Bitcoin Standard Treasury Company pulls plug on SPAC merger, chooses to stay private

Adam Back’s Bitcoin treasury firm has officially ended its planned merger with Cantor Equity Partners I, stepping back from what would have been one of the more ambitious crypto public listings in recent memory. Bitcoin Standard Treasury Company, known as BSTR, terminated the deal on August 20, 2026, after a shareholder vote was delayed so many times it started to feel less like a postponement and more like a slow goodbye. The company’s CIO, Sean Bill, confirmed the firm will stay private until both market conditions and its internal structure are in better shape. That’s a significant pivot for a company that once styled itself the “Berkshire Hathaway of Bitcoin” and had a Nasdaq debut firmly in its sights. What the deal looked like before it unraveled BSTR was not approaching this merger quietly. The company had assembled an initial balance sheet of approximately 30,021 BTC, valued at over $3 billion at the time of the planned listing. Of that, 25,000 BTC came from founders, with the remaining 5,021 BTC contributed through in-kind PIPE financing. The broader PIPE structure was substantial: up to $1.5 billion in total, broken into $400 million in common equity, up to $750 million i...