Zhibao Know-how, a Shanghai-based insurance-technology agency listed on the Nasdaq, stated Wednesday it has signed a non-binding time period sheet for a inventory sale that might 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 Info OPC subscribe for Zhibao shares with consideration the corporate expects to incorporate about 3,500 BTC.
The determine stays topic to closing valuation, custody preparations, an audit, regulatory evaluation, and definitive agreements. Zhibao burdened that the time period sheet binds nobody, and that the transaction might change or fall via.
The construction hints at a well-recognized 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 preserve operating its current enterprise at first.
But the client would identify a majority of the board at closing, a management transition that might hand the newcomers the steering wheel whereas the present staff 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 turn into a house for a big pile of bitcoin, with new homeowners in cost. Relatively than increase money and purchase cash in the marketplace, Zhibao would take the bitcoin itself as fee, a swap that seats a treasury on its steadiness sheet from day one.
It’s the type 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 shoppers, and a founding staff 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 might 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.
