According to Bloomberg, Chinh Chu, a merger and acquisition legend from Blackstone Group, is collaborating with Reeve Collins, co-founder of the stablecoin empire Tether, to raise up to $1 billion through a Special Purpose Acquisition Company (SPAC) M3-Brigade Acquisition V Corp. (MBAV), aiming to create a publicly listed diversified crypto fund.
When a "Wall Street veteran" top trader meets a "crypto newcomer" infrastructure architect, market attention naturally focuses. This is not a simple capital aggregation, but the first deep integration of two entirely different power paradigms - "reputation power" built on impeccable credentials and institutional trust, and "structural power" rooted in market infrastructure. Interpreting this merely as another "basket" crypto ETF follower might miss the key to this grand strategy. It's more like a carefully designed "structural acquisition" - they are not just acquiring assets like Bit, ETH, and Solana, but attempting to construct an entirely new "crypto asset management platform" comprehensible and tradable by traditional capital markets.
This inevitably raises the question: After institutional funds complete their "novice task" at the Bit ETF gateway, has the market underestimated the true value of this "advanced" investment vehicle created by Chinh Chu and Collins? Is it a new tool for Wall Street capital to incorporate the crypto world, or a new species aimed at creating long-term value, comparable to the "Berkshire Hathaway" of the crypto world?
When the "Wall Street Firewall" Meets the "Crypto Native OS"
Any disruptive product's genes originate from its founders. The combination of Chinh Chu and Collins perfectly merges the two trust credentials most needed by the market: an impeccable compliance lineage and a bone-deep native insight.
Who is Chinh Chu? He is a 25-year Blackstone veteran, a "value hunter" who led billion-dollar mergers of giants like Celanese and SunGard. These deals were known for their complex structures, intense negotiations, and precise long-term value excavation, bringing Blackstone billions in profits. For traditional institutional investors, his name represents a "reputation firewall". He embodies the most rigorous due diligence, most mature risk control, and top-tier institutional connections. This "Chu Premium" forged by glorious achievements is an aura the market cannot ignore.
After leaving Blackstone, his CC Capital continued this "architect-like" investment philosophy, successfully pushing physical enterprises like Getty Images to the public market through SPAC, proving he is already a master of listed financial instruments. His entry is essentially a "authoritative due diligence" on the entire diversified crypto track, declaring to the market that this domain has been examined by Wall Street's top minds and possesses analyzable, priceable, and long-term holdable value. For fund managers still hesitating, following Chinh Chu's footsteps is undoubtedly a wise move to reduce career risk.
Reeve Collins, meanwhile, masters another operating system. Tether (USDT), which he co-founded, despite ongoing controversies about reserve fund transparency and even massive regulatory fines, has never wavered in its position as the undisputed "bottom-layer financial OS" of the crypto world. On most trading days, USDT's trading volume far exceeds the total of Bit and ETH, constituting the "settlement layer" of crypto trading. Where is the market's real liquidity? What are the transaction structure's fragile points? How do the unwritten rules of the chain world operate? These are "beta version" insights that no external research report can provide.
Collins' value lies in his ability to navigate this fund, avoiding unseen reefs. His subsequent projects like BLOCKv also prove he is a continuous crypto-native innovation frontrunner. This is the most exquisite part of this marriage. Chinh Chu's "reputation firewall" perfectly hedges the uncertainty risks in Collins' background, safely encapsulating the latter's deep "crypto native OS" knowledge and selling it to the mainstream world. What they're building is not a simple asset portfolio, but an asset management company with a top "product manager" (Collins) and top "chief risk control officer" (Chinh Chu).
The Art of Backdoor Listing: SPAC "Weaponized"
Top players' contests are judged not just by strategy, but tactics. They didn't choose a traditional IPO or start a new SPAC from scratch, but directly "hijacked" an already listed "shell company" - M3-Brigade Acquisition V Corp. (MBAV), maximizing the SPAC financial instrument's efficiency.
SPAC, or Special Purpose Acquisition Company, is essentially a publicly listed company with only cash and no actual business, whose sole purpose is to merge with a private company within a specified time (usually two years), helping the latter achieve a "backdoor listing". After the 2021 frenzy and bubble burst, the 2025 SPAC market has returned to rationality, led by experienced "serial initiators" like Chinh Chu. They deeply understand that for a crypto fund, speed is lifeline. Traditional IPO processes not only take 6-12 months but also face extremely strict and unpredictable SEC reviews when dealing with crypto businesses.
Chinh Chu and Collins' operation is a textbook case of "weaponizing" SPAC. By acquiring founding rights, they directly gained control of this listed company (MBAV). Their series of operations were seamless: acquisition, management layer cleansing, renaming to CCRC Digital Assets Corp., and quickly pivoting from the originally planned energy industry to crypto assets. This means they completely bypassed the SPAC IPO process, almost "plug-and-play" obtaining a public market trading seat. This allows them to launch a $1 billion fundraising at the fastest speed and deploy capital ahead of market trends. This ultimate pursuit of efficiency is itself a powerful competitive barrier.
Institutional Investment "Value Discovery 2.0"
If the 2024 spot Bit ETF represents institutional "value discovery 1.0", this fund aims at "value discovery 2.0" - expanding from a single "digital gold" to a value bet on the entire Web3 infrastructure ecosystem.
As BlackRock CEO Larry Fink said, the industry's future lies in broader "asset tokenization", not just Bit. As the smart contract platform leader, ETH is the cornerstone of DeFi and Non-Fungible Token, representing the "application layer" of the next-generation internet; Solana, with its high throughput and low transaction costs, shows enormous potential in high-frequency scenarios like payments and gaming, representing a breakthrough in the "performance layer". Investing in them is equivalent to shifting from betting on "digital value storage" to betting on the "infrastructure of the next-generation internet". Surveys by Ernst & Young, Coinbase, and Fidelity also confirm that institutional investors' interests are rapidly expanding from Bit to other Altcoins, DeFi, and tokenized assets.
Previously, institutions seeking diversified allocation could only choose OTC trust products like Grayscale's GDLC or Bitwise's BITW. However, these products have long faced liquidity insufficiency and significant discounts or premiums between price and NAV, structural defects that have deterred many institutions seeking precise risk exposure.
CCRC Digital Assets Corp. provides a structural "dimensional strike". As a company set to be listed on the Nasdaq main board, its governance, information disclosure, and liquidity will be benchmarked against standard stocks. Shareholders have voting rights, the corporate governance structure is more transparent, and its stock price will fluctuate more closely around its net asset value, eliminating the premium/discount issues that plague trust products. More importantly, it is no longer a passive index-tracking trust, but a proactively managed company led by two industry giants. This means that during severe market volatility, it has the potential for flexible portfolio adjustment, active risk hedging, and capturing alpha returns - characteristics that passive ETFs lack and institutional investors dream of.
Value Discovery, Because the Structure is Right
In the investment world, the smartest hunters are not seeking undervalued prices, but overlooked structures. Prices fluctuate, but a correct structure can continuously create value. This is the core value of the billion-dollar vessel crafted by Zheng Zhiliang and Collins.
Its disruptive nature lies not in how many Bit or ETH it holds, but in its unprecedented unique "structure":
- Governance Structure: Wall Street legendary reputation endorsement + native wisdom of crypto world creators. This solves the two biggest pain points of investing in the crypto world: trust deficit and information asymmetry.
- Capital Structure: Rapid listing through SPAC, with high liquidity and transparency of the public market. This solves the problems of limited exit channels and non-transparent valuation of traditional crypto funds.
- Investment Structure: Active management, capable of flexibly capturing growth dividends of the entire crypto ecosystem (not just a single asset). This solves the limitations of passive index funds that cannot respond to market changes and cannot obtain excess returns.
This trinity structure makes CCRC Digital Assets Corp. transcend the scope of ordinary funds. The current market may still be calculating the net asset value of crypto assets this fund might hold. However, smarter investors have begun to examine its "platform value" as a listed asset management company. It is more like a "Berkshire Hathaway" of the crypto world - a holding platform led by top management, aimed at long-term holding and managing the best digital assets.
The story is just beginning. In an era of increasingly clear regulatory environment and continuous institutional demand, this "structurally correct" asset will undoubtedly become a key subject for testing market maturity. Its birth and development will become a real-time "thermometer" measuring institutional risk appetite under the new regulatory environment, and may lead capital from the doorway of the crypto world to truly enter the hall.
