Zhibao Technology, a Shanghai-based insurance-technology agency listed on the Nasdaq, mentioned Wednesday it has signed a non-binding time period sheet for a inventory sale that may be paid for in bitcoin — some 3,500 cash, value close to $220 million at present costs.
The deal, a personal funding in public fairness often called a PIPE, would have a purchaser named Joyertech and Information OPC subscribe for Zhibao shares with consideration the corporate expects to incorporate about 3,500 BTC.
The determine stays topic to last valuation, custody preparations, an audit, regulatory evaluate, and definitive agreements. Zhibao burdened that the time period sheet binds nobody, and that the transaction could change or fall via.
The construction hints at a well-known transfer. Zhibao (NASDAQ: ZBAO), which pioneered a “2B2C” embedded-insurance mannequin in China and launched the nation’s first digital insurance coverage brokerage platform in 2020, would maintain working its present enterprise at first.
But the customer would title a majority of the board at closing, a management transition that may hand the newcomers the steering wheel whereas the present crew minds the legacy operation till a later “separation, disposition, or other restructuring.”
$220 million in bitcoin has a brand new proprietor
In plain phrases, a modest insurance-tech firm would turn into a house for a big pile of bitcoin, with new house owners in cost. Moderately than elevate money and purchase cash available on the market, Zhibao would take the bitcoin itself as cost, a swap that seats a treasury on its stability sheet from day one.
It’s the sort of reinvention that has swept public markets over two years, as corporations remake themselves round a bitcoin treasury and company holdings climb to information. Zhibao’s inventory jumped close to 24% on the information.
Behind ZBAO are staff, insurance coverage purchasers, and a founding crew that constructed one thing new in a crowded market, and the time period sheet would fold that story right into a treasury automobile formed by individuals who could worth the shell as a lot because the enterprise.
For the present workers, the promise is continuity “until the separation” — phrases that carry their very own uncertainty.
The wager holds warning indicators. Analysts have known as the treasury increase a bubble, and a few treasury corporations have began promoting their cash beneath market strain this yr.
