Inside the Solana Revolution with James Zhang | KBW2025

Sharp technology. Thank you. Awesome. How's everyone doing? Hey, I know it's the afternoon, day two of the conference.

I appreciate you guys here. You know, I'm honestly not trying to pitch anything. We're just having a conversation, so appreciate y'all being here. Look, the conversation we're having today Oh, did it start already? Is around digital asset treasuries.

How many people here, just a raise of hands, have heard of a DAT, a digital asset treasury? Okay. Awesome, about 30% of the room. So, I'm James Zhang. Nice to meet you.

I'm the strategic advisor to Sharp technology, STSS. We've just raised $410 million in a private placement round to launch our Solana digital asset treasury strategy up to a billion of gross proceeds. Now, quick high-level overview. What phase of digital asset treasuries are we in right now? So, all of this is phase one, accumulation.

Accumulation, you raise private capital before you deploy for whichever tokens you're thinking of. You might have heard of CEP, Nakamoto, you know, a bunch of treasuries beforehand. And moving on. So, this is accumulation phase when you read the big headlines of raise X amount of money up to what valuation. Phase two gets more interesting.

Phase two is yield and deployment. We'll get into that. For example, Solana, why is it a more productive asset than Bitcoin? Why do you get 8% native staking yield? How do you deploy that?

What LSTs are you going to use? Is it Bonk? Is it Jupiter? You know, so it's a very interesting. I believe everyone here, you know, if you know Solana, the reason you might like Solana is for the DeFi involved in it.

Now, phase three, this is 6, 12, maybe 18 months down the line, is more strategy and governance, right? The Solana digital asset treasuries right now hold about 4% of total Solana. And as we know, how you govern Solana, whether in staking or passing governing votes, is how much Solana you actually own. So, Digital Asset Treasuries own more Solana than the foundation itself. So, it might have a direction and a say in how everything is governed.

The DAT timeline. So, here I sort of just want to show you guys an overview before we get into it. MicroStrategy kicked this off, right? 5 years ago. Buying Bitcoin, issuing converts, issuing whichever they do, doing every the Lord's work, Michael Saylor.

5 years ago. Before us, honestly, this entire space started like 6 months ago. But, everyone finally woke up and understood what the strategy is. And since then, there has been a lot of Bitcoin strategies around. And it's gone global, right?

MicroStrategy's in the US on Nasdaq and accessing US capital markets. But, somewhere like Japan, you actually have to pay a lot of tax when you want to buy Bitcoin or digital asset. And you might be like, "James, why would you not buy the digital asset like Bitcoin and go buy Meta Planet in Japan?" Well, it's cuz they grow your holding per share faster than you, and you don't need to pay a certain amount of tax that you would need to do stocks. So, right now you have Meta Planet in Japan, you have Orange that will just list on the Brazilian B3 exchange.

Shout out, they raised about 380 mil, largest deal in Brazilian history. You know, talking to regulators, getting outside of crypto echo chamber. And you have Satsuma, the smarter web company in London. So, everything that started over the last 6 months is around Bitcoin. Now, finally, things started to shift.

Ethereum got a bid, there's a man called Tom Lee, right? And you see Bitmain, you see a bunch of the amazing companies that came out in the Ethereum war, so to speak. And now, what we have doing today, here to present to you, is Solana. Why did we choose Solana to do our Digital Asset Treasury strategy instead of Bitcoin, ETH, or any other token? Well, just looking at the stats for anyone who has built or transacted on Solana, pretty much if you open your phone right now, Phantom wallet, Dexscreener, most of the apps on your phone, consumer-wise, might be Solana-related.

These are all amazing stats. Number one total usage, number one app revenue, staking yield, etc. But, there's one stat up here that actually we haven't even put up. That's the most amazing stat for Solana. Solana did 900 million of revenue last quarter.

Ethereum did 300 mil. This is a metric that no matter what industry you're in, Web3 or Web1, that is respected, revenue. So, I think this just proves Solana is where real builders and talent are coming to. If you're a builder looking at what chain you want to deploy your perp DEX or whatever product, you probably need two things, liquidity and users, and that is found on Solana. And if you look at all the incubators, Alliance DAO, the YCs, there's more and more founders that are applying to build on Solana than any other chain.

The most used blockchain and fastest in the world. 7,500 new developers, 1.3 billion a year day app revenue, probably the most DEX volume seen. These are metrics that we know ourselves in crypto very well. But, in order to actually get crypto to catch a bid and for retail and Wall Street and to be covered by CNBC or just in general, you need to have a very coherent story to show Wall Street.

Now, that for Ethereum may be stable coins, economic value, whichever. Solana, fastest, most used blockchain in the world. If we're actually going to tokenize the world and bring it on chain and bring internet capital markets, you need a blockchain that can handle the transaction the throughput and the load. And Solana is the most commercially viable chain. It honestly just does the most transactions.

It has the most developers. And then we might be wondering, why has it not caught a bid in price in terms of CNBC speaking and media outlets? Simple answer, Solana is 5 years old, right? Ethereum's 11 years old, Bitcoin 7, more than 17 years old. It takes a lot of time to educate a public that is still going down the rabbit hole of Bitcoin before they get to certain other tokens.

The infrastructure for digital assets, I think throughput transaction, I'll go over this real quick, is it's just something we see in the back end and you can only understand it if you use the apps every day, but these are sort of the fees and structurings of how we think about the chain. Now, public vehicles. What is a digital asset treasury strategy? You're providing access to the underlying asset by giving a vehicle for users to invest in. Now, we buy tokens.

If you're sitting here, I assume you buy tokens, you have an account, you can use DEXs. But people that buy tokens buy tokens. People that trade stocks trade stocks. There's two separate group of people. So, by doing a digital asset treasury strategy, Solana, right?

I don't work for Solana, but I'm here trying to evangelize Solana to everyone here. You actually might own more Solana than me and be earlier to Solana. But this is the job that we're doing now to educate the public on what it is and why it is the number one chain in the world. Now, ETFs, right? You look at it, Bitcoin has 43 ETFs, Ethereum has 20, Solana has seven that is pending with the next review date in October that many folks are very confident in will pass.

So, if you pair a digital asset that has explosive growth, has done the number one in most metrics, and you pair that with a digital asset strategy with public exposure like ETFs on the horizon to be approved, that story has been played out in Bitcoin and Ethereum already and Solana is getting there. Whether that be today, in 6 months, you know, for Wall Street catch a bid, going to S&P 500 with the companies that own stocks on the Nasdaq owning Solana, then it's completely different because now you look at Bitcoin, BlackRock IBIT ETF did more revenue, did than that revenue, Had more flows into the ETF than its S&P 500 ETF. Pretty insane. Fidelity, Vanguard, the largest asset managers in the world are all in the game advising their clients to own cryptocurrency digital assets, whether that's in the form of Bitcoin or Solana. Now, when you go even more up, you have nation states that are printing capital to own more digital assets.

You have the entire C-suite of the US exact with the Secretary Treasury on Bitcoin on establishing a reserve. So, you pair that with a lot, you come down to Solana, and I think it means a lot of growth. The raise. What does Sharpe Technology do? Essentially, raise 410 mil in net proceeds and bought all of that into Solana within 1 week, right?

When you can come into Solana at a lower average price and experience the benefits of public market flywheel of whether other digital asset treasuries or other public vehicles that want to own Solana and coming after you, you essentially get all that price action benefit and staking rewards. Top investors, right? Some of the earliest investors in Solana itself, Rockaway X, right? Um some of the largest institutions that are in the digital asset treasury space that really understand structuring and will come out with you. Like ParaFi, Pantera, you know, shout out Synapse.

So, really blessed that in the private around. Remember in the phase one dimension accumulation, this is the stage that it's at. You have to get private investors to invest to start this digital asset treasury strategy and then be able to create returns for your users. And that is when you purchase the two mil Solana, what are you doing with the Solana now? Just by doing native staking, you own 8% staking yield, right?

On a 410 mil treasury strategy that's valued around 500 mil on the balance sheet right now based on Solana price action, you're generating around 50 mil in revenue a year. And this is purely from working with certain LSTs and keeping CapEx very low. And when you do earnings calls on Wall Street, this is as good of a value as you can get, right? At 50 mil revenue, low CapEx, and a company that's only growing with the digital asset space. Now, if you ask me like, how do I view digital asset treasuries in like the whole form of a financial system?

It's a It's a It's a large financial institution that's furthering an ecosystem. Think of it like a bank, right? JP Morgan trades at a 2x MNAV because it's efficient, because it generates you return on this capital formed. Similarly, so if the US dollar isn't doing well and it's not generating economic activity, JP Morgan probably won't trade at 2 mil Sorry, 2x MNAV. Similarly for Sharp Technology, we are providing shareholder growth by growing more Solana for you, right?

By owning Sharp Technology one share in one year one month, hopefully you'll earn a lot more base Solana than actually just buying the asset class itself. So, number one is Expasheo Digital Assets. The Sharp Technology team was amazing, and we decided to start this treasury strategy together. Focus solely on Solana. I think this is a no-brainer.

Uh we want to have one clear mission and goal for retail investors. If you're a retail investor looking at stocks, you want a very clear vision. You want your management team to be, "Hey, this is what I'm executing. This is what I've done. These are all the transparent dashboards and to prove to you the shareholder value."

So, we're very strict on one thing, growing your Solana per share. Solana Foundation LOI. I think anyone who has been in the ecosystem knows Solana one of the biggest differences from other chains beyond the metrics that I have put up is the people. I know it sounds cliché, but think about it. When you go to a Solana event, when you want to access and reach out to Solana, who can you reach out to?

There's the foundation, the super teams. They have APAC strategy. They're probably some of the only guys to actually work like the entire business organization. So, Solana Foundation has been amazing, uh supported us with the first LOI for the digital asset treasury strategy and for purchasing potential Solana from them. Solana native leadership, if there's one thing I want to want I want you to leave from this talk from me giving you on digital asset treasuries is this entire team is Solana native founders.

We're not asset managers. You look at most of the teams that put together on the DAT timeline, it's asset managers. It's that guys that come from banking etc. background that want to manage the assets of what you raised. Let me do staking, let me do XYZ.

We built Jambo. We built Solana products for years in the trenches at whichever point the market has been. And now we are trying to evangelize and bring Solana and provide more access to the masses through Nasdaq listing, through our digital asset treasury strategy flywheel. Potential yield from SOL staking. Uh probably one of the main things that makes Solana an attractive asset is the productivity of it through staking.

Now, if you just want to do the most basic staking, earn 8% native staking yield, amazing. Let's go to sleep. No one's going to complain. It's done. Ethereum's at 3%, much higher than most other chains combined.

But when you start to look at how you can actually run a Solana DeFi, that's when things get interesting, right? Not only partnering with certain guys like Jupiter, Bonk, right? Sanctum, shout out. Guys that really know what they're doing in the LST space running validators. They're returning you the MEV rewards and block rewards cuz they want you to work with them and to show how powerful their LST is.

So, you can actually do a lot by working with some of the deepest DeFi projects in Solana. Quick illustration. How do you have more asset like Solana per share by owning a piece of stock versus the actual asset? Well, mid-June, Bitmain. I'm going to use them.

I know it's an Ethereum GET, but I'm going to use them as an example. Just cuz I'm a big fan of how they've been capturing volume and retail and doing their marketing. Uh Bitmain held about $4 of Ethereum per share in mid-July when they launched. If you could have bought $4 of the Ethereum ETF and you could have bought $4 of Ethereum. As of today, Bitmain has grown by 10x the Ethereum per share.

They hold about $40 per share or higher, right? And you would have still owned the same amount if you bought ETH or bought the ETF. You still would have made money. 20-30% return has been amazing cycle, but it's fundamentally a different bet, different leverage, and different take. You have an entire management team that's working to grow that net asset class per share.

So, Sharp Technology Solana treasury flywheels very simple. We access capital markets. We raise capital. When I pitched my investors in the private round, I wasn't pitching Solana. Like I said, they've they know Solana better than me probably.

They own more Solana than me. They were the earliest investors. They had the lowest cost basis. I'm pitching James Zhang. I'm pitching Sharp Technology.

I'm pitching why I can continuously fundraise, bring that net asset per share, bring your MNAV up, and do very interesting things working for shareholder growth. So, our goal is raise capital, capital markets on-chain, off-chain, NASDAQ private placements, deploy that into Solana, and generate the highest yield possible. Let's talk about partnerships a bit. Last two slides, bear with me. Pudgy Penguins.

I think the legend himself Luca was on here right before. Uh anyone who knows Pudgy, especially in Korea, you know that they're one of the only communities that have transcended crypto. You can be in mainstream and like Pengu and know what Pudgy Penguins is. So, by partnering with Pudgy Penguins, it gives us a platform to essentially speak to users on what Solana is. Pudgy is built on the Solana blockchain, right?

So, everything that we do is very synergistic. And they're probably one of the first to tap into the real world in terms of commercials, in terms of hardware, etc. So, we're very excited to be partnering with Pudgy Penguins and bringing cultural IP into a digital asset treasury institutional strategy. BONK. Very different, but also very similar to a community like Pudgy, where some of the most Yeah, BONK Radio, you have BONK Guys, you probably all follow Unibots, Cadenza, Nam on X.

It's like core Solana community. If you ask me who the Solana like cabal / core Solana is that built through the bear market with Solana at $8, these are the guys. It's BONK. They launched one meme coin on Solana Saga the phone and essentially gave everyone 10x return, right? They airdropped 10,000 tokens.

It then went up to like $5,000 in August 2023. BONK has some of the most interesting LSTs and it has been a pleasure partnering with them. We contributed about 10% to their BONK SOL TVL. Now, what does that mean? It means we're staking our SOL, we're earning 10% 8 to 10% yield.

Now, by staking into BONK SOL, you can actually get that and work as collateral many lending platforms desk OTC desk and do market neutral yield generation strategies. This is where asset management gets interesting and beyond for the, you know, tip of the iceberg of just doing basic staking. So, extremely proud BONK community shoutout, shoutout Nam. Holds a dear place in my heart. This is the PR game that a lot of DATs you have to do.

You have to go global, you have to do press releases, you have to essentially show Solana institutional way. Um, Sharps very proud to do so. And global PR takeover, right? Where are we right now? We're in Korea.

Everyone understands the importance of Korea. You You the largest exchanges, you have some of the largest retail trading volume, and I assume that Koreans don't go on Wall Street Journal or the usual American publications every day. And maybe Korean ones, maybe certain ones that affiliate with Korean production companies. So, very important to be tapping into global PR strategy and sharing with folks. Awesome.

Hope you guys enjoyed the talk. Thank you.