ReserveOne to go public in $1B SPAC deal backed by Kraken, Tether’s co-founder, and former U.S. Commerce Secretary

The SPAC IPO space is heating up as a new crypto holding company heads to Wall Street with a heavyweight team—and a billion-dollar plan to match.

ReserveOne, a cryptocurrency asset manager backed by industry heavyweights and political insiders, announced Tuesday it’s going public via a SPAC deal expected to raise over $1 billion. The firm will list on the Nasdaq through a merger with M3-Brigade Acquisition V Corp, a blank-check company whose shares dropped nearly 4% in premarket trading after the news.

ReserveOne plans to manage a portfolio of crypto assets, including Bitcoin, Ethereum, and Solana, giving traditional investors equity exposure to digital currencies without holding them directly. It’s a move that mirrors the strategy behind Michael Saylor’s MicroStrategy pivot in 2020—a bet that has since drawn a wave of copycats aiming to wrap crypto inside more familiar stock structures, Reuters reported on Tuesday.

The leadership team reads like a crypto and finance power list. Jaime Leverton, former CEO of mining firm Hut 8, will serve as CEO. Sebastian Bea, who previously held leadership roles at BlackRock and Coinbase Asset Management, is stepping in as president and head of investment.

The board will be chaired by Reeve Collins, co-founder of Tether, with former U.S. Secretary of Commerce Wilbur Ross also joining. The deal has the backing of major crypto players like Blockchain.com and Kraken, which are investing up to $750 million through equity and convertible debt.

SPACs—short for special purpose acquisition companies—have become a popular route for startups to go public without the traditional IPO process. These shell companies raise funds from investors and then look for a private company to merge with, turning it into a publicly traded firm. So far in 2025, SPACs represent 70 of the 104 IPOs—or 67% of the U.S. total, according to SPACAnalytics.com.

ReserveOne joins a crowded field, but with heavyweight investors and deep ties to both crypto and government, it’s aiming to stand out. Now it’s up to the market to decide if the pitch works.