Chinese microchip manufacturer Nano Labs has officially launched its initiative to acquire up to 10% of the total circulating supply of BNB, beginning with a $50 million purchase of the cryptocurrency.
In a statement on Thursday, the company reaffirmed its long-term objective to invest up to $1 billion in BNB, aiming to hold between 5% and 10% of the total supply.
Following its latest acquisition, Nano Labs now holds approximately $160 million worth of BNB and Bitcoin combined.
Founded in 2019 by Kong Jianping and Sun Qifeng—both former board members of Singapore-based hardware company Canaan—Nano Labs went public in 2022. The firm specializes in the development of high-throughput and high-performance computing chips.
Nano Labs shares dip while BNB remains steady
While Nano Labs’ stock surged over 106% after it initially unveiled plans to raise $500 million through convertible notes to build a BNB treasury, the latest purchase failed to excite investors.
Following the company’s recent BNB acquisition, its shares fell more than 4.7% during Thursday’s regular trading session and declined another 2% in after-hours trading, settling at $8.21.
BNB gained only slightly, rising 0.3% in the last 24 hours to trade at around $663 per coin.
Still a long way to go to reach 10%
According to CoinGecko, BNB currently has a market capitalization of $93.4 billion, with a circulating supply of 145,887,575 tokens.
Acquiring 10% of that supply at current market prices would cost approximately $926 million.
While BNB’s initial supply was capped at 200 million tokens, the total in circulation has been steadily declining due to Binance’s ongoing token burn program aimed at reducing supply.
A Forbes report from June 2024 revealed that Binance and its former CEO, Changpeng “CZ” Zhao, collectively control 71% of the 147 million BNB tokens that were in circulation at the time.
Interest in crypto treasuries may wane
An increasing number of companies are turning to crypto assets for their treasuries, but Anthony Scaramucci, founder and managing partner of hedge fund SkyBridge Capital, believes the trend may not be sustainable, according to a Bloomberg report published Tuesday.
Scaramucci argues that in the long term, investors will start to question the logic of backing a company simply because it holds a valuable asset—especially when they could purchase that asset directly.
“If you’re giving somebody $10 and they’re putting $8 into Bitcoin, are they going to do well? Yes. But you might have been better off just putting the full $10 into Bitcoin,” he told Bloomberg. “I think that’s an issue.”
While Scaramucci remains bullish on Bitcoin and doesn’t oppose companies allocating crypto to their balance sheets, he emphasized that investors should carefully consider the underlying costs associated with each of these treasury strategies.
