Who guided Chinese billionaire CZ through his IPO?
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Who guided Chinese billionaire CZ through his IPO?
The era no longer rewards those who run fast; power is returning to the stewards of the rules.
Navigating Web3 tides with focused insightsBy Lin Wanwan, TechFlow
In the world of crypto, the loudest moves aren't noisy trades—they're the quiet transfers of 90 billion dollars through powerful networks.
In July 2025, an address holding 80,000 bitcoins—dormant for 14 years—suddenly moved its holdings. This was one of the largest nominal Bitcoin transactions in history. A transfer of this scale should have triggered a 30% market drop. But in reality—no major crash, no panic. The market quietly absorbed these bitcoins.
Ninety billion dollars in assets were silently swallowed by the market. The operator wasn’t an exchange or hedge fund, but a relatively obscure Wall Street player: Galaxy Digital.
During the company’s latest Q2 earnings call on August 5, someone asked the CEO: How did you secure the client for 80,000 BTC? Was there a formal bidding process?
The CEO casually replied: "For this deal, relationships mattered more than pricing."
Moreover, BNB Treasury—the corporate treasury firm personally led by Chinese billionaire CZ—quietly hired David Namdar, former co-founder of Galaxy Digital, as its new CEO.
Who exactly is behind Galaxy Digital? What political and financial resources enabled it to execute such epic-scale transactions? And what kind of new power structure is this network building within the crypto world?
The "Inner Circle": Political Capital on the Board
The key to this transaction lies not in public bids, but in backroom connections—all pointing to one veteran Wall Street figure.
Mike Novogratz, the 56-year-old founder, is a quintessential product of Wall Street.
He spent 11 years at Goldman Sachs, starting on the Southeast Asia futures desk and eventually becoming a partner in fixed income. At the time, Novogratz was among the rare few who could navigate macro trading, portfolio management, and national policy simultaneously.
Later, he joined Fortress Investment Group, leading macro strategy investments and becoming one of the earliest key figures to bet on emerging markets and sovereign debt. During that period, he frequently visited policy institutions, central banks, and finance ministries across Latin America, Asia, and Eastern Europe, negotiating bond issuances and currency policies, mastering the logic of leverage and sovereignty in gray zones.
From 2012 to 2015, he served on the New York Federal Reserve's Investment Advisory Committee, directly participating in policy consultations, monetary mechanism research, and financial institution evaluations. This gave him rare "dual capabilities"—deep understanding of derivatives trading and fluency in regulatory language and rhythm.
This is someone who has operated at the intersection of political power, Wall Street capital, and information flow for over a decade.
As early as 2013, he used personal funds to heavily invest in Bitcoin and Ethereum, committing around $7 million total. By 2017, he publicly stated in a CNBC interview: "I've made over $250 million from crypto assets in the past two years."
But he is neither a native of the crypto industry nor a typical speculator. His real turning point came in 2015—when he suffered losses from a large position in Brazilian interest rates and exited Fortress, briefly retreating from frontline investing. It was during this "gap period" that he first seriously examined Bitcoin, reshaping his understanding of money, credit, and financial infrastructure.
Yet unlike many early crypto evangelists who stopped at "holding Bitcoin," Novogratz aimed higher—to build an entirely new financial institutional framework for the on-chain world. He said: "I see a systemic gap—the liquidity in crypto is deepening, but there's no structure."
In his view, the entire chain of traditional finance—asset management, market making, clearing, ETF custody, PIPE financing, audit disclosure, regulatory lobbying—has no equivalent in crypto. This is a "institutional wasteland" desperately in need of reconstruction.
Galaxy Digital emerged precisely at this structural crack.
In 2018, Novogratz personally invested $350 million, taking a Canadian shell company—Bradmer Pharmaceuticals—public, creating the first crypto financial platform offering full-stack services to institutions. It was designed as a "Wall Street-style on-chain investment bank."
However, moving from a Canadian exchange to Nasdaq took Galaxy Digital 1,320 days—nearly four years. During this time, the company endured nine rounds of SEC feedback, countless legal reviews, and spent over $25 million to meet compliance requirements. While the broader crypto industry faced regulatory winter and mass exodus, Galaxy held on.
It is neither a trading platform nor a VC firm, but a "financial infrastructure provider" for crypto. Novogratz designed Galaxy Digital as the "on-chain Goldman Sachs." Its structure clearly bears the marks of his Wall Street roots:
Service offerings mirror Goldman Sachs: asset management, market making, OTC trading, proprietary investing, risk management, financial advisory; trade structures mirror Citadel: dark pool matching, low-latency derivatives systems, ETF liquidity integration; policy pathways mirror Brookings: establishing a policy research team, publishing reports, testifying before regulators, entering regulatory sandboxes; compliance frameworks mirror Deloitte and EY: building a "digital asset legal packaging system" enabling financial statement inclusion and audit disclosure.
At the heart of all this is the "political-business network" cultivated through Galaxy's board of directors.
Galaxy's board includes Tyler Williams, former Deputy Assistant Secretary at the U.S. Treasury, seconded in 2025 by the current Treasury Secretary as Special Advisor on Digital Assets—he translates crypto language into regulatory terms, serving as a key bridge between Galaxy and agencies like the SEC, CFTC, and FASB.
Another board member, Doug Deason, is one of Texas' most influential real estate and energy lobbyists. He helped pass legislation on mining farms, electricity pricing, and taxation, playing a crucial role in Galaxy's successful transformation of Bitcoin mining facilities into AI computing centers.
This convergence of "policy-capital-technology" gives Galaxy an extremely rare "policy influence capability" among crypto firms.
In the financial architecture he built, Galaxy doesn’t just conduct trades or manage assets—it serves as the "legal power-up" service provider for traditional companies entering the on-chain world.
Compared to CZ’s operational excellence or SBF’s aggressive capital tactics, Mike Novogratz represents a different type of founder. He never emphasizes "decentralization," but rather "structural arrangements." He doesn’t measure success solely by token price, but by whether privacy, regulation, institutions, finance, custody, and compliance pathways are truly established.
This explains why, despite not having the highest traffic, Galaxy became the only player capable of securing the massive 80,000 BTC order, executing settlement, and giving counterparties peace of mind.
Many believe Galaxy Digital’s moat is capital—but its real advantage is its political-financial fluency.
The Banker Behind Crypto Treasuries
The 80,000 BTC transaction is just one corner of this network. Companies represented by Chinese billionaire CZ are now viewing Galaxy Digital as a "political passport" to compliance.
In mid-2025, a new mainstream narrative quietly emerged in U.S. equities: crypto stocks. Wall Street is undergoing a capital "shell swap"—packing BTC and ETH into public companies, allowing crypto assets to enter Wall Street under the guise of financial statements.
Yet as recently as late 2023, this was considered a "forbidden zone" in capital markets.
U.S. companies struggled to "legally hold crypto" because the financial system couldn't accommodate it. Under previous FASB accounting rules, cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin could only be recorded as "intangible assets"—meaning declines required write-downs, but gains couldn't be recognized as profits, distorting corporate balance sheets and complicating audits.
For example, if you bought 10,000 ETH, any drop in price had to be immediately booked as a loss, but price increases were ignored—never counted as profit. This made financial statements look terrible and audits a mess. It wasn't until the 2025 fiscal year, when FASB introduced "fair value" accounting—allowing gains to be recognized—that a true "compliant holding" pathway opened.
Galaxy was among the first to enter—and the first to guide a group of public companies into compliant participation.
The first to spot the opportunity were ancient ETH whales. They quietly packaged their ETH into U.S. shell companies, using circular transactions to effectively cash out via stock market liquidity without disturbing the market. SharpLink Gaming became the leader in this "cash-out strategy."
Soon after, Chinese billionaire CZ followed suit—inserting his company's native token BNB into a U.S. public company, leveraging shell structures, packaging, and listing to transform the platform token into a compliant asset, then integrating it into capital valuation frameworks.
Behind these maneuvers, Galaxy Digital has quietly surfaced—as the mastermind orchestrating the entire playbook.
It customizes "crypto treasury" narratives for these companies: from OTC accumulation and asset custody to compliant disclosures and staking yields—each step relies on the political-business channels Galaxy has built, each move precisely navigating the gray zone between regulatory blind spots and capital leverage.
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