A group of crypto executives has filed to raise $200 million through a blank-check company that plans to list on Nasdaq under the ticker BIXIU.
According to a regulatory filing, Cayman Islands-based Bitcoin Infrastructure Acquisition Corp Ltd will offer 20 million shares at $10 each and then search for a private company to merge with and take public.
Experienced Crypto Team
The company’s leaders bring long ties to bitcoin and crypto firms. Ryan Gentry, named CEO, spent five years leading business development at Lightning Labs.
He also worked as a lead analyst at Multicoin Capital. James DeAngelis was picked as finance chief; he has run finance teams at Kroll, a firm involved in several crypto bankruptcy cases.
Vikas Mittal, a director, is the chief investment officer at Meteora Capital, the sponsor behind this IPO and a backer of the 2023 SPAC that took Bitcoin Depot public.
Image: NASDAQ
According To The Filing, Focus Will Be On Infrastructure
Bitcoin Infrastructure says it will look for targets involved in wallets, custody, exchanges, lending protocols and tokenized financial instruments, as well as applications such as payments, DeFi and cross-border finance.
The filing frames the SPAC as a vehicle to bring infrastructure-style businesses into public markets rather than speculative consumer tokens.
Market Appetite For Crypto IPOs
Wall Street money has already flowed into crypto companies that went public this year, and SPACs are part of that push.
Bullish and Circle Internet Group are two recent public debuts tied to crypto. In just two days, two crypto-focused SPACs raised a combined $575 million: CSLM Digital Asset Acquisition Corp III closed a $230 million IPO and M3-Brigade Acquisition VI Corp closed $345 million.
A prior M3-Brigade SPAC took ReserveOne public in July. These moves show there is still capital available for firms that promise a path to public markets.
Baggage And Risks Remain
There are reasons for caution. Kroll, where DeAngelis worked with finance teams, faces a lawsuit over a data breach that touched creditors of FTX, BlockFi and Genesis.
The SPAC itself has not named a target yet. That leaves investors buying into a plan without a clear deal on the table.
Blank-check companies have been criticized for raising large sums and then racing to find a suitable merger, which can lead to rushed decisions.
Featured image from Unsplash, chart from TradingView
