VanEck was skeptical when micro-value companies, riding the bullish wind in the crypto market, announced that they would purchase hundreds of millions of dollars worth of cryptocurrencies.
Many of these attempts could be scams aimed at “insider inflating” the market, said Matthew Sigel, head of digital assets at VanEck.
Treasury plans have been floating around in recent weeks, particularly for popular altcoins like XRP and Solana (SOL), but these announcements have mostly come from companies with low market caps and no direct crypto-related affiliation.
One recent example is Singapore-based Trident Digital Tech, which announced plans to raise “$500 million to build one of the world’s first large-scale institutional XRP treasuries.” However, at the time of the announcement, its stock was trading at less than $0.40 per share on Nasdaq and its market cap was just $16 million.
VanEck’s Sigel says such attempts are often aimed at artificially inflating stock prices by misleading investors. “If the market cap is very low and there’s no new investor disclosure, I assume it’s a scam,” he said.
Sigel also cited the example of a post he made on the X (formerly Twitter) platform last month, where a US company with a market cap of just $3 million and Chinese management announced that it would purchase $800 million worth of BTC and the TRUMP memecoin. That company was China-based clothing manufacturer Addentax Group Corp. The company’s shares are currently trading at $0.63.
Similarly, earlier this month, Nasdaq-listed education technology firm Classover Holdings Inc. said it wanted to set up a $500 million Solana treasury, despite having a market value of about $100 million. The company’s shares are trading below $4.
VanEck officials and industry observers caution that such announcements should be approached with caution.
*This is not investment advice.
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