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Title: Retail Traders Left Exposed in High-Stakes Crypto Treasury Deals

Link: https://tech.slashdot.org/story/25/11/14/1739...

An anonymous reader shares a report: Executives are turning to a novel
structure to fund crypto accumulation vehicles as investor appetite thins.
They're called in-kind contributions, and they now account for a growing
share of digital-asset treasury, or DAT, deals. Instead of raising cash to
buy tokens in the open market, DAT sponsors contribute large slugs of their
own crypto, often unlisted and hard to value. Digital-asset treasuries are a
new breed of public company built to hold concentrated crypto positions. The
structure surged in 2025 as small-cap firms, especially in biotech and
mining, reinvented themselves as digital-asset proxies. Sponsors provide
tokens or raise money to buy them, and the stock then trades as a kind of
listed bet on crypto. For insiders, it's a shortcut to liquidity. For
investors, a wager on upside. But not all DATs carry the same level of risk.
Earlier deals raised money to buy tokens through regular markets, which
offered at least some independent price check. In-kind contributions skip
that step -- letting insiders decide what their tokens are worth, sometimes
before the token even trades publicly. That shift means pricing and trading
risks land more squarely on shareholders, many of them retail investors.
Investor faith is already wobbling. Many DATs that once traded above the
value of their holdings now trade below it. As insiders supply the tokens and
set their price, it's becoming harder for investors to tell what these deals
are really worth, or when to get out. The in-kind structure was on full
display in a recent $545 million private placement by Tharimmune Inc., a
biotech firm-turned-crypto proxy, to set up a buyer of Canton Coins. About
80% of the raise came in the form of unlisted Canton tokens, priced at 20
cents each, according to an investor presentation seen by Bloomberg News. The
token began trading on exchanges Nov. 10 and is now around 11 cents,
CoinGecko data show. More deals are following the same template. In these
placements, insiders contribute tokens -- sometimes illiquid or unlisted --
to form a treasury, lock in valuations and seed the perception of market
demand. But when tokens list below deal price, public shareholders absorb the
difference. [...] Then there's Flora Growth Corp., a Nasdaq-listed company
that announced a $401 million deal to start acquiring Zero Gravity tokens in
September. On closer inspection, the firm had raised just $35 million in cash
to pair with a $366 million in-kind contribution of then-unlisted 0G tokens.
Those tokens were priced at around $3 a piece; they subsequently listed, and
are now trading at about $1.20.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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