of decentralized technologies,” the firm’s incoming CEO Brittany Kaiser told Decrypt.
“TON is at the beginning of its explosive growth curve,” she added, “now that it vertically integrated into Telegram this year, which has over 1 billion monthly active users, and the TON wallet only just became available in the U.S. markets [in July].”
Kaiser will be joined at AlphaTON by Enzo Villani, currently CEO of Alpha Transform Holdings, who will serve as the firm’s CIO and Executive Chairman. AlphaTON will also maintain strategic advisors like Skybridge Capital CEO and former White House Communications Director Anthony Scaramucci, “The Bitcoin Supercycle” author Michael Terpin, and WallStreetBets founder Jamie Rogozinski.
To begin its treasury, the firm expects to close around $38 million in net proceeds from a private placement securities sale and an additional $35 million via a loan from BitGo.
“We are purchasing a large tranche of TON tokens at a discount to add to the treasury, and we also accepted TON as investment, adding significant TON per share for our shareholders,” the firm’s incoming CEO added. “This means that our first $100+ million market value of TON will have been acquired for less than $70 million.”
The firm’s operational strategy includes more than mere TON acquisition, aiming to differentiate itself from other treasuries with proactive deployment of the asset via network validation, staking, and DeFi activities, and also a commitment to participating within the TON ecosystem.
“AlphaTON Capital will not only be developing a robust TON treasury starting with our first $100 million TON token acquisition, but actively developing, incubating, and accelerating businesses in the TON and Telegram ecosystems, from DeFi to gaming to business applications,” Kaiser said.
“Therefore, ATON can provide exposure to the broader Telegram ecosystem,” she added, “with many revenue streams besides only staking and validating our treasury—our core differentiator to other DAT strategies.”
Shares of PRTG rose earlier Wednesday, hitting a peak of $9.43 after closing Tuesday at $6.96. However, the stock ultimately finished the day down slightly at $6.84.
Though it will change tickers on Thursday, Kaiser told Decrypt that the legacy biotech business will continue to operate.
In August, publicly traded Verb Technologies began its transition to a TON treasury, using $558 million to secure Toncoin.
Though not directly associated with Telegram, Toncoin (TON) serves as the native token for The Open Network, a layer-1 network originally developed internally within Telegram. The messaging app abandoned development in 2020 amid regulatory scrutiny, with external developers continuing the project. In recent years, Telegram has renewed its embrace of TON.
In January, Telegram agreed to an exclusivity deal with The Open Network, ensuring that mini apps in its ecosystem built with blockchain connections can only utilize The Open Network.
TON is roughly flat over the last 24 hours at a current price of $3.19, but is down about 36% over the last year.