Public Keys is a weekly roundup from Decrypt that tracks the key publicly traded crypto companies.
This week: Strategy aims to go even bigger, Metaplanet get more ambitious with Bitcoin buying plans, and Coinbase highlights shifting altcoin drivers amid an earnings miss.
Strategy Double Up
Strategy wants its Bitcoin treasury to be the largest corporate treasury ever.
And yes, that means the company is looking to overtake Warren Buffet’s Berkshire Hathaway, which currently had a Scrooge McDuck-worthy $328 billion in cash and cash equivalents sitting in the bank as of Q1.
We’ll get a better idea of how much cash the Omaha Oracle is sitting on tomorrow, when his company publishes its Q2 results “on the internet.”
For Strategy to catch up, the company would need to see the value of its BTC holdings more than double. And if Bitcoin manages to hit the $225,000 target that Benchmark is forecasting for the end of 2026, paper gains could do the bulk of the work.
Even if MSTR stopped buying Bitcoin—it won’t, I know—its current 628,791 BTC would be worth $141 billion if the asset sees those kinds of gains in the next year.
But we know Michael Saylor isn’t done buying Bitcoin. In fact, he said during an interview with CNBC on Friday morning that the company is looking to own up to 7% of the total Bitcoin supply.
“I don’t think we’ll get all of [the Bitcoin]. I don’t think in the range of 3-5% or 3-7% is too much,” he said. “We wouldn’t want to own all of it—we want everyone else to have their piece,” he said.
To that end, the company said during its earnings call it plans to raise another $4.2 billion to buy Bitcoin this year with preferred stock offerings.
Metaplanet’s Bitcoin orbit
Metaplanet, a company about 5% the size of its Bitcoin treasury idol Strategy, is raising almost as much money to buy Bitcoin.
The company announced its $3.7 billion raise through a preferred stock offering on Friday. The perpetual preferred shares would pay up to 6% dividends, the company said.
Metaplanet is giving itself two years to complete the raise.
Keep in mind that the Japanese firm has previously said it wants to hold at least 210,000 BTC by the end of 2027. To do that, it will need to multiply its current holdings by twelvefold.
If Metaplanet were able to magically pull that off now, it would easily be second only to MSTR as the largest corporate Bitcoin holder.
Year-to-date, Metaplanet’s share price has climbed a staggering 207% and an even more impressive 313% in the past year. But today, news of its monster raise didn’t have investors feeling particularly bullish.
Metaplanet, which trades as MTPLF on OTC and 3350 on the Tokyo Stock Exchange, dropped 7.65% during Friday’s session, closing at $7.18, or 1,063 Yen.
Coinbase runs out of alt gas
Coinbase’s earnings miss revealed that XRP has edged out Ethereum as a transaction revenue driver.
The San Francisco-based crypto exchange reported $1.5 billion in revenue, a 25% dip from the previous quarter and 6% lower than analysts’ forecasts of $1.59 billion, according to FactSet data.
But XRP made a strong showing among traders, according to the company’s Q2 shareholder letter. XRP accounted for 13% of consumer transaction revenue, beating out Ethereum’s 12%.
Alt season fervor aside, is it time to worry about Coinbase? Bernstein analysts don’t think so.
The firm’s analysts called Q2 the “quarter that doesn’t matter” in their latest note, which reiterated their outperform rating and $510 price target. Coinbase is currently priced at $316.
“Improving crypto market structure and width with trading focus going beyond Bitcoin into Ethereum, Solana and other blockchains driven by stablecoins and asset tokenization,” the Bernstein analysts wrote in a note shared with Decrypt. “This should drive improved trading volumes in H2, already reflected in guided July transaction revenues (~44% up vs. Q2 average).”
They added that they’re optimistic about the exchange’s partnerships with leading banks, like its new deal with JP Morgan, helps to position the company as the “leading AWS of crypto financial infra.”
Other Keys
- Tokenization, tokenization: Unfortunately for Robinhood CEO Vlad Tenev, saying “tokenization” 11 times during his company’s earnings call won’t make controversy over private company stock tokens disappear. But HOOD did see its revenue climb 45% in Q2, so there’s that.
- Skipping AI: Bitcoin miner MARA Holdings caught some flak this week from for not making more of an effort to diversify its revenue beyond mining BTC. “Everyone else is focused on HPC, and MARA is kind of in its own world,” Compass analyst Ed Engel told Decrypt. “It’s different from what others are doing.”