The Latest Crypto Treasury Punt: Art Laffer and a Mongolian Soccer Team Owner — WSJ
By Angus BerwickThe investor craze for boosting public companies' shares by loading them up with crypto is getting stranger.A tiny sports company that owns a portfolio of obscure soccer teams, including squads in Mozambique and Mongolia, said Thursday it had raised $300 million from investors to accumulate the cryptocurrency solana. Arthur Laffer, the economist who invented the famous Laffer Curve, which depicts the relationship between tax revenue and tax rates, is joining its board.Shares in Nasdaq-listed Brera Holdings more than tripled, handing it a valuation of around $60 million."Throughout history, sound money has been the foundation of strong economies," Laffer said in a statement, calling the venture a "powerful way to safeguard and grow value for informed investors."Ireland-based Brera Holdings also owns an amateur football association in Italy, and a team in North Macedonia. It booked a $5 million loss on $3 million of revenue during 2024.Brera said it would pursue a so-called crypto treasury strategy for solana, and would be renamed "Solmate."Pioneered by software firm Strategy, the crypto-treasury playbook is for companies to sell shares and debt to investors and use the proceeds to buy crypto, in the hope that their stock will trade at a premium to their digital-currency holdings.The premium allows these companies to issue more shares at a higher valuation to amass even more crypto. However shares in a number of crypto-treasury firms are now trading at discounts, which undermines their investor proposition. And skeptics question why any investor would be willing to pay extra to own shares in a company buying a cryptocurrency, when they could just buy that cryptocurrency themselves at a lower price."Solmate is not just another treasury. It will execute on a durably differentiated strategy in a crowded field of look-alike" digital-asset treasuries, said Marco Santori, Solmate's incoming CEO.Investors include Cathie Wood's Ark Invest, and venture-capital firm RockawayX.This item is part of a Wall Street Journal live coverage event. The full stream can be found by searching P/WSJL (WSJ Live Coverage).