This is a segment from the Lightspeed newsletter. To read full editions, subscribe.
I wrote two weeks back that SOL does not enjoy the same institutional buy pressure that BTC and ETH do from digital asset treasuries (DATs).
That state of affairs is changing.
The healthcare device company Sharps Technology (STSS) announced on Sunday that it secured a $400 million private investment structured as a public equity transaction (PIPE) offering to establish a SOL treasury.
That makes Sharps Technology officially the largest Solana DAT to date by announced raise size.
Alice Zhang, co-founder of the Jambo Web3 phone, is Sharp’s newly appointed chief investment officer. Her co-founder James Zhang will serve as a strategic advisor.
Then, news broke yesterday that Pantera Capital is planning a $1.25 billion raise for a Solana DAT. It’ll be called “Solana Co.”, per The Information. The fundraising strategy comprises an initial $500 million equity raise, followed by $750 million in warrants.
Pantera is also an investor in Sharps Technology, and has deployed more than $300 million on DATs spanning across eight tokens: BTC, ETH, SOL, BNB, TON, HYPE, SUI and ENA.
Bloomberg reported yesterday that the trio of Galaxy Digital, Multicoin Capital and Jump Crypto are also planning to raise approximately $1 billion for a SOL DAT, with Cantor Fitzgerald LP serving as the lead banker for the transaction.
Put together, that’s $2.65 billion in total SOL, or 14,095,744 SOL at today’s price of $188.
Before you get too excited, note that this does not necessarily translate to equivalent spot demand for SOL on open markets. That all depends on how DATs are accumulating SOL.
Are DATs buying SOL off the market, are they purchasing locked SOL in-kind with equity, or are they buying it at a discount? The Sharps press release, for instance, indicates an arrangement with the Solana Foundation to buy “$50 million of SOL at a 15% discount to a 30-day time-weighted average price.”
On the other hand, purchasing SOL in-kind effectively converts locked SOL holdings into tradable liquidity, and can even potentially contribute to future sell pressure when the resulting equity overhang is sold or redeemed.
The devil’s in the details.
Regardless, $2.65 billion in SOL is fairly significant; that’s about 4.1x more than the SOL holdings (3,431,861) of existing DATs like Upexi (UPXI), DeFi Development Corp (DFDV) and SOL Strategies (CYFRD).
“Solana dats are going to be monstrous and first principles tuned to what makes solana great,” Solana co-founder Raj Gokal tweeted.
Contextualizing the news further, $2.65 billion in SOL is still relatively small compared to the $14.3 billion in ETH that has been stacked by ETH DATs.
And even smaller compared to the accumulated $80 billion in BTC by BTC DATs:
Get the news in your inbox. Explore Blockworks newsletters:
Source: https://blockworks.co/news/sol-digital-asset-treasuries-are-coming-in-size
