Public Keys: Gemini Twinning Circle, Strategy's 'Preferred' Bitcoin Play
In brief
- Gemini is twinning with Circle, as the exchange confirms it's filed to go public.
- Analysts say investors may want to wait a few months to see how CRCL settles before buying shares.
- Strategy has a new, high-yield preferred stock offering to fuel its Bitcoin buys. But there's a catch.
Public Keys is a weekly roundup from Decrypt that tracks the key publicly traded crypto companies.
This week: Gemini makes its own IPO move after Circle's explosive debut (and continued rise Friday), while Strategy boosts its Bitcoin buying power.
Twinsies!
Crypto exchange Gemini confirmed that it has filed to go public, within 24 hours of USDC issuer Circle making its euphoric debut on the New York Stock Exchange.
Rumors started making the rounds in February and March that Gemini, which has been operating since 2015, wanted to go public.
The firm was one of the earliest crypto companies to secure a New York BitLicense the same year it launched and has long marketed itself as a compliant, secure bridge between traditional finance and digital assets.
Gemini offers spot trading, staking, and custodial services. For a few years, the firm also offered the Gemini Dollar, or GUSD, as a so-called “regulated stablecoin.”
The company hasn’t officially killed off its stablecoin. Rather, it’s been moth balled since the Gemini Earn program had to be shut down in 2022. In the past year, the GUSD market capitalization has gone from $140 million to $51 million, according to CoinGecko data.
Analysts had been predicting that more crypto IPO hopefuls might feel ready to pull the trigger thanks to none other than…
Circle’s debut
Odds are most readers have seen that investors went wild for Circle’s New York Stock Exchange debut, pushing the price to three times and then four times its IPO price in the first two trading days.
There’s enough investor frenzy to keep driving the price higher. But there’s a handful of analysts saying that’s why you shouldn’t buy the CRCL right now.
Dom Kwok, co-founder of the Web3 development tutoring app EasyA, said on X that retail investors should be wary of buying up CRCL shares after seeing its first-day performance. That's because Wall Street analysts tend to price in an initial pop.
"Wait 90-180 days after IPO to invest," he wrote, "not just to allow for price discovery, but because that's typically when the lockup period ends."
Lockup periods stop early investors and insiders from dumping their shares for a set amount of time after a security becomes available to the public.
Case in point: A “first 20” former Circle employee used a Disney GIF to complain on X that he was having to go through Robinhood to try to get a piece of the IPO.
Two hours later, he confessed that he exercised his options and sold in secondaries. Then taunted his former colleagues because while they’re still stuck in the aforementioned lockup period, he’s sitting on 57 very liquid shares.
Think he’s sold yet?
Striding towards 10% yield, maybe
Ok folks, we’ve hit “fourth gear” in what Bitcoin scion Michael Saylor calls Strategy’s “Bitcoin Engine.”
The prodigal Bitcoin treasury company has upsized its offering of perpetual Stride preferred stock, or STRD, to $1 billion. The shares will pay a yummy 10% yield.
“It’s our high-yield credit instrument,” Saylor said in a video on X earlier this week. “Compared to STRK or STRF, it should be a higher-yielding preferred instrument.”
Keep in mind, this is the company’s third preferred stock offering in six months after STRK and STRF. Strategy, which trades on the Nasdaq under the MSTR ticker, clearly wants to very urgently buy more Bitcoin.
And it’s worth noting that STRD is subordinated to STRK and STRF, meaning that it carries more risk for investors. In very simple terms, that means if Strategy were to go bankrupt, STRD holders would get paid after the company’s creditors and STRK and STRF holders.
And the STRD 10% annual dividends, which will be paid quarterly, are non-cumulative and discretionary. That means if STRD investors don’t get an IOU if Strategy skips a dividend payment.
Other keys
- Miners are minted: Nothing like Bitcoin bouncing back and record-high May production to boost miner stocks. MARA Holdings has climbed 7.2%, Riot Platforms has gained 11.4%, and HIVE Digital has picked up 10% in the past day.
- Circle IPO = bullish for Ethereum: Analysts told Decrypt that because Circle’s flagship USDC is an ERC-20 token on Ethereum, the IPO craze is incredibly bullish for the network. “As USDC usage proliferates, that will continue to translate into more liquidity for DeFi and excitement for developers to build on Ethereum,” Bitwise Senior Investment Strategist Juan Leon told reporter André Beganski.
Edited by Andrew Hayward
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