Morning Minute: Forward Industries Eyes $4B to Buy More Solana

Morning Minute is a daily newsletter written by Tyler Warner. The analysis and opinions expressed are his own and do not necessarily reflect those of Decrypt. Subscribe to the Morning Minute on Substack.

GM!

Today’s top news:

• Crypto majors mostly rally post-FOMC; BTC at $117,300
• SOL jumps 5% as Forward Industries announces $4B ATM
• BNB crosses $1,000 for first time; CZ bull-posts ASTER (+400%)
• Hype hits new ATH at $59; Project X announces its Phase 2
• TokenWorks & PNKSTR announce perpetual machine rollouts for 5 new NFT collections, token soars

💰 Forward Industries Loads a $4B ATM to Buy SOL

The leading Solana TreasuryCo (or DAT) has apparently just whet its appetite.

And is hungry for a lot more SOL…

📌 What Happened

Forward Industries (NASDAQ: FORD) filed an automatic shelf and an ATM prospectus for up to $4B.

The company says proceeds may fund “pursuit of its Solana (SOL) strategy,” and other income-generating assets.

This comes after Forward just bought 6.82M SOL ($1.6B) at a $232 average as it kicked off its SOL strategy.

FORD stock dipped 10% on the day on the news of dilution, though it’s still up 168% on the month.

🗣️ What They’re Saying

“Through this offering, Forward Industries gains a flexible and efficient mechanism to raise and methodically deploy capital in support of our Solana treasury strategy.” – Kyle Samani, Chairman, Forward Industries (press release)

“We want to be not only the top Solana-based Digital Asset Treasury, we want to be the top Digital Asset Treasury in the world. We have aspirations for this thing to become a $50B+ Digital Asset Treasury company over the next 5-10 years.” – Kyle Samani, on TBPN

🧠 Why It Matters

Forward Industries looks to be the leader of the SOL DAT race.

For comparison, this is the list of current SOL DATs

• DeFi Development Corp (DFDV): 2,027,817 SOL held; has an up to $5B equity line with RK Capital
• Upexi (UPXI): 2,018,419 SOL as of Sept 10
• Sharps Technology (STSS): ~2,000,000 SOL referenced in public trackers/PRs
• Sol Strategies (STKE/HODL.CA): ~370,420 SOL disclosed

So Forward bought more than the rest combined in just it initial buy.

And now it wants to buy $4B more.

Assuming they are able to do that – no one has enough SOL.

For perspective, the top ETH DATs combined to buy ~$17B of ETH. And that drove the price of ETH from $2,500 to $4,900 (along with ETF inflows as well).

Given that ETH is about 4x the size of SOL, a $4B ATM for SOL is equivalent to $16B for ETH.

So…$240→$470?

Probably not that high, at least in a straight shot.

But a new SOL ATH is very in play (prior high was $294).

The wildcard is the SOL ETFs coming online in big size in Q4. If that happens, $400 may indeed be in play.

For now, Forward is in the driver’s seat. Let’s see how fast they’re able to move…

🌎 Macro Crypto and Memes

A few Crypto and Web3 headlines that caught my eye:

In Corporate Treasuries / ETFs

In Memes

• Memecoin leaders are very green post-FOMC; DOGE +5%, Shiba +2%, PEPE +7%, PENGU +10%, BONK +7%, TRUMP -2%, SPX even, and FARTCOIN +3%
• PNKSTR soared 140% to $26M after a major announcement (more below)
• 1 led Solana onchain movers, up 11,000% to $6.7M; PANDU +110% was another top movers

💰 Token, Airdrop & Protocol Tracker

Here’s a rundown of major token, protocol and airdrop news from the day:

• ASTER soared to $0.47 and a $750M market cap ($3.75B FDV) in its debut, boosted by a rare bull post from CZ
• Project X announced its Phase 2 allowing any coin from any chain to be trading directly on their platform with 0 aggregator fees
• Token Works and PNKSTR announced that they’re rolling out their tech and perpetual machine to other NFT collections, planning to launch PUDGYSTR, APESTR, DICKSTR, BIRBSTR & MEEBSTR today
• Bio Protocol raised $6.9M in seed funding led by Arthur Hayes

🤖 AI x Crypto

Section dedicated to headlines in the AI sector of crypto:

• Overall market cap +3% at $14.2B, leaders were very green
• FARTCOIN (+10%), VIRTUAL (+10%), TIBBIR (+8%), aixbt (+8) & ai16z (+12%)
• AXR (+27%), SERAPH (+25%) and LEA (+20%) led top movers

🚚 What is happening in NFTs?

Here is the list of other notable headlines from the day in NFTs:

• ETH NFT leaders were mostly green after the TokenWorks news; Punks -1% at 48.3 ETH, Pudgy +2% at 10.5, BAYC +2% at 9.3 ETH
• Punk Strategy bought its 8th Punk yesterday (token at $25M)
• Anichess Ethernals (+55) and Cryptodickbutts (+13%) were top movers
• Abstract NFTs were mixed led by Bearish and Astroverse
• Jack Butcher’s ‘Gas Wars’ settled around a 0.35 ETH floor after their literal gas-war mint out earlier today
• Pavel Durov posted the 30-day growth of Telegram Gifts (TON NFTs) in which most sets are up 50%-70% or more