Currently, the global capital markets are undergoing unprecedented transformations, with various innovative operations emerging one after another. Among them, Eightco, an American company originally focused on packaging, has risen like a sudden nova, causing a stir in the capital markets. Its stock price surged nearly 50 times overnight, instantly becoming the focal point of the market and igniting enthusiasm in the global financial markets.
The remarkable performance of Eightco this time stems from its announcement of a major strategic shift — moving from the traditional packaging industry into the emerging WorldCoin track, with plans to purchase WorldCoin on a large scale. This news, like a bombshell, created waves in the financial market, attracting widespread attention and discussion from all walks of life.
In fact, it’s not just Eightco. In recent years, the WorldCoin model has been gradually gaining traction globally, capturing the attention of many companies and investors. Wall Street, as the core of global finance, has seen many companies adopt an open and positive attitude toward the “WorldCoin” model. For example, ARK Invest, a renowned American investment company known as the “Wooden 姐,” is famous for its precise positioning in tech stocks and bold predictions, especially for successfully investing in Tesla. Now, she is also highly favoring the WorldCoin model and is making significant moves into Coinbase and similar models like BitMine.
On the other side of the globe, the financial market in Hong Kong has also shown strong interest in this model. Yunfeng Financial, a company associated with Jack Ma, is a prime example. Yunfeng Financial has accumulated 10,000 Ether (ETH) in the public market, with a total investment amount of $44 million (approximately RMB 314 million), a move that clearly demonstrates its inspiration from Wall Street’s WorldCoin model.
However, with the rise of the treasury model, a key question has been put before everyone: Is this emerging model truly a groundbreaking financial innovation, or merely a seemingly glamorous financial scam? To answer this question, we first need to gain an in-depth understanding of the essence of the treasury model.
The treasury model, in simple terms, refers to enterprises or institutions incorporating cryptocurrencies into their asset reserve systems, treating them as an important investment strategy. Put simply, it involves allocating corporate idle funds or funds raised through fundraising to invest in cryptocurrencies, with the expectation of enhancing the overall value of the enterprise through the appreciation of cryptocurrency assets. Like the Eightco company, which announced a sharp rise in stock prices, raising substantial funds through private placements and other methods to buy large quantities of World Coin (as one type of cryptocurrency) on a large scale, is a typical operation of the treasury model.
The rise of this model is not accidental; it is closely linked to the recent vigorous development of the cryptocurrency market. The significant fluctuations in the prices of cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin and Ethereum are like a huge magnet, attracting the attention of a large number of investors worldwide. In this cryptocurrency feast, MicroStrategy (often abbreviated as MSTR) in the United States can be considered the pioneer and classic case of the treasury model. A deeper analysis of MSTR’s development Process will help us better understand this popular financial innovation model.
MSTR was originally a company engaged in data mining and analysis software, with clients including well-known companies like McDonald’s. However, over the past few decades, the company’s business development has been steady but not spectacular, failing to make much waves in the market. Until August 2020, MSTR made a major decision that changed the trajectory of the company’s fate — investing over $250 million in cash reserves into the Bitcoin market. This decision became a significant turning point in MSTR’s development 历程. Since then, MSTR has been racing full speed ahead in its Bitcoin investment journey, continuously raising funds through equity and debt markets to purchase large amounts of Bitcoin. To date, MSTR has accumulated 386,700 Bitcoins, accounting for 1.83% of the total supply of Bitcoin, with a total cost of $21.9 billion, averaging $56,761 per Bitcoin. Through this series of operations, MSTR has become the world’s largest holder of Bitcoin, even surpassing the 210,000 Bitcoins held by the U.S. government.
With the implementation of the Bitcoin investment strategy, the fate of MSTR has undergone a dramatic transformation. Since adopting the Bitcoin strategy, its stock price has surged more than 30 times, while the price of Bitcoin itself only increased by about 7 times during the same period. The success of MSTR is like throwing a huge stone into a calm lake, creating ripples that have attracted the attention of the entire financial industry. After all, driven by profit, no one would overlook such an opportunity for wealth growth. As a result, hundreds of companies worldwide have rushed to imitate MSTR’s model, trying to carve out a piece of the pie in the wave of vault models. The star company Eightco, which announced its purchase of World Coin and the construction of a vault system, follows the same model as MSTR, essentially betting on the continuous rise in cryptocurrency prices to enhance the value of their own businesses.
It is worth noting that with the continuous development of Web3 and the tokenization of real-world assets (RWAs), the vault model seems to no longer be limited to simply betting on the price increase of cryptocurrencies, but is gradually moving towards building an encrypted ecosystem. From this perspective, the vault model undoubtedly has the connotation of financial innovation.
In the fields of cryptocurrencies, blockchain, and Wall Street finance, has always been a focal point of attention. She is not only the leader of ARK Invest but also renowned for her unique investment insights and bold decisions. Now, has also joined the ranks of companies betting on vaults. Recently, she purchased approximately 4.77 million shares of Bitcoin mining company BitMine, worth 182 million US dollars, and allocated them to three of her funds. After receiving this funding, BitMine plans to invest in Ethereum, which is clearly a typical vault model operation.
believes that the adoption of the vault model by companies may be precisely a forward-looking financial innovation. She uses the example of the payment layer in the early days of the internet to illustrate: in the late 1980s and early 1990s, the internet was just beginning to rise, and no one could have foreseen the flourishing of financial services and commercial activities on the internet, let alone a mature payment layer system. This has resulted in today’s financial companies, despite having migrated to the internet, still operating with relatively traditional business models. For example, payment giants like Visa and Mastercard still have transaction costs as high as 2% – 3.5% per transaction. However, the emergence of blockchain technology, particularly companies like Ethereum-based vaults and tech firms, may reshape the payment layer system, reducing transaction costs to less than 1%. This would significantly reduce friction costs in the financial market and improve transaction efficiency. In simple terms, the blockchain payment layer (stablecoins are also built on top of the blockchain payment layer) has the potential to greatly reduce financial transaction costs, thereby encouraging more liquid assets, such as stocks, bonds, and currencies, to be tokenized on the blockchain. This is also the core essence of the recent buzz around RWA (real-world asset tokenization).
In China, there are also some companies that, with their keen market sense, have early on recognized the development opportunities in this field. Ma Yun’s companies are one of them. Alipay, under Ma Yun’s companies, holds an important position in the payment field, which also makes them exceptionally sensitive to changes in the financial payment sector. The recent move by Yunfeng Finance to accumulate 10,000 Ether (ETH) in the public market has attracted widespread attention. According to data from Qichacha, the largest shareholder of Yunfeng Finance is Jade Passion Limited, holding a 47.25% stake. This company is an investment entity under Yunfeng Fund, and Ma Yun indirectly holds interests in Yunfeng Finance by owning a 40% stake in Shanghai Yunfeng Investment Management Co., Ltd. It is therefore evident that Yunfeng Finance’s large-scale purchase of ETH marks the formal entry of Ma Yun’s companies into the digital asset sector, serving as a typical example of traditional financial institutions actively embracing Web3.
Additionally, a noteworthy piece of information is that Yunfeng Finance recently announced on September 1 a strategic partnership with Ant Digital Technology. The two parties will leverage the next-generation Layer1 blockchain platform Pharos to jointly explore cutting-edge fields such as real-world asset tokenization (RWA) and Web3. In its announcement, Yunfeng Finance explicitly stated that the purchase of ETH aims to support the group’s strategic layout in Web3, RWA tokenization, digital currencies, ESG zero-carbon assets, and artificial intelligence, providing key infrastructure support for RWA tokenization while actively exploring innovative application scenarios for ETH in the insurance business.
Overall, we can clearly see that the wallet model, RWA, and Web3 are intertwined and mutually influential. With the support of AI technology, they collectively construct a new blueprint for the financial world. This new financial world is filled with opportunities and challenges. It may be an exciting field for financial innovation, much like when stocks were first born, initially viewed by many as a bubble but gradually becoming an important part of the modern financial system over time. However, it may also hide numerous risks, akin to a bubble. Once it bursts, it could bring significant shocks to investors and the financial market. Therefore, for investors and market participants, when facing this emerging financial trend, maintaining rationality and caution, conducting in-depth research and understanding the operational mechanisms and potential risks involved, appears particularly crucial.
