Crypto’s newest craze is attracting some big names—including one of Tesla’s biggest bulls. On Monday, Dan Ives, an analyst at the financial advisory firm Wedbush Securities and one of the most vocal cheerleaders behind Elon Musk’s electric car company, became chair of a small, publicly traded company that aims to load its balance sheet with cryptocurrency.
Eightco Holdings, a firm that specializes in packaging and retail inventory management, announced that it had raised $250 million through a private share offering to buy up Worldcoin, a cryptocurrency linked to the crypto project World, which itself is backed by OpenAI cofounder Sam Altman.
Ives is a widely recognized Wall Street figure, but he made his name as an analyst, not as the operator of public companies. He may appear to be a strange choice to oversee a board—let alone one devoted to accumulating cryptocurrency—but his appointment comes amid a rush of big names on the boards of so-called digital asset treasury companies, or public firms whose primary aim is to accumulate cryptocurrency, providing investors with exposure to tokens they would normally not be able to trade through brokerage accounts.
Others include Alex Spiro, an attorney to Musk, who is chairing a company dedicated to the memecoin Dogecoin. And then there’s Kyle Samani, a well-known crypto venture capitalist set to chair a different public treasury company for the cryptocurrency Solana.
“It’s a playbook taken out of Hollywood,” said Nick Cote, CEO and cofounder of SecondLane, a newer investment bank that caters to crypto and private markets. “It’s no different than Tom Cruise or whoever gets associated with a movie.”
Treasury boom
That playbook is the latest attempt from digital asset treasury companies to differentiate themselves in an increasingly saturated market. Since January, 209 companies have announced that they were planning to raise more than $145 billion to fund crypto treasury strategies, according to data from Architect Partners, a crypto M&A advisory and financing firm.
Michael Saylor, cofounder and executive chairman of the software company Strategy, first popularized crypto hoarding when his firm announced in 2020 that it was adding Bitcoin to its balance sheet. Traders soon saw its stock as a proxy for Bitcoin, and as the world’s largest cryptocurrency soared in price, shares for Strategy, formerly known as MicroStrategy, surged.
Copycats soon emerged, and, now, there are not only treasury companies devoted to Bitcoin but more exotic cryptocurrencies like Ethereum, Solana, and XRP.
To get traction amid the cacophony of new crypto treasury plays, some teams have increasingly resorted to eye-catching names. “It’s an obvious move to get instant eyeballs,” said Marco Margiotta, CEO of House of Doge, the corporate arm of the Dogecoin Foundation.
Margiotta’s company is behind the Dogecoin treasury vehicle with Alex Spiro, who successfully defended Musk against a lawsuit that alleged that the Tesla CEO was manipulating Dogecoin markets. But Margiotta said that his digital asset treasury company doesn’t necessarily need a Tom Cruise-style hero at the helm to thrive. “We already have a community,” he said. “We don’t need a giant spokesperson to go out there.”
Other reasons for adding recognizable individuals to the boards of crypto treasury companies include signaling trustworthiness to Wall Street investors, said Jaime Leverton, CEO at ReserveOne, a digital asset treasury company expected to go public later this year. Her firm expects to add Wilbur Ross, the former U.S. commerce secretary, to its board. “Investors expect credible executives and strong corporate governance as signals of stability,” she said in an email.
Cote, the CEO of SecondLane, said that recognizable names and trustworthy board members were especially important for digital asset treasury companies, given crypto’s tumultuous history. “Crypto has had a history of negativity around it, billions lost, etcetera. So how can we amend that past?” he said. “You have to have credible characters who are leading that charge and telling those stories.”
While it’s unclear why Eightco tapped Ives—who usually comments on Tesla and AI, not crypto—to chair a company now devoted to accumulating cryptocurrency, he did say in an interview with CNBC that he “would not be doing this initiative if it was just a cookie-cutter token strategy.”
A spokesperson for the Worldcoin treasury company did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
