Riot pads Bitcoin trove with $500m note sale
Bitcoin infrastructure firm Riot Platforms proposed issuing debt securities to fund BTC buys and finance “general corporate purposes.”
Riot Platforms announced plans to offer $500 million in convertible senior notes through a private offering to accredited institutional buyers. Investors will also have an additional $75 million purchase option within three days of the initial investment.
Convertible notes are debt instruments that allocate share rights to purchasers, allowing the option to convert notes into ownership units in a publicly traded entity.
“Riot intends to use the net proceeds from this offering to acquire additional Bitcoin,” (BTC) read a Dec. 9 press statement from the crypto mining startup.
Notes to Bitcoin trend
Colorado-based Riot joined a growing cast of companies funding Bitcoin purchases by offering shares. Fellow BTC miner Marathon Digital Holdings upsized its note sale to $850 million with an additional $150 million option on Dec. 3 and increased its total BTC horde above $3.3 billion.
Japanese investment giant Metaplanet holds over $45 million in Bitcoin, mostly financed by selling shares for capital.
The National Center for Public Policy Research, a global think tank, urged Jeff Bezos’ Amazon to include Bitcoin in its corporate reserves. Binance founder Changpeng ‘Cz’ Zhao supported the idea, noting that Amazon should also add BTC as a payment option.
Firms like China’s SOS Limited and Genius Group also adopted the securities debt capital raise concept instigated by Michael Saylor, founder of MicroStrategy.
Saylor, a crypto-skeptic turned Bitcoin advocate, has asserted that BTC will capture greater portions of global cash reserves in the coming years. MicroStrategy’s executive chairman and other BTC supporters have also pressed U.S. authorities to create a strategic national Bitcoin reserve.
Experts surmised that an open race for BTC’s declining supply among countries has already started, especially since U.S. elections beckoned a regime change under pro-Bitcoin President-elect Donald Trump.
