SPACs in the crypto space with a high chance of spiking upward
I’ve been digging deeper into the crypto treasury bubble theme, which I touched on in the recent RTACU and CEPO/CEPT write-ups. Those still look like the most compelling bets—backed by politically connected sponsors who clearly know how to play the game.
That said, there are a few other SPACs with pretty interesting angles that fit into this same theme and are worth keeping on the radar: MBAV (covered below), CCCM (here), PCAPU (here), TACO (here).
M3-Brigade Acquisition V (MBAV)
MBAV was launched last year. It does have a very unusual twist. Three weeks ago, the company announced that Tether co-founder Reeve Collins and private equity veteran Chinh Chu acquired the sponsor interest at around $0.90 per unit. I don’t recall other instances where sponsor’s stake in a SPAC got bought out. It is quite strange that the new managers went this route instead of just launching their own vehicle. It might have been driven by necessity for speed, i.e. they already have a deal lined up and wanted to skip the IPO process. The newly reoriented SPAC will now be hunting for a target in the digital assets space.
The people involved are real heavy hitters. Reeve Collins is one of the most influential figures in crypto. Beyond co-founding Tether (the most widely used stablecoin, reportedly backed by $132bn in U.S. Treasury reserves), he also co-founded BLOCKv, the original NFT platform, which kicked off the NFT boom. It’s the first SPAC he has ever been involved in, so it’s even more curious that he went for the sponsor interest and not a fresh launch.
Chinh Chu is a former co-chair of Blackstone’s Private Equity Executive Committee (i.e. he was a top executive of Blackstone’s PE side). Whatever that’s worth, his previous track record in SPACs is quite solid. Of the three SPACs I could find (excluding one liquidation and another deal done in 2017), two reached $30/share post-deal. The third peaked at $13/share. The company that merged with the 2017 SPAC was eventually acquired by Fidelity at $12.50/share.
MBAV jumped up 17% following the sponsor change and now trades at $12.65/share. So some of the optionality around this new team is already priced in. That said, the trust account has accrued some interest and should now be worth roughly $10.45/share, putting the downside at high teens. With such names involved, that might be a reasonable price to pay for the embedded upside.
The previous sponsor was a kind of consortium between Brigade Capital and M3 Partners. It’s unclear why they chose to step away. Cantor Fitzgerald, the Lutnick family’s firm, served as an underwriter and acquired a substantial stake in the IPO ($37.5m, ~13%). According to the press release, Cantor will sell its private placement warrants to the new sponsor, but there was no mention of the common shares. So it’s possible that Lutnick’s firm retained some equity interest.
- IPO Date: August 1, 2024
- IPO Size: $287.5m (including $37.5m taken by the underwriters)
- IPO Price: $10/share
- Warrants: MBAVW ($2.41)
- Sponsor’s stake: 20%
- Sector preference: digital assets
- Trust value: ~$10.45 (mid-2025)
- Current Price: $12.65 (common shares)
Bloomberg reported that MBAV is also planning to pivot into a crypto treasury, with plans to hold a mix of Bitcoin, Ether, and Solana. Despite a very solid management lineup and a small twist on the usual angle (i.e. diversified coin mix), the market was unimpressed. The stock dropped following the report, and the premium to trust value has now narrowed to around 8%. It seems that the crypto treasury trade has fully busted.
Wilbur Ross (former US Commerce Secretary during Trump’s 1st presidency) and Gabriel Abed (chairman of Binance) are expected to serve as vice chairmen. The former CEO of Hut 8 Mining, which recently merged with one of Trump’s sons’ entities (American Bitcoin), is said to be coming in as CEO. Cantor Fitzgerald is advising on the deal.
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2025-06-25/ex-blackstone-tether-duo-plot-1-billion-crypto-reserve-push
Like CCCM, now that the premium over trust value has shrunk, can we play MBAV like a cheap option, for the small probability that an irrational price spike may happen sometime in the future for no reason,?
For the “protected downside”, how much time do we normally have from the initial announcement to the business combination?
MBAV now trades at $10.64 while warrants MBAVW trade at $1.7. Warrants seem pretty expensive compared to commons?
My take is the SPAC crypto treasury stocks have no upside until the business combination since there is an adjustment if crypto prices rise. This means the SPACs are unlikely to trade at much of a premium.
However, the warrants still have a 5-year expiration post-merger, so they could get upside from crypto prices.
I think most traders in crypto treasury stocks are betting on NAV premium widening (aka ponzi) instead of the rise of crypto prices per se, otherwise they would have invested in crypto ETFs.
When did this idea close, and why? also brr/cccm and pcapu? Thanks!
These were mostly bets on SPAC deal announcements. All of them have announced deals that failed to generate any excitement in the market. The initial thesis has essentially failed, so the cases have been removed from the list of actionable ideas.
PCAP itself hasn’t announced a deal yet. (But yes, the main man behind PCAP has done a deal with someone else’s SPAC)