Which US-listed companies joined the encryption strategic reserve in July?

Written by: Oliver, Mars Finance

In July 2025, Wall Street is staging a bizarre capital drama. The spotlight is not on giants like Apple or Google, but on those nearly forgotten corners of the exchange listings. Here, a group of small companies with precarious main businesses and insignificant market values seem to have heard a divine revelation overnight, all announcing that they will bet the fate of their companies on digital assets like Bitcoin and XRP.

At the core of this wave is a so-called "Saylor Effect" that is revered as a standard. Michael Saylor, the founder of MicroStrategy, has long demonstrated the magic of this model: borrowing low-cost funds as a company, purchasing Bitcoin, leveraging the market's fervent expectations for crypto narratives to drive up its own stock price, and then using the overvalued stock as collateral, repeating the cycle. However, Saylor's gamble has a profitable software business as a ballast. The new players that have now joined the table have almost no cards in hand. Is their transformation a financial innovation leading to the future, or a carefully packaged scam?

DDC Enterprise (DDC): Poison Pill Protocol

This company, self-proclaimed as a "global Asian food platform," announced a fundraising of $528 million to establish a Bitcoin treasury under the leadership of its founder, former HSBC analyst Zhu Jiaying, while its market value was only tens of millions of dollars at the time. This deal attracted investors including the well-known hedge fund Anson Funds. However, the devil is hidden in the details submitted to the SEC. The agreement contains two fatal clauses: one is a "put option," allowing investors to force the company to buy back shares when DDC's market value falls below $500 million; the other clause is even more direct, as DDC pledges one of its Bitcoin wallets as collateral, and in the event of default, investors will gain "absolute and complete control" over that wallet, including the private keys. This is no longer an investment but a high-risk mortgage disguised with precision, with almost all risks shifted to the existing shareholders of the company.

Sequans Communications (SQNS): Surrenderer

This French semiconductor company, which has struggled in the Internet of Things sector for 20 years, has seen its revenue decline and continued losses in recent years, and has long received non-compliance notices from exchanges. In July 2025, this company with a market capitalization of only $49 million announced the completion of a strategic investment of up to $384 million, and will use "all net proceeds" to purchase Bitcoin. The company's CEO, George Karam, holds a PhD in communication theory, and he and his management team have made the clearest judgment through action: the risk-reward of betting on Bitcoin is far greater than investing in their own engineers and product lines. This is not an extension of business, but a abandonment of it, a gamble that uses financial engineering to replace technological innovation.

BioSig Technologies (BSGM): The Resurrection of the "Shell"

The financial statements of this medical device company are nothing short of a disaster, with an annual revenue of only $26,000 and a loss of as much as $9.79 million, bringing it dangerously close to bankruptcy. Yet, it is precisely this near-bankrupt "shell" that achieved a reverse merger through a "merger" with the private crypto startup Streamex. Control of the company was handed over, and immediately a grand plan was unveiled: to raise $1.1 billion, initiate a "gold-backed treasury management strategy," and tokenize the "$142 trillion goods market." The market's reaction was immediate and irrational, with the surge in stock prices having nothing to do with the nearly ignored medical devices. The entity of this company, BioSig, is dead, but its "shell" has gained immortality in the crypto narrative.

Thumzup Media (TZUP): The story is everything.

The total revenue of this advertising technology platform for the entire year of 2024 is an astounding $741, while it incurred a loss of over $5.8 million during the same period. By any standard business logic, this cannot be referred to as a company. However, it successfully completed a $6.5 million financing round in July, claiming to use the funds to "explore opportunities to accumulate other cryptocurrencies." The significance of this financing is self-evident; the funds are not meant to develop a nearly non-existent business, but rather to execute its true business plan—speculating on cryptocurrencies. The existence of its advertising platform is merely a thin veil to maintain the identity of a publicly listed company.

Aditxt (ADTX): Absurd logic

This biotechnology company, with a market value of only $3.8 million and depleted cash flow, has launched an ambitious plan called "bitXbio", claiming to "accelerate the commercialization of biotechnology" by establishing a Bitcoin reserve. This logic is fraught with contradictions. Biotech research requires long-term, stable, and predictable funding, while Bitcoin is known for its short-term and extreme volatility. Supporting a venture that desperately needs stability with an extremely unstable asset is financially absurd. Clearly, "bitXbio" is not a serious research funding proposal, but rather a gimmick designed to cater to market tastes - "Bitcoin empowering biotechnology".

Webus International (WETO): Narrative Arbitrage

The travel service provider announced plans to establish a reserve of XRP and signed a credit agreement worth up to $100 million with an entity named "Ripple Strategy Holdings." The name is so cleverly crafted that it’s hard not to associate it with the creator of XRP—Ripple Labs. However, a thorough review of public information shows no clear connection between the two. This deliberately created ambiguity is, in itself, a clever form of "narrative arbitrage." By publicly accepting funds from this entity, Webus skillfully cloaked itself in an aura associated with industry giants, sufficient to raise investor expectations in an information-asymmetric market.

Conclusion: Whose feast?

By juxtaposing these cases, a clear picture emerges: a group of publicly listed companies facing operational difficulties, under the influence of a successful narrative represented by MicroStrategy, utilize complex and often predatory financial instruments to obtain funds from a new type of capital ecosystem composed of mature institutions and mysterious entities, completely betting the company's future on highly volatile cryptocurrency assets.

This phenomenon blurs the boundary between corporate treasury management and pure speculation, posing a severe challenge to regulatory agencies. When a company's stock price becomes completely decoupled from its operational value and merely reflects market sentiment and Bitcoin prices, these companies become a form of "zombie enterprises." Their existence is no longer aimed at creating products or services, but rather at serving as a highly leveraged financial derivative.

Are we witnessing the dawn of a bold financial architecture driven by digital assets, providing the lifeblood for innovation, or are we merely observing the construction of a house of cards rooted in despair, fueled by speculation? History has yet to provide an answer, but when the music of the feast stops, we will ultimately see who the diners are and who the dishes on the menu are.