The race to create publicly traded bitcoin treasuries is accelerating — and so is the capital pouring in.
ProCap Financial, the latest entrant, has raised more than $750 million and is going public through a special purpose acquisition company, or SPAC, with Columbus Circle Capital Corp. I, according to an announcement Monday.
Led by investor and podcast host Anthony Pompliano, ProCap raised more than $750 million in its funding round, including $235 million in convertible debt, with equity making up the rest. The new firm aims to hold up to $1 billion in bitcoin on its balance sheet and generate revenue through a full-stack, bitcoin-denominated financial services platform.
The rush into bitcoin treasuries — inflated by cheap capital, yield promises, and brand name endorsements — is starting to resemble a bubble.
“There’s an old George Soros quote that goes, ‘When I see a bubble forming, I rush in to buy, adding fuel to the fire,'” Pompliano said. “There’s a reason the bubble forms — because the trend works.”
ProCap joins a growing cohort of bitcoin-heavy ventures using reverse mergers and blank-check vehicles to tap into public markets.
From Trump Media‘s $2.5 billion bitcoin treasury plan to Jack Mallers’ Twenty-One and the Nakamoto fund, a growing number of firms are racing to offer stock market exposure to bitcoin.
Some, like Tron founder Justin Sun, are using reverse mergers to take crypto businesses public — in Sun’s case, folding his blockchain platform into a Nasdaq-listed toy manufacturer. Others, like Mallers, are launching purpose-built bitcoin holding firms backed by heavyweight investors including Tether and SoftBank.
While Trump Media isn’t a crypto-native firm, it has embraced the playbook of raising money to buy bitcoin and promoting the asset through affiliated ventures.
All are following a path blazed by Strategy‘s Michael Saylor: Turning public companies into bitcoin proxies.
But ProCap says it’s pushing beyond that model, aiming not just to hold bitcoin but to build a financial services platform on top of it.
“Most other firms raised capital that’s just sitting in cash while they wait for deals to close,” Pompliano told CNBC. “We’re buying bitcoin immediately.”
He added that ProCap’s equity investors are getting direct exposure from day one.
The structure gives ProCap a rare first-mover edge in a space where many deals are still weeks or months from closing, with some yet to even file their S-4s — the regulatory documents required to complete a merger. It also sets the stage for a new phase of the bitcoin proxy trade: not just holding bitcoin, but generating yield from it.
“We want to build the leading bitcoin-native financial services company,” Pompliano said. “Like a traditional Wall Street firm, but on top of a bitcoin balance sheet instead of dollars.”
ProCap plans to offer services like lending, trading, and capital markets — all denominated in bitcoin. The goal is to recreate the architecture of a Goldman Sachs or Cantor Fitzgerald, rebuilt from the ground up in crypto.
“The goal is to look and feel like a traditional financial institution,” he added. “That resonates very differently with capital allocators.”
ProCap’s pitch to investors is that it’s not just chasing momentum. It’s building the infrastructure for what Pompliano calls a new financial system — one that runs on bitcoin, but looks and feels familiar to the institutions still sitting on the sidelines.
“Many companies don’t care about the cost of capital. We do,” he added. “We’re traditional capital allocators — we care about building a sustainable business that generates cash flow.”
(Source)