A patchwork of crypto executives is teaming up to raise $200 million to take their blank-check company public amid a boom in crypto public debuts.
The Cayman Islands-based Bitcoin Infrastructure Acquisition Corp Ltd, a special purpose acquisition company (SPAC), plans to offer 20 million shares for $10 each on the Nasdaq under the ticker “BIXIU,” it said in a regulatory filing on Wednesday.
The firm plans to merge with an existing company to take it public, but has yet to determine a target. It will focus on those involved in “digital assets, Web3 technologies, financial services infrastructure, and other blockchain-driven business models.”
It added that its top brass “are well-positioned to identify businesses that are building core infrastructure such as wallets, custody, exchanges, lending protocols, and tokenized financial instruments as well as real-world applications of blockchain and distributed ledger technologies, including in payments, DeFi, and cross-border finance.”
Wall Street has dumped billions of dollars into crypto-tied firms that have made public debuts this year, such as the stablecoin issuer Circle Internet Group and crypto exchange Bullish. SPACs have raised billions more with promises to bring private crypto firms to the market.
Bitcoin Infrastructure chiefs linked to crypto
Bitcoin Infrastructure will be headed by CEO Ryan Gentry, who led business development at Lightning Labs, a developer of Bitcoin’s layer 2 Lightning Network blockchain for the past five years.
He previously spent two years as the lead analyst at Multicoin Capital, a venture firm that’s backed a wide array of crypto projects and is reportedly working with Galaxy Digital and Jump Crypto to raise $1 billion to take over a public company and turn it into a Solana (SOL) treasury.
Ryan Gentry (left) speaking at a Bitcoin conference in 2024. Source: YouTube
The company named James “Jim” DeAngelis as its financial chief, who has helped to head finance at risk adviser Kroll.
Kroll is the claims agent in multiple crypto bankruptcy cases, and is facing a lawsuit accusing it of negligence over a data breach that impacted creditors of FTX, BlockFi and Genesis.
Vikas Mittal will also be a director and form part of the company’s management. Mittal is the chief investment officer of Meteora Capital, an investment firm sponsoring Bitcoin Infrastructure’s initial public offering and which created a SPAC that brought crypto ATM operator Bitcoin Depot public in 2023.
Mittal is also the chair and financial chief of CSLM Digital Asset Acquisition Corp III, another SPAC that closed a $230 million IPO on Thursday with a plan to acquire a crypto company.
Board stacked with crypto talent
Bitcoin Infrastructure has also packed its board of directors with executives who have long been involved in crypto.
The company’s chair is Parker White, a former engineering director at crypto exchange Kraken who is now operating and investment chief at DeFi Development Corporation, a real-estate technology firm turned Solana-buying company.
The co-founder of crypto miner Giga Energy, Matt Lohstroh, was also brought onto the board, as was Tyler Evans, who co-founded Bitcoin Magazine publisher BTC Inc and the Bitcoin-focused investment firm UTXO Management.
Evans became the investment chief of healthcare firm Kindly MD in March, which merged with Bitcoin-focused holding firm Nakamoto Holdings to turn into a Bitcoin (BTC) buying firm that said on Tuesday it was looking to raise $5 billion.
Crypto SPACs raise $575 million in two days
Two SPACs raised a total of $575 million in the past two days, both of which are looking to target crypto.
Alongside CSLM Digital Asset Acquisition Corp III’s $230 million IPO on Thursday, the blank-check firm M3-Brigade Acquisition VI Corp said it closed a $345 million IPO the same day.
The company said it sold 34.5 million shares for $10 each on the Nasdaq. A prior SPAC from its parent firm, M3-Brigade, took the crypto management company ReserveOne public in July.
