BitMine Brings Strategy's STRC Playbook to an ETH Treasury
These are today’s biggest crypto and DeFi news:
- BitMine files $300M preferred stock
- Coinbase International opens USDC-settled pre-IPO perps
- Sky launches Pendle-built fixed-rate yield
- PENDLE goes live on Revolut
- Bitcoin ETFs extend record outflow streak
BitMine, the Ethereum-treasury company sitting on $9.2 billion in unrealized losses, filed a prospectus supplement for up to $300 million in Series A Perpetual Preferred Stock at a 9.5% cumulative dividend. Tom Lee is trying to apply Strategy's STRC playbook to an ETH instrument.
Meanwhile, Coinbase International opened USDC-settled pre-IPO perpetual futures with SpaceX as the first listing, Sky shipped a Pendle-built fixed-rate yield product aimed at its $6 billion sUSDS pool, and PENDLE itself went live on Revolut for 20 million EEA crypto traders.
The counter signal is significant: spot Bitcoin ETFs extended their outflow streak to a record 13 consecutive days this week, $4.4 billion cumulative since May 15. That’s the largest withdrawal run in the products' history. Strategy's Michael Saylor, sitting on a $10.3 billion paper loss of his own, said the slide was 'AI capital rotation.’
Spot allocators are stepping back at the same time treasury companies, exchanges, and yield protocols are building more capital markets infrastructure. The bet inside the BitMine filing is that investors will seek a yield-bearing instrument. The next two quarters will say whether the bet was early or wrong.
Read more below!
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WATCH
"ETH IS MONEY" — IS THE THESIS OVER? | David Hoffman vs. John Gillen
This morning, Camila Russo moderated a debate between two of Ethereum's loudest bulls now in opposite trades. David Hoffman, co-founder of Bankless, exited his entire ETH position after nearly a decade — arguing the thesis played out, with value leaking to L2s, apps, and stablecoins. John Gillen, lead macro researcher at Milk Road and a former BlackRock strategist, fired back with 'Wartime Ethereum' — calling it too early to write the game off, and doubling down by staking.
The debate sits directly on top of today's BitMine filing: if Hoffman is right that value leaks away from ETH, BitMine's treasury bet looks like the wrong asset; if Gillen is right, the preferred-stock issuance is exactly the kind of capital structure a long ETH treasury should be running. Worth a watch for the framing both sides land on.
TRADFI AND FINTECH
BitMine Files for $300M Preferred Stock Offering at 9.5% Yield to Expand ETH Treasury
BitMine's 424B5 prospectus supplement registers up to $300 million in Series A Perpetual Preferred Stock at a 9.5% cumulative dividend, issued out of an Ethereum-treasury balance sheet currently $9.2 billion underwater on its ETH position. The structure follows Strategy's STRC blueprint — preferred dividends paid in cash, no maturity date, redemption at the issuer's option — letting BitMine raise capital without selling ETH or diluting common stock at the current price.
Why this matters: Strategy spent five years proving that a preferred-stock structure works for funding a bitcoin treasury — last week's 32-BTC sale was the first disclosed disposition since 2022, structured to fund STRC dividend obligations. BitMine porting the playbook to ETH is the natural next step, and the 9.5% coupon is the market-clearing yield for a treasury company that's down 30%+ on its underlying. The bet is that the dividend gets covered by ETH staking yield or ETH-collateralized lending — if it doesn't, the structure forces ETH sales the same way STRC forces BTC sales at Strategy. Watch for whether other ETH treasuries (Sharplink, BitDigital) follow with similar issuances.
CEFI
Coinbase Launches Pre-IPO Perpetual Futures, Starting with SpaceX
Coinbase International, the exchange's Bermuda Monetary Authority-licensed entity, opened USDC-settled perpetual futures referencing private-company valuations, with SpaceX as the first listing. The contract type sits in the same regulatory pocket as the international perps Coinbase already runs on liquid crypto — block-margined, USDC-collateralized, BMA-licensed, but the underlying is a private US equity valuation reference. Coinbase frames it as filling the gap between secondary-market access and the public IPO.
Why this matters: Pre-IPO exposure has been a closed product for accredited investors and VCs running secondaries on Forge or EquityZen, with index-style derivatives essentially unavailable. Coinbase putting a perpetual-futures wrapper on SpaceX through its Bermuda venue moves the product into 24/7 leveraged territory that the regulated US prediction venues (Kalshi) haven't touched.
DEFI
Sky Launches Fixed-Rate Yield Product Built on Pendle, Targeting $6B sUSDS Pool
Sky (formerly MakerDAO) launched Fixed Yield, a term-based alternative to the variable Sky Savings Rate (SSR), giving sUSDS depositors a locked rate to a named maturity date. The product is built on Pendle Protocol v2, which splits yield-bearing tokens into principal and yield components and prices each as a tradable instrument. Sky's $6 billion sUSDS pool is the addressable base; the locked-rate product targets the share that wants duration over the variable SSR's overnight rate.
Why this matters: Fixed-rate yield is the missing piece in the stablecoin yield stack. Without it, treasuries and DAOs sitting on sUSDS have to mark to a variable rate that resets daily. That’s a structural problem if you're matching against fixed liabilities. Sky outsourcing the yield-tokenization layer to Pendle is also the more interesting half of the story: the same week Pendle shipped on Revolut for 20 million European retail customers (see below), the protocol is becoming plumbing for fixed-rate yield in DeFi.
DEFI
PENDLE Token Goes Live on Revolut, Reaching 20M EEA Crypto Traders
The PENDLE token — yield-tokenization protocol with a $233 million market cap — is now buyable inside Revolut's MiCA-licensed crypto app across the UK, EU, Norway, Iceland, and Liechtenstein, reaching 20 million European crypto traders. PENDLE is the second on-chain yield protocol to land on Revolut's regulated rails after Maple's SYRUP in April. Revolut's product roadmap has been moving toward MiCA-aligned listings as a competitive moat against US-domiciled exchanges.
Why this matters: Distribution is the variable most onchain yield protocols have been missing. Pendle finally has it: Sky uses Pendle's v2 yield-splitting as the engine inside its fixed-rate stablecoin product (above), and Revolut now puts PENDLE itself in front of 20 million consumer accounts.
MARKETS
Spot Bitcoin ETF Outflow Streak Extends to Record 13 Days, $4.4B Cumulative
US spot Bitcoin ETFs posted a 13th consecutive day of net outflows on Wednesday, extending the longest withdrawal streak in the products' history to $4.4 billion cumulative since May 15. The pace has been steady — single-digit-millions on the slow days, $500M+ on the heavy ones — and is now running against the narrative that ETF demand absorbs every supply shock the BTC treasury companies and miners create.
Why this matters: Spot ETF flow has been the marginal-buyer story in BTC since January 2024. Thirteen days of outflows says the marginal buyer is currently a seller. Saylor's same-day 'AI capital rotation' framing (see Other Stories) is the bull-side read: discretionary risk capital is moving to AI-infrastructure equities, not abandoning crypto. The bear read is institutional allocators are rebalancing on a 15-20% drawdown.
Other Stories Worth Your Time
Saylor Calls Bitcoin's Slide 'AI Capital Rotation' as Strategy Sits on $10B Paper Loss — Strategy's Michael Saylor publicly attributed Bitcoin's 13% weekly slide to AI infrastructure spending absorbing risk capital, framing the drawdown as an exogenous capital-rotation event — as the firm sits on roughly $10.3 billion in unrealized losses.
Western Union Deploys USDPT on Bybit's Fiat Channels in Latin America — Western Union pushed its USDPT stablecoin into Bybit's fiat channels in Latin America, making Bybit the first major crypto exchange to integrate the token. Lands two days after MoneyGram launched its own rival dollar token on Stellar.
Visa and Brale Test Privacy-Enabled SBC Stablecoin Settlement on Canton Network — Visa and stablecoin issuer Brale are piloting settlement using SBC, a USD-backed stablecoin, on Canton Network — testing whether the privacy-preserving institutional DLT can meet bank-grade compliance for card-rail settlement.
