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Forward Industries raises $1.65 billion for solana treasury

Treasury companies collectively hold 4.67 million solana tokens.

Solana treasuries continue to gain momentum, with Forward Industries announcing it has raised $1.65 billion in cash and stablecoin commitments for a PIPE offering led by Galaxy Digital, Jump Crypto, and Multicoin Capital to launch a solana treasury. Cantor is the lead placement agent.

Shares of the company are up over 40% on Monday. Solana, the sixth-largest crypto by market cap, is up 5.4% in the past 24 hours.

Kyle Samani, a Multicoin managing partner, will become chairman of the board.

Meanwhile, Sol Strategies, a Canadian publicly listed company with 402,623 solana, announced it has received approval to list on the Nasdaq. The company will start trading on Tuesday under the ticker “STKE.”

Leah Wald, Sol Strategies CEO, told Sherwood News that securing Nasdaq approval is a defining moment for the company. 

“We’ve proven that a company built around solana infrastructure can meet the same standards as the most innovative firms in traditional markets,” she said. “This uplisting opens the door to a wider class of investors and shows how our validator-driven model is built for scale.”

Solana treasury companies collectively hold 4.67 million solana, The Block data shows.

Among the companies leading the treasury pack:

Solana’s price has been buoyed by increased institutional interest and solana’s upcoming Alpenglow upgrade.

“If successfully implemented, it could give solana transaction speed that exceeds that of SUI and even rival standard Google Search response times,” Ray Youssef, CEO of crypto platform NoOnes, said. “For institutions and builders considering on-chain infrastructure, this kind of benchmark and performance is a material differentiator, reinforcing solana’s narrative as a leading next-generation Layer 1 chain and alternative to ethereum.”

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Payward, parent company of crypto exchange Kraken, puts plans for IPO on hold

Payward, crypto exchange Kraken’s parent company, has paused its plans for an initial public offering until market conditions improve, according to a report from CoinDesk that cited two people with knowledge of the matter. 

Since the firm announced in November its preparation for an IPO of its common stock, the total market capitalization of the crypto industry has shed around $652.2 billion, from $3.2 trillion to $2.5 trillion as of Wednesday, data from CoinGecko shows. 

The news comes two weeks after Kraken received approval for a master account from the Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City, allowing the crypto exchange to connect to the Fed’s payment infrastructure used by traditional banks and credit unions. 

Last year, Kraken raised $800 million at a $20 billion valuation from institutional investors such as Jane Street and Citadel Securities.

The news comes two weeks after Kraken received approval for a master account from the Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City, allowing the crypto exchange to connect to the Fed’s payment infrastructure used by traditional banks and credit unions. 

Last year, Kraken raised $800 million at a $20 billion valuation from institutional investors such as Jane Street and Citadel Securities.

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SEC and CFTC issue new guidance on how securities laws apply to crypto assets

On Tuesday, the US Securities and Exchange Commission, together with the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, issued an interpretation clarifying how federal securities law applies to crypto assets, a first step toward developing a clearer regulatory framework. 

The interpretive guidance introduces a token taxonomy for different types of cryptocurrencies, with SEC Chairman Paul S. Atkins adding that “most crypto assets are not themselves securities.”

Examples of a digital commodity, “a crypto asset that is intrinsically linked to and derives its value from the programmatic operation of a crypto system that is ‘functional,’” include:

The guidance also includes definitions of digital collectibles (such as NFTs), stablecoins, digital tools, and digital securities (such as tokenized real-world assets and stocks).

This is a monumental step in the mainstream adoption of the industry and clears a hurdle in how crypto can operate going forward, according to David Pakman, head of venture investments at CoinFund. “This will allow new token designs with the confidence that their existence does not require registration with the SEC, etc.,” Pakman told Sherwood News.

Despite the clarification efforts from the two organizations, the market capitalization of the crypto industry has dropped about 2% in the last 24 hours as each of the tokens mentioned in the guidance are trading lower in the period, data from CoinGecko shows.

The joint agency action also complements congressional efforts to turn a crypto market structure framework into law. With the goal of providing regulations on the offer and sale of digital commodities, the CLARITY Act passed the House of Representatives last year and is now sitting in the Senate.

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