Blackstone Legend Teams Up with Tether's Founder: Not a Fund, But a "Berkshire Hathaway" of the Crypto World?
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Blackstone Legend Teams Up with Tether's Founder: Not a Fund, But a "Berkshire Hathaway" of the Crypto World?
Former Blackstone M&A expert Zheng Zhiliang has teamed up with Tether co-founder Reeve Collins to raise $1 billion through the SPAC company MBAV, aiming to build a publicly listed, diversified cryptocurrency fund.
Navigating Web3 tides with focused insightsBy Luke, Mars Finance
According to Bloomberg, Chinh Chu, the former M&A legend from Blackstone, has joined forces with Reeve Collins, co-founder of the stablecoin empire Tether, to raise up to $1 billion through a special purpose acquisition company (SPAC), M3-Brigade Acquisition V Corp. (MBAV), aiming to build a publicly listed, diversified crypto fund.
When the elite operators of "Wall Street old money" stand side by side with the foundational architects of "crypto new wealth," market attention naturally follows. This is not merely a convergence of capital, but the first deep integration of two fundamentally different power paradigms: "reputational power," built on impeccable track records and institutional trust, and "structural power," rooted in the底层 infrastructure of markets. Yet, if one interprets this simply as another me-too "basket-style" crypto ETF, they would miss the broader strategic play. This is more akin to a meticulously designed "structural acquisition"—one that acquires not just assets like Bitcoin, Ethereum, and Solana, but seeks to construct an entirely new "crypto asset management platform" that traditional capital markets can understand and trade.
This raises a critical question: After institutional capital completes its "onboarding mission" at the gates of Bitcoin ETFs, has the true value of this advanced investment vehicle crafted by Chu and Collins been underestimated? Is it merely a new tool for Wall Street to absorb the crypto world, or is it an entirely novel entity designed to generate long-term value—a Berkshire Hathaway of the crypto era?
When the "Wall Street Firewall" Meets the "Crypto-Native OS"
The DNA of any disruptive product stems from its founders. The pairing of Chu and Collins perfectly synthesizes the two most essential forms of trust the market demands: unimpeachable compliance pedigree and deeply embedded native insight.
Who is Chinh Chu? A 25-year veteran of Blackstone, he was the mastermind behind multibillion-dollar acquisitions such as German chemical giant Celanese and financial software firm SunGard. These deals, known for their complex structures, fierce negotiations, and precise extraction of long-term value, generated billions in profits for Blackstone. To traditional institutional investors, his name functions as a "credibility firewall." He embodies the highest standards of due diligence, mature risk controls, and top-tier institutional networks—an aura of "Chu Premium" forged by past successes that the market cannot ignore.
After leaving Blackstone, his firm CC Capital continued this "architectural" investment philosophy, successfully taking entities like image library Getty Images public via SPACs—proving he is already a master of public market financial instruments. His entry into crypto effectively serves as an "authoritative audit" of the entire diversified crypto space, signaling to the market: this domain has now passed scrutiny by Wall Street’s sharpest minds, possessing analyzable, priceable, and holdable long-term value. For hesitant fund managers, following Chu's lead becomes a career-risk-minimizing decision.
Reeve Collins, on the other hand, operates on a completely different operating system. As co-founder of Tether (USDT)—despite ongoing controversies over reserve transparency and even regulatory fines—the platform remains the undisputed "financial OS" of the crypto world. On most trading days, USDT’s volume exceeds the combined volumes of Bitcoin and Ethereum, forming the settlement layer of crypto transactions. Where does real market liquidity reside? What are the fragile points in transaction structures? How do unwritten rules operate on-chain? These are "insider beta" insights no external research report can replicate.
Collins’ value lies in his ability to navigate this fund through invisible reefs. His subsequent ventures, such as BLOCKv, further demonstrate his status as a continuous innovator within the crypto-native ecosystem. This partnership’s brilliance is clear: Chu’s "credibility firewall" perfectly offsets the uncertainty risks associated with Collins’ background, allowing the latter’s deep "crypto-native OS" knowledge to be safely encapsulated and sold to mainstream markets. What they are building is no longer just an asset portfolio, but an asset management firm with a top-tier "product manager" (Collins) and a top-tier "chief risk officer" (Chu).
The Art of Backdoor Listing: Weaponizing the SPAC
Top players compete not only on strategy but also on tactics. Rather than pursuing a traditional IPO or launching a new SPAC from scratch, they have directly "hijacked" an already-listed shell company—M3-Brigade Acquisition V Corp. (MBAV)—pushing the efficiency of the SPAC mechanism to its extreme.
A SPAC, or special purpose acquisition company, is essentially a publicly traded shell with cash but no operations, whose sole purpose is to merge with a private company within a set timeframe (typically two years), enabling the latter to go public via a backdoor listing. After the frenzy and subsequent collapse of the 2021 SPAC bubble, the 2025 SPAC market has matured, now dominated by seasoned "serial sponsors" like Chu. They understand that for a crypto fund, speed is existential. Traditional IPOs take 6 to 12 months and face unpredictable, highly stringent scrutiny from the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), especially when dealing with crypto-related businesses.
The move by Chu and Collins is a textbook example of "weaponized" SPAC usage. By acquiring sponsor equity, they seized control of the already-public MBAV. Their moves were seamless: acquisition, cleansing of the original management, rebranding as CCRC Digital Assets Corp., and swiftly pivoting from its original energy-sector mandate to focus entirely on crypto assets. This allowed them to bypass the SPAC IPO process entirely, achieving near "plug-and-play" access to a public market listing. This enables rapid fundraising of up to $1 billion and timely capital deployment ahead of market cycles. This relentless pursuit of efficiency itself constitutes a formidable competitive moat.
Institutional Investing’s "Value Discovery 2.0"
If the spot Bitcoin ETFs of 2024 marked institutions' completion of "Value Discovery 1.0" in crypto, then this fund targets "Value Discovery 2.0"—shifting from a singular bet on "digital gold" to broad-based wagers on the entire Web3 infrastructure ecosystem.
As BlackRock CEO Larry Fink has stated, the future lies in broader "tokenization of assets," not just Bitcoin. Ethereum, as the leading smart contract platform, underpins DeFi and NFTs, representing the "application layer" of the next-generation internet; Solana, with its high throughput and low transaction costs, shows immense potential in payments, gaming, and other high-frequency use cases, symbolizing breakthroughs at the "performance layer." Investing in them means shifting from betting on "digital value storage" to investing in the "infrastructure of the next internet." Surveys by EY, Coinbase, and Fidelity confirm that institutional interest is rapidly expanding beyond Bitcoin to include altcoins, DeFi, and tokenized assets.
Prior to this, institutions seeking diversified exposure had limited options, mostly relying on trust products like Grayscale’s GDLC or Bitwise’s BITW. However, these over-the-counter (OTC) vehicles have long suffered from poor liquidity and persistent premiums or discounts between share price and net asset value (NAV)—structural flaws that deterred many institutions seeking precise risk exposure.
CCRC Digital Assets Corp. delivers a structural "upgrade." As an operating company listed on the Nasdaq, its governance, disclosures, and liquidity will align with those of conventional equities. Shareholders have voting rights, governance is more transparent, and its stock price will closely track its NAV, eliminating the premium/discount issues plaguing trust products. More importantly, it is not a passive index-tracking trust, but an actively managed entity led directly by two industry titans. This means it can dynamically rebalance, proactively hedge against volatility, and capture alpha returns—capabilities that passive ETFs lack and that institutional investors deeply desire.
Value Is Discovered, Because the Structure Is Right
In investing, the shrewdest hunters don’t look for undervalued prices—they look for overlooked structures. Prices fluctuate, but a sound structure continuously generates value. This is precisely where the core value of the $1 billion vessel built by Chu and Collins lies.
Its disruptive nature does not stem from how much Bitcoin or Ethereum it holds, but from its unprecedented and unique "structure":
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Governance Structure: The credibility backing of a Wall Street legend + the native wisdom of a crypto pioneer. This solves the two biggest pain points in crypto investing: trust deficit and information asymmetry.
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Capital Structure: Rapid listing via SPAC, offering high liquidity and transparency of public markets. This resolves the problems of illiquid exits and opaque valuations faced by traditional crypto funds.
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Investment Structure: Active management capable of flexibly capturing growth across the entire crypto ecosystem—not just single assets. This overcomes the limitations of passive index funds, which cannot adapt to market shocks or generate excess returns.
This triple-layered structure elevates CCRC Digital Assets Corp. beyond the scope of a typical fund. Today’s market may still be focused on calculating the net asset value of its crypto holdings. But smarter investors are already assessing its "platform value" as a listed asset manager. It resembles a Berkshire Hathaway of the crypto world—a holding platform steered by elite managers, designed to long-term own and manage the best digital assets.
The story has just begun. In an era of increasingly clear regulations and surging institutional demand, this structurally sound asset will undoubtedly become a key benchmark for measuring market maturity. Its emergence and evolution will serve as a real-time "thermometer" for institutional risk appetite under the new regulatory regime—and may finally guide capital from standing at the door of crypto, all the way into the main hall.
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