In partnership with Sharp's Technology, JD Durkin spoke to the company's strategic adviser James Zhang.
Take a look.
Welcome to FinTech TV.
I'm JD Durkin.
NASDAQ listed Sharp's Technology is a medical device and pharmaceutical packaging company.
It trades under the ticker symbol STSS, and it's brace Sallana as a Treasury reserve asset.
With Sallana digital asset treasury is growing by the day, STSS holds millions of Sallana tokens.
Sharps is looking to grow along with the crypto market, and the team attended two of Asia's largest crypto conferences in the fall.
Joining me here on the iconic trading floor.
Of the New York Stock Exchange is James Zhang.
He's strategic advisor at Sharps Technology.
James, great to have you on the team.
Welcome down here onto the trading floor.
Nice to have you here.
So now you just got back from Asia meeting with investors, attended two of the largest crypto conferences out there, Korea Blockchain Week and Token 2049.
Tell me about those experiences.
Holy, JD, is great.
I feel like Asia has truly lagged behind in the digital asset treasury trade but has been on the forefront of pretty much digital assets.
You see most of the exchange. are in the Asian center, a lot of trading volume, especially Korea and China.
So for the digital asset treasury strategy, we really wanted to expand and show the Asia region, especially the roots there, how everything is run and set up here in the US.
I think a lot of Asian investors missed out on the private side and the round and the pipes that are formulated and basically have exposure mostly through public markets and secondary, and we're seeing how they're able to capture value right now and especially if you look at most of the trading brokerage firms one is Million people in Singapore are on Weibo, and that is essentially the Robin Hood of Singapore.
It seems as if at least a little bit the digital asset trade has slowed down at least a bit and I'm curious your general take on that reduction of appetite coupled with maybe some subpar price action and kind of slowing volumes across the board for the space.
I think it's part of a more mackerel trade right now where the US government is obviously slowing down.
There are certain approvals and certain regulations that have not come into play yet.
So ETF approval of Solana has also been stalled for a little bit.
So this is all part of sort of a plan of nurturing that volatility and being able to spend your disaster treasury and have a strategy when the token price actually goes down to use that cash to accumulate and increase and creatively increase your share.
What does a digital asset treasury 2.0 look like to you and the team, I wonder.
So what is digital asset Treasury 1.0 MNA increasedalla per share and aggressively out there raising cash for your shareholders.
So what is the difference between owning Solana and owning Sharp Technology STSS is that you have a management team that is solely focused on increasing your Salla per share.
Now in the digital asset Treasury 2.0 world, a lot of that comes down to one thing, and that's revenue, where Solana ecosystem is built on revenue.
You look at Sallana D5, 3 of the app's fastest to 100 mil revenue.
Axiom, photon, pump fun all built and man of Solana founders.
Well, as a sla as a digit as a treasury, you're supposed to provide exposure for the broader la ecosystem, and we're really seeing that and having revenue build products and working with those products in the slana defI eco.
Yeah, of course the general Q4 seasonality conversation over the crypto majors, it's been front and center given how well historically a lot of those majors have performed in October, November, and December, but we're in an environmental landscape right now where we're Of the Bitcoin all-time highs recently hitting 125, we've had front page news with regards to Ethereum seemingly by the day, not quite so much the same comparable price action for Salon, and I wonder, do you view it a bit as perhaps a bit of a mispriced asset, a bit of an underperformer relative to some of the other crypto majors?
How are you viewing that conversation into Q4?
Great question.
Well, let's just zoom out a bit, right?
What makes Solana Solana?
Is this honestly the most commercially viable chain.
The fact The matter is in digital assets, a lot of times you have to optimize for certain things and give up other parts.
If you optimize for privacy, if you optimize for scalability and trading, you potentially give up other parts, and Solana is able to aggregate all that liquidity without it being siloed in one location because it has the fastest transactions per second.
It holds the most users, which in turn generates the most fees, helping Sallana generate over 900 mL revenue last quarter to its counterpart theory of 300 mL.
So honestly, zooming out Salon being.
Most commercially valuable chain and having Asian investors now having a deep look at it, which is coming back from the Asia trip, I think it's very helpful.
On top of that, just look at what's successful with its predecessors.
Bitcoin's 17 years old.
It has over 40 ETFs, hundreds of companies publicly listed owning a balance sheet.
Ethereum is 11 years old, 20 something ETFs, and has multiple companies owning a balance sheet.
Salana is 5 years old, has generated the most revenue.
It's the most commercially viable chain, and it has the most pending ETF approvals in October of this year.
Talk to me a bit about the recent partnerships, not just with Coinbase but Crypto.com as well.
How do those relationships come together and ultimately, James, how do you feel like those relationships fit into your ongoing strategy?
I think a big part of running a digital asset treasury is offering exposure of that digital asset in other public markets and for institutions that can't own the digital asset because of operational executional risk.
When you work with someone on top of the lines like Coinbase, crypto.com. that has made its name in business on cold storage custody, qualified custodianship.
In fact, even when we want validators staking that, where do you stake it through qualified custodians that has the most safe and best rail set up with the most scalable.
So working with them has really just pushed forward the institutionalization of our treasury.
Yeah, I know Sharp's recently announced a 100 million share repurchase program.
How important is that in terms of a financial tool for where the Company is today and where you hope it could be tomorrow.
Oh, when you run a treasury strategy, a lot of that is creatively generating salla per share through raising cash when you're trading above MA and when you're trading below to do the right thing of generating shareholder value by selling potentially some of your underlying assets to buy back shares.
Now this in theory works very well, but not a lot of companies have done it and not a lot have done it executed.
Well in terms of how you can block trade and block by and actually instill confidence in shareholders.
So with the share repurchase program of 100 million, we're really trying to show the market that even though the entire Treasury strategy is a few months old, this is a management team that is well versed in financial tools and able to deliver that shareholder value.
James Eng is the strategic advisor at Sharps Technology joining me down here on the trading floor of the New York Stock Exchange.
James, it's great to have you here today.
Thanks for being here.
Thank you.
