Zhibao Know-how, 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 will be paid for in bitcoin — some 3,500 cash, price close to $220 million at present costs.
The deal, a non-public funding in public fairness often known as a PIPE, would have a purchaser named Joyertech and Info OPC subscribe for Zhibao shares with consideration the corporate expects to incorporate about 3,500 BTC.
The determine stays topic to remaining valuation, custody preparations, an audit, regulatory assessment, 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 will hand the newcomers the steering wheel whereas the present workforce minds the legacy operation till a later “separation, disposition, or different restructuring.”
$220 million in bitcoin has a brand new proprietor
In plain phrases, a modest insurance-tech firm would change into a house for a big pile of bitcoin, with new homeowners in cost. Relatively than elevate money and purchase cash available on the market, Zhibao would take the bitcoin itself as fee, a swap that seats a treasury on its steadiness sheet from day one.
It’s the form of reinvention that has swept public markets over two years, as corporations remake themselves round a bitcoin treasury and company holdings climb to data. Zhibao’s inventory jumped close to 24% on the information.
Behind ZBAO are staff, insurance coverage shoppers, and a founding workforce that constructed one thing new in a crowded market, and the time period sheet would fold that story right into a treasury car formed by individuals who could worth the shell as a lot because the enterprise.
For the present employees, the promise is continuity “till the separation” — phrases that carry their very own uncertainty.
The wager holds warning indicators. Analysts have referred to as the treasury growth a bubble, and a few treasury corporations have began promoting their cash underneath market strain this yr.