Strive Asset Management (NASDAQ: ASST) has purchased 2,000 Bitcoin (BTC-USD) for approximately $169 million, nearly six times the 334 Bitcoin that Strategy acquired in the same period.
Strive now holds 29,462 Bitcoin in total, placing it within roughly 6,000 Bitcoin of Marathon, the next largest holder among publicly traded Bitcoin treasury companies.
The purchase was funded partly through preferred stock sales of SETA, Strive’s preferred share offering, which accounted for 61.5% of the capital raised, with warrant exercises generating an additional $56.7 million.
According to CEO Matt Cole, Strive now carries approximately $1.29 billion of preferred stock in SETA, with around $168 million in annual dividend obligations attached to those holdings.
Strive paid an average of $84,422 per Bitcoin for this week’s purchase, and unlike Strategy, the company has maintained a debt-free structure by focusing exclusively on preferred stock issuance rather than convertible notes.
Analyst and host Scott Melker noted on Yahoo Finance’s The Daily Wolf that “debt-free does not mean obligation-free,” pointing out that preferred shareholders still hold priority over common shareholders and that Strive carries a 12% plus daily dividend obligation.
Separately, the Securities and Exchange Commission has approved the first US products offering three times Bitcoin (BTC-USD) and Ether (ETH-USD) daily returns, clearing a request from CBOE to list the funds operated by Volatility Shares using regulated futures contracts.
US crypto funds had previously been capped at 2X leverage, and Melker warned that these 3X instruments reset daily, creating significant volatility decay that makes them unsuitable as long-term investment vehicles.
Using a straightforward example, Melker illustrated that if Bitcoin rises 10% on day one and falls 10% on day two, Bitcoin itself finishes down just 1% while a 3X ETF finishes the same period down 9%.
The Commodity Futures Trading Commission has also proposed a new federal framework for leveraged retail crypto trading, floating a registration category called a crypto asset market that would govern exchanges offering leverage, margin and financed retail crypto transactions.
The proposed CFTC framework includes token listing standards, market surveillance and anti-manipulation rules, proof of reserves for pooled customer assets, capital requirements, customer asset segregation, and KYC and anti-money laundering controls.
CFTC Commissioner Mike Seelig, currently the agency’s sole commissioner, submitted the rulemaking proposals to the White House following the failure of the Clarity Act to pass Congress, with the new proposals seen as regulators filling the legislative void.
In a further sign of regulatory easing, the Treasury Department has withdrawn both a 2020 self-hosted wallet rule and a 2023 crypto mixer reporting rule, citing concerns that the proposals could have a chilling effect on legitimate financial activities.
The withdrawn wallet proposal would have required banks and exchanges to verify identities and maintain records for self-hosted wallet transactions above $3,000, with transactions above $10,000 reported to FinCEN regardless of whether they involved a custodied exchange account.
On the banking front, Rain has filed an application with the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency to establish Rain National Trust Bank, joining Modern Treasury in seeking a federal trust charter even as community banks continue to challenge the OCC’s authority to grant such charters to crypto firms.
Finally, Ondo Finance has launched Ondo Private Markets, offering tokenized exposure to pre-IPO companies beginning with an unnamed artificial intelligence business, with investors receiving tokenized notes linked to economic performance rather than actual company shares or voting rights.
