Drug Company Will Buy Up to $700 Million in BNB After Coin Hits All-Time High

Another day, another crypto treasury. Biotech firm Windtree Therapeutics said Thursday that it plans to buy up to $700 million worth of BNB to put on its balance sheet—one day after the asset hit a new all-time high price.

The Warrington, Pennsylvania-based company, which trades on the Nasdaq under the ticker WINT, said that it is raising up to $520 million to fuel BNB purchases after previously announcing a plan to buy $200 million in the cryptocurrency. It also said it would partner with crypto exchange Kraken to help custody the asset. 

Windtree will raise the money with a $500 million equity line of credit with an unnamed institutional investor, and via a separate $20 million stock‑purchase pact with another firm, Build and Build Corp, a Friday release said. Overall, the firm said it has committed up to $700 million towards BNB purchases.

The drug company’s CEO Jed Latkin said: “Pending stockholder approval, the opportunity to secure additional funds for purchasing more BNB cryptocurrency is essential to our strategy.”

Windtree did not immediately respond to Decrypt‘s questions. 

BNB is the fifth-biggest digital coin with a $106.9 billion market cap. It was recently trading for $769, according to crypto data provider CoinGecko. The coin this week hit a new all-time high price of $808, before taking a dip.

The asset was launched in 2017 by Binance, the world’s biggest crypto marketplace, and previously ran on the Ethereum network. It then became the native coin of the BNB Chain—a crypto network used by developers to build decentralized apps. 

Windtree is part of a wave of companies building crypto treasuries. Its stock on Friday is down by about 5%, but over the past month, it has risen by 162%. 

Chinese blockchain infrastructure firm Nano Labs this week announced plans to buy $1 billion worth of BNB, and its stock pumped as a result. 

Strategy (formerly MicroStrategy) was the first publicly traded company to start a Bitcoin-buying masterplan. The software firm is now the largest corporate holder of Bitcoin, with 607,770 BTC—or $70.6 billion—in the leading cryptocurrency. The firm allows investors to buy its stock as a Bitcoin proxy. 

Other publicly traded companies that have followed suit include Semler Scientific and Metaplanet, while other firms have bought assets like Solana, Ethereum, and XRP.