Key Highlights:
- Anthony Scaramucci recently invested in AgriFORCE, a crypto treasury company.
- AgriFORCE is rebranding to AVAX One as it aims to establish a $700 million Avalanche treasury.
- The company has launched a $550 million fundraise to purchase AVAX tokens.
AgriFORCE Growing Systems (NASDAQ: AGRI) declared its intention to rebrand into AVAX One and became the first company to be listed on NASDAQ as a company focused on investments in Avalanche (AVAX) tokens. The firm intends to raise $550 million to hold more than $700 million of AVAX. Strategic advisors include Anthony Scaramucci of SkyBridge Capital and Brett Tejpaul of Coinbase Institutional.
Anthony Scaramucci-Backed Company Eyes Major AVAX Purchase
The capital raise will be implemented via a privately issued $300 million PIPE and an additional $250 million by way of equity-linked instruments, subject to shareholder approval. The tendering of the private placement securities will be restricted by resale. Meanwhile, it’s important to note that before Avalanche, AgriFORCE focused on Bitcoin treasury as announced in a July 15 release this year.
Jolie Kahn, the CEO of AVAX One, will be nominated as chairman, and Hivemind Capital founder Matt Zhang will be the CEO. The initiative has more than 50 institutional and crypto-native investors, such as Galaxy Digital, Digital Currency Group, ParaFi, and Kraken. The company will deploy the amassed AVAX tokens to create a company treasury and onboard cash-generating fintech operations to the Avalanche network. Kahn said:
“The architecture of financial markets is changing, and programmable blockchains like Avalanche are the new foundation. For the first time, our company provides public market investors with a professionally-managed vehicle to invest directly in this transformation. Our mission is to maximize our ownership of this foundational technology, AVAX, on a per-share basis, delivering direct value to our shareholders as this new economy grows.”
In the latest press release, the company noted that it plans to be the “Berkshire Hathaway of the on-chain financial economy.” It would focus on token accumulation alongside smart acquisitions of fintech firms that can be moved to the Avalanche blockchain.
This is a vast difference from the earlier business conducted by AgriFORCE on agricultural technology, which was also operating on a Bitcoin treasury strategy. The transformation is a change to a blockchain-based investment vehicle that is publicly traded. In the past, the company was a product-oriented business.
How will AVAX One Impact the Crypto Investing Arena?
The capital raise of $550 million makes AVAX One the first publicly traded investment that is focused solely on Avalanche. In contrast to the cryptocurrency ETFs, which track the prices of digital assets passively, AVAX One plans to directly hold AVAX tokens and follow a strategy of integrating fintech businesses into the Avalanche ecosystem.
The advisory board, which includes executives of major financial and crypto establishments, provides advice on treasury management and strategic development. The executives of the company have worked in Citigroup, Mastercard, and BlackRock, which further attests to the company’s institutional investor character in the blockchain world. Along similar lines, Anthony Scaramucci, a major stakeholder said:
“The tokenization of assets is the single biggest theme for the next decade of finance. Avalanche has clearly become the institutional-grade platform for this shift, and SkyBridge has already committed to tokenizing on the network. AVAX One will be the essential on-ramp for public investors to participate.”
The program is designed to ensure token accrual is as high as possible and flexible at the same time, with the use of PIPE and equity-link instruments. There are still execution risks, such as shareholder approval and effective integration of acquired fintech businesses onto the network of Avalanche. The current shareholders will experience a drastic change in the business model of the company, as they will not be involved in agricultural activities anymore, but will be involved in blockchain-centric treasury policy.
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