Michael Saylor’s MicroStrategy has outperformed all the S&P500 constituent stocks since 2020, but Sol Strategies blows the bitcoin-holding stock’s returns out of the water.
Since 13 March this year to date, MicroStrategy is up 23.4%, which is nothing to be sniffed at, but it pales in comparison to Solana-hungry Sol Strategies, which was 544% higher in the same period.
Cryptonews.com caught up with the largest shareholder – serial entrepreneur Antanas Guoga (aka TonyG) – in the publicly traded Solana vehicle Sol Strategies. TonyG owns 36.8% of the outstanding common shares.
The stock trades over the counter in the US (CYFRF) for USD $0.704 as of Tuesday, 22 October’s close. Its primary listing on the Canadian Stock Exchange is under the ticker HODL, where it is priced at CAD $0.98.
TonyG bought into Sol Strategies at $0.03 when he became CEO of the company in 2019, which means today he is sitting on an enormous 2,233% return.
As chairman of the company, he is understandably super bullish about Solana and his company. So much so that this week, he advanced a CAD $10 million unsecured revolving credit facility to the firm. That news alone pushed the share price up 12% in the Tuesday session.
TradingView chart: Sol Strategies (CYFRF/HODL) has been outperforming MicroStrategy (MSTR) since July. This month the the price has gone parabolic.
SOL to $1,520, Bitcoin at $150,000 in 12 Months’ Time
We caught up with TonyG playing and working in the thrusting global crypto hub that is Dubai. He sees Sol Strategies priced at $10 or more going forward, which would lift its market cap from $63 million to $1,260 million.
He expects in the course of the next 12 months to see the SOL price touching 1,520, an 815% move to the upside.
To put that valuation in perspective, Solana’s market cap would be close to Tesla’s current $705 billion and better than Visa’s $565 billion and Exxon Mobil’s $533 billion.
If you had invested in Sol Strategies 12 months ago you would be sitting on a return of 1,280%. Analysts rate the stock a strong buy with a price target of USD $3.70. That could turn out to be a very conservative PT.
Excluding stablecoins and exchange coins like Binance’s BNB, Solana is the third most valuable coin on planet crypto, valued in market capitalization terms at $71 billion.
TonyG sees a generalized bull market ahead, which won’t be confined to bitcoin. “Bitcoin has the opportunity to be at $150,000”, he notes in passing.
But what might upset these predictions? “The SEC. The next SEC will be very important. America is leading the world on crypto so it matters how the SEC handles it.
“We can’t fight the government. There’s no need to. There’s a clear demand for blockchain. We are not a crypto play – we are a blockchain play. We want to validate transactions, we want to be the biggest validator. We don’t get into speculation too much – we are focused on the blockchain.
Sol Strategies Chairman Antanas Guoga, aka TonyG
Leading the Charge to Open the Investment Floodgates for Blockchain and Crypto
Keen to distance himself from politics, although TonyG is a past member of the European Parliament, he concurs with market sentiment that appears to be interpreting a Trump win in the US presidential election as a boon for crypto.
“We’re not political, but of course with Trump now positive on crypto and even talking about adding bitcoin to the government balance sheet, that’s got to be good. But Harris is also making positive noises, so either way, the outcome of the election is probably a win-win for the industry, especially regards regulations.
He continues:
“We need good regulation, clarity and protection for investors. And we still need a lot of investors. The blockchain sector is still extremely under-invested compared to the chip sector and all other tech sectors right now. I’m hoping as the chairman of the company that we can be part of leading that charge to open the investment floodgates.”
TonyG steers clear of talk about Solana being an Ethereum killer. “There’s room for everyone”. I have six kids. Solana wants to give birth, to create things – not kill anyone.”
Sol Strategies CEO Leah Wald is the Personification of the Bridge Between TradFi and Crypto Finance
The Lithuanian-Australian is no longer the company’s CEO; that role has passed to Leah Wald, the co-founder of digital asset manager Valkyrie.
In March this year, CoinShares acquired Valkyrie Funds LLC, the investment advisory arm of Valkyrie Investments Inc., as part of the European-based fund manager’s US expansion strategy.
Leah Wald is the consummate Wall Street operator and crypto pioneer – Valkyrie was among the first companies to successfully list a bitcoin futures ETF in the US.
You may have seen Leah on CNBC and Bloomberg – here she is talking about Bitcoin Miners ETF launch in February 2022 – a world first:
Now as CEO of Sol Strategies, she is bringing her experience and uniquely valuable skillset in navigating the US capital markets regulatory space to turning Sol Strategies into a Solana powerhouse.
Given the favorable backdrop, Sol Strategies is likely to garner significant interest from institutions seeking regulated access to the Solana network. We asked Wald if she was seeing this sort of movement on Wall Street.
“While I can’t disclose specific third parties at this time, I can speak to the broader trends we’re seeing. Institutional interest in staking on Solana is growing significantly, with various sophisticated players actively participating in staking operations”.
Valkyrie founder and Sol Strategies CEO Leah Wald
For more of the CEO’s thoughts, look out for the full interview coming soon to Cryptonews.com. Also, don’t miss our interview with Sol Strategies chief investment officer Moe Adham (co-founder of Bit Access).
Solana Could Be One of the Main Commercial Rails Bringing Decentralized Applications to the Masses
In a deck seen by Cryptonews, Sol Strategies positions itself as the vehicle that “bridges the gap between traditional finance and crypto markets.”
Publicly listed companies such as MicroStrategy and Sol Strategies allow investors to “avoid the complexities of direct crypto ownership”, and are more accessible and liquid than crypto markets.
Furthermore, as the deck points out, Sol Strategies enables investors to participate in staking and benefit from the strategic investments the company makes in “high potential Solana projects.”
As the “only publicly traded vehicle for regulated exposure to Solana in North America”, Sol Strategies is well-positioned to leverage a bull market that could be just getting started.
As this bullish set-up plays out, Solana will attract even more attention than it already has this year, after its unexpected starring role as the blockchain of choice for an increasing number of meme coin launches.
Meme coins are often dismissed as frivolous, high-octane speculative bets of little if any intrinsic worth. Regardless of that view, however, they do showcase the robustness of the Solana blockchain, despite continuing issues around network congestion and doubts about centralization.
Solana has had at least nine major or partial outages, but things seem to have calmed down on that front, with no major outages in a year or more.
Still, as TonyG puts it, “these are still early days” for blockchain projects so teething problems are to be expected.
Sol Strategies Aims to Be the No.1 Validator on the Solana Network
According to its latest announcement, Sol Strategies stakes 225,158 SOL of which 105k is delegated by the company and the remainder on behalf of third parties.
Sol Strategies began staking on its Solana Validator on June 14 this year. In an announcement dated 3rd October, the firm said it had booked revenue of 1,430 SOL ($282,910) from staking, representing a gross profit of $266,680. The profits are invested in buying more SOL, held on its behalf by Coinbase Custody.
TonyG says the company aims to be at the top of the Solana validator leaderboard, which is currently dominated by Galaxy and Coinbase.
In addition to the capital gains from price appreciation, Sol Strategies’ shareholders benefit from the 6.25% annual percentage yield validators earn at the time of writing for securing the Solana blockchain as a validator. Shareholders also benefit from the commission the company charges third-party delegated validators.
Source: Solana Beach
Sol Strategies holds 0.06% of the circulating supply of SOL. Solana token price was up 11% on Tuesday, breaking above $170 for the first time since August, although has slipped back since.
Solana was, to a degree, held back by its associations with FTX, which meant it was perhaps unfairly labeled as one of the ‘Sam coins’, a reference to imprisoned FTX founder Sam Bankman-Fried.
As it happens, though, creditors have all got their money back, and that includes Sol Strategies. In its previous guise as Cypherpunk Holdings (it changed its name to Sol Strategies in September this year), Sol Strategies held tokens on FTX. The company received a disbursement at a premium of 122% on its original investment.
TonyG – ‘It’s going to be a fascinating journey. It’s still early.’
TonyG is an old hand in the crypto world, but his first love was poker. As a top-flight pro, he became a well-respected fixture at the poker dealing table and the founder of Pokernews in 2002. It’s all been plain sailing since then. Other successful businesses he’s set up include the crypto-powered poker platform Coinpoker and – let’s show our hand – Cryptonews.com.
These days, he spends a lot of time wheeling and dealing in bustling crypto hub Dubai and divides his time between watching the price of Sol Strategies explode and helping Ukrainian refugees survive the war, among his other philanthropic activities.
“We’re still a very small company in a very big space. We hope to attract more talent and find solutions for real-world problems,” TonyG enthuses.
“We are very fortunate to attract Leah Wald – we want to attract the very best people in the world to put things on the blockchain like verification of all sorts of assets and processes. Blockchain is going to go to a different level – it’s not going to be what it is now; it’s going to be a fascinating journey. It’s still early”
And it’s the early bird that catches the worm. It might pay to keep an eagle eye on Sol Strategies.
Disclaimer: This article is provided for informational purposes and does not constitute investment advice. As of the time of writing the author owns no shares in any of the stocks mentioned, but has a small holding of SOL.
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