Micro caps planning XRP or SOL treasuries probably ‘scams,’ VanEck says

At least for now, the rage amid crypto’s bull run seems to be this: declare ambitious plans to accumulate hundreds of millions of dollars’ worth of crypto — even if those plans appear objectively ludicrous.

In recent weeks, a wave of companies, many of which have very small market capitalizations, have announced their intentions to accumulate large amounts of popular altcoins, such as XRP and Solana. These firms often come from seemingly unrelated corners of the commercial world.

A perfect example of this curious trend emerged yesterday when Singapore-based Trident Digital Tech announced its plan to “raise up to $500 million to establish one of the world’s first large-scale corporate XRP Treasuries.” At the time of the announcement, the company’s shares were trading on the Nasdaq for less than $0.40 per share. As of Friday, Trident Digital’s market cap is about $16 million, according to Yahoo Finance.

VanEck’s Head of Digital Assets, Matthew Sigel, told The Block that it’s likely that several of these so-called initiatives are simply attempts to juice the stock prices of small-cap companies, many of which trade on the Nasdaq.

“Insider pump and dump attempts, many of them,” said Sigel. “If the market cap is de minimus and there is no disclosure of new anchor investors, I assume it’s a scam.”

At the beginning of this wave of low-cap stocks announcing ambitious plans to form crypto treasuries — à la Michael Saylor’s software company, Strategy, buying billions of dollars worth of Bitcoin and seeing its stock price soar — Sigel was one of the first to flag the strangeness of it all.

“When a $3 million, market cap US-listed penny stock with all Chinese management announces plans to buy $800 million of BTC and TRUMP coin, you don’t post the ticker,” he said last month in a post to X. Sigel repurposed a Bloomberg story in his post, however, he blurred out the company’s ticker symbol.

The VanEck researcher was referring to news that China-based Addentax Group Corp., a clothing manufacturer listed on the Nasdaq OTC market, said it intended to purchase $800 million worth of cryptocurrency.

At the time, Addentax Group’s market cap was only a few million dollars. As of Friday, its shares were trading at about 63 cents, according to Yahoo Finance.

Solana and XRP treasuries

Earlier this month, educational tech company Classover Holdings Inc., with a Nasdaq-listed stock and a market capitalization of less than $100 million, shares trading at less than $4, announced plans to raise up to $500 million to build a solana treasury.

China-based automotive and hospitality company Webus International, which also filed a Form 6-K with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission earlier this month, outlined plans to establish an XRP treasury worth up to $300 million. Webus International’s market cap is under $100 million, and its shares are trading under $3 as of Friday, according to Yahoo Finance.

On Thursday, in a slight variation of the above trend, DeFi Development Corp. said it had “entered into a share purchase agreement” to sell up to $5 billion worth of its shares to fuel a strategy of stockpiling Solana.

Unlike some of the other recent announcements listed above, this company’s sole purpose appears to be accumulating SOL.

“As we enter June, DeFi Dev Corp. remains laser-focused on executing our Solana treasury strategy,” it said in a report last month published to its website.

DeFi Development said it inked the share purchase agreement with Denver-based firm RK Capital Management, which, according to its LinkedIn, is a “12-person, employee-owned, and SEC-registered investment manager” managing “$500 million in long/short and long-only small-cap focused assets.”

While the buzz has driven DeFi Dev’s stock price sharply higher, skepticism remains over whether it can actually raise $5 billion. Currently, the company’s market capitalization is approximately $379 million, quite a leap from its $ 7 million market cap reported at the end of March, according to Yahoo Finance. 

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