As Dogecoin surges past a three-year high, one Canadian company is aiming to legitimize the memecoin through investment and infrastructure development.
According to Spirit Blockchain Capital CEO Lewis Bateman, the digital asset management firm’s acquisition of Dogecoin Holdings was partly inspired by MicroStrategy’s Bitcoin buying strategy. However, Spirit Blockchain Capital claims it has much bigger plans than just using Dogecoin as a treasury reserve asset.
“We will build a strong balance sheet with Dogecoin in the coming months and years,” Bateman said. “But our goal is not just to hold, but to develop a full ecosystem and make Dogecoin part of the mainstream financial system.”
Dogecoin Holdings was founded by a group of Dogecoin investors and supporters, and its portfolio includes “a range of digital assets, intellectual property and strategic partnerships” that align with the team’s technological expertise, Spirit said.
The acquisition also includes “Dogecoin ETF technology,” a “Dogecoin payment gateway” that is in development, and $383,000 in cash. Despite operating as a private company, Bateman said Dogecoin Holdings does not have an official website and has not issued a public press release. According to British Columbia’s regulator, RoC, Dogecoin Holdings was founded in April, and the acquisition was only disclosed in recent months. Bateman also noted that the deal has not yet been formally finalized.
Dogecoin has surged 125% in the past week, reaching $0.32 on Monday, thanks to Donald Trump's victory in the US presidential election and the resurgence of Dogecoin, fueled by Elon Musk. The Department of Government Efficiency (D.O.G.E.), proposed by Musk during the Trump campaign, has contributed to the renewed interest in the coin. While it remains unclear what role Musk will play in the Trump administration, Dogecoin's rise has drawn a lot of attention from the community and investors.
On Monday, DOGE options open interest (OI)* surged to an all-time high of around $3 billion, according to data from CoinGlass. Prior to this week, DOGE futures OI peaked at $2.21 billion in March and had mostly stayed below $1 billion from April until late October.
Is this massive amount of money being bet on a Dogecoin bull run? Not necessarily. As of writing, options traders have opened more DOGE shorts ($13.7 million) than longs ($8.13 million).
Meanwhile, lesser-known companies like Spirit are quickly catching on to the trend and are planning to launch new products aimed at boosting the value and utility of Dogecoin, which was created as a joke more than a decade ago. Bateman noted:
“People may think Dogecoin is just a joke, but it actually has huge potential and is very unique. It is not some small, meaningless altcoin.”
Spirit is aiming to develop products that will make Dogecoin a more practical payment method. While the company is focused on offering publicly traded products that will give investors exposure to Dogecoin, Bateman said Spirit also plans to develop exchange-traded products* that will make it easier for users to access and use Dogecoin immediately.
Bateman also revealed that Spirit has started buying Dogecoin and is building its position in the market.
Before spot Bitcoin ETFs became a multibillion-dollar phenomenon on Wall Street, MicroStrategy pioneered the Bitcoin hoarding strategy, becoming one of the world's largest Bitcoin holders. As of today, the company owns 279,420 Bitcoins, worth about $24.8 billion. MicroStrategy also recently announced plans to raise $42 billion to continue buying more Bitcoins in the coming years. MicroStrategy's stock has increased 578% to $340 in the past year thanks to this strategy.
Spirit is not the first company to follow MicroStrategy founder and CEO Michael Saylor’s strategy. Tokyo-listed investment firm Metaplanet has also been amassing millions of dollars in Bitcoin in recent times. However, Bateman insists that Spirit is not looking to completely copy Saylor’s strategy, but is instead looking to forge its own path with Dogecoin.
“We don’t want to be just a public company with opaque decisions,” Bateman said. “Our goal is to build a real legacy, with a solid infrastructure and full audit capabilities. And I believe we have the ability to achieve that now.”
*OI (open interest) is a measure of the total value of all outstanding or “unsettled” futures contracts on exchanges, and is also an indicator of market price momentum as well as trader sentiment around a particular asset.
*Crypto Exchange-traded products (ETPs) are crypto-based investment products that trade on traditional exchanges like regular stocks. This allows investors to access and invest in crypto more easily, without having to purchase and store tokens directly.
$DOGE $INJ $APT