H100 seals Europe’s largest Bitcoin treasury merger as rivals push abroad

H100 Group has closed the biggest merger yet in Europe’s public Bitcoin treasury sector, with its holdings now standing at 3,506 BTC, which is nearly triple what it had before the merger. 

It has also helped it move clear of a cluster of European firms all racing to bulk up their corporate crypto reserves.

Capital B and Raiffeisen kept Europe busy the week before

H100’s deal is the latest in what has been a busy stretch for Bitcoin-focused digital asset treasuries in Europe. 

Five days earlier, France’s Capital B started trading its shares on Cboe Europe’s order books to give institutional buyers more access to it. Capital B’s aggregate volume doubled within two hours of the first session, according to bitcointreasuries.net. 

In Austria, a 13F filing dated August 3 showed that Raiffeisen Bank International is rebuilding its stake in Michael Saylor’s Strategy, lifting its position to around 3,081% quarter on quarter to 5,980 shares. 

So far, H100’s merger has proved to be the largest single move of the run.

How was H100 able to fund the purchase?

H100 announced the completed transaction on August 10, having agreed to the terms back in April. It won shareholder approval at its June 23 annual general meeting in Stockholm. 

H100 absorbed Norwegian treasury entities Moonshot AS and PDI AS, and they came along with 2,455.4 Bitcoin, which took the company’s total from 1,051 BTC to 3,506.4 BTC, an increase of approximately 234%.

However, no cash was involved in the transactions, as the H100’s board issued 790,534,666 new shares to the sellers, priced at 1.86 Swedish kronor each and set off against seller promissory notes worth about 1,470 million kronor. 

The valuation used a Bitcoin reference price of about $62,900 as of July 31, putting the merger at roughly 1.0x net asset value, so neither side booked a premium or a discount on the underlying Bitcoin.

H100 calls it the first Bitcoin-for-Bitcoin deal in public markets

The executive chairman, Sander Andersen, said in the company’s statement, “This is the largest M&A transaction ever completed in the European Public Bitcoin Equity sector, and the first in the world done Bitcoin for Bitcoin.” 

Ownership in the combined firm was fixed purely by how much Bitcoin each side contributed, which H100 says leaves Bitcoin-per-share untouched for existing investors even as the balance sheet grew.

The company arrives at 3,506 BTC, ranked 26th among listed Bitcoin holders globally on bitcointreasuries.net and second in Europe behind Germany’s Bitcoin Group at 3,605 BTC. It was reported in March that H100 is backed by Blockstream co-founder Adam Back.

A Bitminter founder brings his coins and a 12-month lock-up

The deal also hands H100 a new majority shareholder. Geir Harald Hansen, the principal seller, is a 15-year Bitcoin veteran who built the Bitminter mining pool in 2011, a pool that once produced up to 20% of daily blocks and mined 208,232 BTC over its life, he wrote in a letter to shareholders. 

Hansen has agreed to a 12-month lock-up on the shares he received and now sits on roughly 70% of the enlarged company.

That 70% figure is also the dilution existing holders swallowed, leaving them with about 30% of the merged entity. The scale-up comes after a rough year for the stock: H100 shares had fallen more than 90% over the prior 12 months when shareholders voted the deal through in June, Cryptopolitan reported, against an average cost basis near $114,615 per coin. 

Hansen said he intends to broaden the investor base over time rather than sit on the controlling stake.