Adam Back Puts €7.6 Million Into Europe’s First Bitcoin Treasury

PARIS — The American playbook for a bitcoin treasury company is well worn: raise capital, buy coins, use a rising share price to raise again. Europe has been slower to run it. On September 2, the company trying hardest to change that got a vote of confidence from one of bitcoin’s best-known figures. Adam Back, the Blockstream chief executive and long-time cypherpunk, subscribed a €7.6 million private placement in Capital B, the Paris-listed firm that calls itself Europe’s first Bitcoin Treasury Company.

Capital B trades on Euronext Growth Paris as ALCPB and in the US as CPTLF. The raise was priced at €0.58 a share across 13,181,030 new shares — a 15.4% premium to the prior close, which for a capital raise is itself the news. Companies usually sell new shares at a discount to get them away. A strategic buyer paying above market is signaling conviction, not bargain-hunting.

What the money buys

Capital B says the proceeds, with its ongoing operations, could fund the purchase of about 376 BTC, lifting its holdings toward 3,521 coins. Its director of bitcoin strategy, Alexandre Laizet, framed the goal as growing bitcoin per share on a fully diluted basis — the metric the treasury-company model lives or dies on.

The structure is built to compound. Attached to every new share are four warrants; if all are exercised, they would issue another 52.7 million shares and raise up to €49.4 million more, at strike prices from €0.75 to €1.27. The company can force early exercise if its shares trade above those levels — a mechanism that converts a rising price into fresh bitcoin-buying capital.

A strategic investor paying a 15% premium is not hunting a bargain. He is buying a bet that the model compounds.

Back moves closer in

The placement raises Back’s stake in Capital B from 14.82% to 17.77%, and potentially to 27.8% if the warrants are exercised. Blockstream Capital Partners remains the largest shareholder at 18.91%. That concentration is a double edge: deep-pocketed, aligned backers who understand bitcoin, but also a company whose fortunes are tied tightly to a small circle around Blockstream.

The risk that rhymes

Europe now has its answer to Strategy and Metaplanet — and inherits their central vulnerability. A treasury company that raises against its own shares thrives when its stock trades at a premium to the bitcoin it holds and struggles when that premium collapses. Metaplanet spent early September more than a billion dollars underwater on its coins as its premium evaporated. Capital B is far smaller and earlier, which cuts both ways: more room to grow, less cushion if the model turns.

Why it matters: the bitcoin-treasury trade is no longer an American phenomenon — and a premium-priced raise from Adam Back is a bet that it travels.