The short version: a French company sold shares to one of Bitcoin's earliest advocates and plans to use the proceeds to add more Bitcoin to its balance sheet. A Bitcoin treasury company, in plain terms, holds Bitcoin as its main reserve asset the way a traditional firm might hold cash or bonds. Capital B, a Paris-listed firm trading as $ALCPB, just completed that deal with Blockstream CEO Adam Back, who bought 13.18 million shares at €0.58 each.
That price was 15.4% above Capital B's September 1 closing level. Back paid in through a private subscription to newly issued shares, and his ownership stake will rise from 14.82% to 17.77% as a result.
The warrant structure
Every share Back received comes attached to four warrants. A warrant gives the holder the right to buy additional shares later at a fixed price, and these come in three price tiers: two at €0.75 per share, one at €0.98, and one at €1.27. All four expire in five years.
If Back exercises all of them, Capital B would collect an additional €49.4 million and issue 52.7 million more shares, pushing his potential ownership to 27.8%, according to the company's filing. Capital B can also accelerate the exercise of any tranche if its 20-day volume-weighted average price holds above 130% of the relevant exercise price for 20 consecutive trading days.
What the proceeds are earmarked for
After fees, Capital B expects to net roughly €7.3 million from this transaction. The company said that amount, combined with operational funds, could allow it to acquire an additional 376 BTC, lifting its holdings from 3,145 BTC to 3,521 BTC. Those are projected figures, not completed purchases.
This follows a €21 million private placement Capital B closed last month, also directed at Bitcoin purchases.
Back's involvement carries biographical weight. He created Hashcash, the proof-of-work mechanism that Bitcoin's design draws directly from, and he leads Blockstream, a firm built around Bitcoin infrastructure. His growing stake in Capital B is a direct financial position in the corporate treasury model he has long argued for.
That model is under pressure. A Financial Times analysis of the 50 largest corporate Bitcoin holders found those companies have together lost more than $80 billion in market value. Bitcoin was trading at $79,365 at the time of writing, roughly flat over the prior 24 hours.