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Citizen Daily Brief

Grading Strategy Copycats ($)

Citizen Brief: Public companies are stacking crypto, but not all opportunities are created equal.
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Jun 13, 2025 • 9 min read
Grading Strategy Copycats
Published on June 13, 2025
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NEED TO KNOW
Amazon Stablecoin?
  1. 🛒 Amazon, Walmart 'Exploring' Their Own Stablecoins: WSJ. The newspaper shares that the retail giants are weighing their own stablecoins amid legal clarity.
  2. 👩‍⚖️ Senate Schedules Final Vote on GENIUS Bill for June 17. The highly anticipated stablecoin bill is likely to get the stamp of approval from lawmakers on Tuesday.
  3. 🔻 SharpLink Announces $463M ETH Buy Following Thursday Selloff. The firm, which is now the largest corporate holder of ETH, had dropped 66% in after-hours trading Thursday.
📸
Daily Market Snapshot: Geopolitical chaos took a bite out of most markets today as traders react to the uncertainty; the crypto market fell 2% alongside Wall Street stock indices which faced similar dips.
Prices as of 4pm ET 24hr 7d
Crypto $3.27T ↘ 2.2% ↘ 0.9%
BTC $105,486 ↘ 0.6% ↗ 0.8%
ETH $2,551 ↘ 4.1% ↗ 1.7%
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CHEAT SHEET
Trading Tweets

Market Plays:

Hot Reads:

Farming Opps:

Airdrop Hunter:

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PLAY OF THE WEEK
5 Buzzy Crypto Treasury Opportunities
Bankless Analyst: Jack Inabinet

With institutional crypto adoption accelerating, a new breed of public company has taken form; slews of high-beta digital asset proxies are now leveraging capital markets in a race to create the ultimate crypto treasury company…

Once-forgotten public companies are reemerging as financial alchemists, transmuting fiat money into stacks of cryptocurrencies. As their treasuries swell and investor attention mounts, Wall Street is fast becoming a blockchain battleground!

Today, we’re overviewing and rating the top 5 crypto treasury companies behind this financial revolution. 👇

🟠 Strategy

Website | Twitter
Ticker: MSTR

About:

The OG cryptocurrency treasury company, Strategy (f.k.a. MicroStrategy) is a dotcom bubble darling that reemerged to prominence in August 2020 when it became the first publicly traded company to purchase BTC with its acquisition of 21,454 tokens for $250M.

Strategy pioneered the concept of selling stock to fund BTC buys, and in December 2020, the Company bolstered its arsenal with convertible bonds. These instruments are intended to mitigate the immediate impacts of share dilution through agreements to repay dollar-denominated debts at a later date with cash, MSTR shares, or a combination of both.

In recent months, Strategy has expanded its offerings with the addition of STRK (a convertible preferred stock offering with 8% dividends), STRF (a senior perpetual fixed income offering with 10% dividends), and STRD (a junior perpetual fixed income offering with optional 10% dividends).

As of June 8, Strategy held 582k BTC (~$48B), which it had acquired at an average cost basis of approximately $70k per coin, making it the largest crypto treasury company in existence.

My Current Rating: A

Look, as far as leveraged crypto holding companies go, Strategy is without doubt the premier play. The Company's years-long BTC accumulation headstart has secured a favorable cost basis and cemented a commanding lead that dwarfs all competition.

While smaller crypto treasury players may have trouble raising capital through exotic (and typically illiquid) fixed income and stock offerings, Strategy’s enormity enables it to tap capital markets with innovative instruments like STRK, STRF, and STRD, helping MSTR raise capital while mitigating the negative impact of direct share sales.

🏃‍♂️ MARA Holdings

Website | Twitter
Ticker: MARA

About:

With nearly 50k BTC on its balance sheet, MARA Holdings (f.k.a. Marathon) presently ranks as the second largest crypto treasury company behind Strategy.

Founded as a patent holding company in 2010, MARA Holdings first experimented with Bitcoin in 2017 with a small-scale mining operation. The Company grew its mining operations at a modest pace until 2020, when it began aggressively raising capital and purchasing vast quantities of ASIC miners to scale its computational resources.

MARA Holdings is currently the largest BTC miner, operating over 300k digital asset mining rigs across 15 globally distributed data centers. In addition to BTC retained from mining operations, MARA Holdings began conducting BTC outright purchases in mid-2024, making its treasury accumulation strategy a two-pronged operation.

Rating: B

While the alternative crypto treasury companies listed herein derive value largely from their ability to leverage on-balance sheet digital assets, MARA Holdings also controls substantial mining operations that produce actual bitcoins.

MARA Holdings stands out for its vast computational resources, which provide flexibility to persevere headstrong with crypto mining or dabble in innovative AI applications.

Website | Twitter
Ticker: SBET

About:

Widely regarded as the “Strategy of ETH,” SharpLink Gaming (SBET) is a marketing partner for online sportsbooks and casino gaming operations that recently saw shares surge by as much as 1,800% on the announcement it would adopt an Ethereum treasury strategy.

In late May, Ethereum software developer Consensys led a $425M SharpLink raise with participation from a litany of prominent crypto venture capital firms; it enabled private investors to receive 69M SBET at a price of $6.15 per share. The deal installed Consensys CEO Joseph Lubin as Chair of Sharplink and its proceeds were used to buy ETH.

Following the deal’s close, on May 30, SharpLink filed a shelf offering prospectus with the SEC to sell an additional $1B of stock to fund future Ether purchases.

My Current Rating: C

As a relative up-and-comer compared to more time-worn crypto treasury companies, SharpLink Gaming is the leading ETH corporate play, an interesting distinction that will enable it to outperform should ETH gain greater mainstream adoption.

In a world where SharpLink fulfills its promise of becoming the “Strategy of ETH,” it could supplant its forebearer as the most valuable crypto treasury company, unlocking market demand for the types of illiquid/exotic offerings currently exclusive to Strategy.

Although the yield that can be generated from ETH staking and DeFi-native lending is relatively minor (and not without risk), SBET bulls cite the Company’s ability to generate returns from its treasury stores as a compelling feature. While its freshness presents some risks for early investors, as the firm matures and showcases its capacity to earn yield, it has the potential to grow into a more premier opp.

🏛️ Trump Media & Technology Group

Website
Ticker: DJT

About:

Co-founded by President Donald Trump, the aptly named “Trump Media & Technology Group” is the owner/operator of Truth Social, an alt-tech social media platform built using a custom instance of open-source social media framework Mastodon.

Trump’s media conglomerate became publicly traded under the ticker symbol “DJT” after it merged with Digital World Acquisition Corp – a SPAC created by Shanghai investment bank ARC Capital – in March 2024.

In May, Trump Media disclosed it had raised $2.5B from approximately 50 institutional investors for the creation of a Bitcoin treasury, and earlier this month, the company registered a shelf offering with the SEC to sell an additional $12B of securities to fund future BTC buys. If fully executed, a purchase of this magnitude would make DJT the second largest crypto treasury holding company behind Strategy.

Complementing its transition into a cryptocurrency holding company, Trump Media has partnered with Crypto.com to launch a slew of security and crypto exchange-traded funds with a “Made in America” focus through its upcoming Truth.Fi financial services platform.

My Current Rating: C

Although DJT’s $5B market capitalization may be slightly on the rich side considering the company earned only $3.6M in revenue during 2024 and has posted consistent net earnings losses since inception, crypto could be the next big play for Donald Trump’s “America First” holding company 

Backed with fervent support among Trump-aligned retail investors, DJT’s pivot toward a crypto treasury strategy could bolster appeal among key holder demographics while attracting new crypto-native speculators seeking either leveraged crypto equity investments or spot crypto via Truth.Fi.

Undeniably, this memecoin-like company with absent profit faces major key person risk, meaning DJT share prices may fall abruptly if Donald Trump’s reputation falters.

🇯🇵 Metaplanet

Website | Twitter
Ticker: MTPLF (OTC), 3350 (TSE)

About:

Metaplanet (f.k.a. Red Planet) is a Japanese hotel holding company that became insolvent in 2021 due to lasting business impacts from COVID, but managed to stave off delisting from the Tokyo Stock Exchange after it was acquired by Evolution Financial Group.

In June 2024, Metaplanet took its first step on the journey to becoming Asia’s leading crypto treasury play, raising ¥1B to buy BTC with a bond issued to Evolution Financial Group. Metaplanet has since built a treasury of 8,888 BTC, acquired for ¥122.2B, using a combination of share and bond primary offerings – funded exclusively by Evolution Financial Group’s “Evo Fund.”

There are no Japanese custody options to hold spot BTC exposure in security brokerage accounts. Unlike competitive crypto treasury companies, Metaplanet frequently sells cash-secured put options to acquire BTC, enabling the Company to earn premium while purchasing tokens at discounted prices compared to when the option was written.

My Current Rating: D

While Metaplanet has spawned a cult-like following after quadrupling in price over the six-week period ahead of this analysis, this stock ranks among the most dubious BTC treasury plays.

Metaplanet’s close ties with Evolution Financial Group – an obscure Japanese financial conglomerate – creates considerable counterparty risk that may expose shareholders to sizable losses if funding dries up or the relationship sours.

Additionally, while selling put options allows Metaplanet to earn premium from its BTC buys, risky short put option exposure ties up capital and could force the Company to choose between buying BTC at an undesirable time or repurchasing option exposure at a loss.

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CITIZEN-ONLY TOKEN RATING
LDO Redemption
Bankless Analyst: Jack Inabinet

Catalyst Overview:

DeFi fallen angel Lido DAO is in the midst of a modest resurgence on news of developing digital asset clarity. After tumbling to new all-time lows against ETH in early June, LDO had been bouncing in the week ahead of this analysis on hopes of an increasingly conducive crypto regulatory environment.

Pros:

  • Staking Clarity: On May 29, the Securities and Exchange Commission’s Division of Corporation Finance confirmed that certain staking activities, including “custodial arrangements” in which a third party holds crypto assets and administers staking operations, are exempt from registration under the Securities Act.
  • DeFi Exemptions: At the Crypto Task Force’s June 9 “Roundtable on Decentralized Finance,” SEC Chair Paul Atkins suggested the Commission is considering an “innovation exemption” for onchain products and services as it works to create rules for blockchain-based financial markets.

Cons:

  • Declining Market Share: On a year-to-date basis, Lido has seen its ETH staking market share fall from 28.2% to 25.6%; that key metric has been steadily decreasing since early 2024. Additionally, total Lido ETH staked has decreased by 16% since peaking in March 2024.

Price impact:

The Bankless Analyst Team is upgrading LDO to bullish, identifying this ticker as the consensus Ethereum liquid staking token to hold amid hopes of positive staking and DeFi regulatory momentum, but noting fundamental growth challenges stemming from a shifting ETH staking landscape.

Not financial or tax advice. This newsletter is strictly educational and is not investment advice or a solicitation to buy or sell any assets or to make any financial decisions. This newsletter is not tax advice. Talk to your accountant. Do your own research.

Disclosure. From time-to-time I may add links in this newsletter to products I use. I may receive commission if you make a purchase through one of these links. Additionally, the Bankless writers hold crypto assets. See our investment disclosures here.

Published in Bankless

There’s a revolution in the world of money. Ethereum, Bitcoin, crypto, open finance, DeFi—a bankless revolution. And you want part of it.