Special purpose acquisition company (SPAC) Columbus Circle Capital (BRR) and ProCap BTC — led by Anthony Pompliano and having raised more than $750 million to build a bitcoin treasury firm — closed their merger late Friday.
The combined company has been renamed ProCap Financial and will begin trading on the Nasdaq under the BRR symbol on Monday.
The performance of the hastily-formed bitcoin treasury companies (BTCTCs) this year has been disastrous, with most down 90% or more following their SPAC combinations.
KindlyMD (NAKA) and Strive (ASST) — to name two of the higher-profile ones — each now trade for less than $1.
BRR shares had traded in a very tight range near their offering price of $10 for several months. They even closed at $10.15 on Friday Nov. 28, perhaps as investors held out hope the merger would not be approved and Columbus Circle might look for another merger partner or return capital to shareholders.
As the merger completion became evident this week, BRR plunged more than 50%, closing yesterday at $4.36.
Pomp attempts to address concerns
Among the issues facing this year’s crop of BTCTCs are the often sweet compensation deals secured by managements and the boards. After all, why should investors be paying so much money for something they can kind of do themselves — buy and hold bitcoin.
Surely hearing those concerns, Pompliano earlier this week said he will earn a salary of just $1 per year with no guaranteed bonus. Going further, he pledged that any equity compensation will not kick in until the stock hits $15 per share, or more than three times its current trading price.
Pompliano also said the board had agreed not to receive any equity compensation until the share price hits certain price targets. As for the preferred investors in the SPAC deal (the so-called PIPE), they too will need targets to be met.
“CEOs and Boards shouldn’t be making millions of dollars unless retail shareholders are also winning,” said Pompliano. “Now that I am in charge of a public company, I hope to set the standard for what true shareholder alignment looks like.”
