Written by: Lin Wanwan
In the crypto world, the loudest noise is not the trading of gongs and drums, but the connections that can quietly pocket $9 billion.
In July 2025, 80,000 bitcoins that had been dormant for 14 years suddenly changed hands, marking one of the largest nominal bitcoin trades in history. Such a large transfer should have triggered a 30% market drop, but in reality—there was no significant crash, no panic; this batch of bitcoins was quietly absorbed by the market.
The $9 billion stake was 'quietly' absorbed by the market. The operator is neither an exchange nor a hedge fund, but a somewhat obscure Wall Street player: Galaxy Digital.
At the latest Q2 earnings meeting on August 5, someone asked the CEO: How did you secure the 80,000 BTC client? Was there a formal bidding process?
The CEO casually responded: "This deal is more about relationships than quotes."
Who exactly is behind Galaxy Digital? What kind of political and business resources have been mobilized to execute this epic transaction? And what kind of new power structure is this network creating for the crypto world?
High-level 'circle of friends': Political capital in the boardroom
The key to this transaction is not the quotes on the front stage, but the connections behind the scenes—everything points to an old Wall Street figure.
The founder Mike Novogratz, aged 56, is a standard product of "Wall Street manufacturing."
He worked at Goldman Sachs for 11 years, starting from the Southeast Asia futures desk and eventually becoming a fixed income partner. At that time, Novogratz was one of the few who could navigate between macro trading, asset portfolios, and national policies.
He then joined Fortress Investment Group, leading macro strategy investments and was one of the first key figures in the group to bet on emerging markets and sovereign debt.
During that period, he frequently visited policy institutions, central banks, and market departments in Latin America, Asia, and Eastern Europe, negotiating bond issuance and exchange rate policies with local governments, familiarizing himself with the game logic between leverage and sovereignty in the 'gray area.'
From 2012 to 2015, he also became a member of the New York Federal Reserve's Investment Advisory Committee, directly participating in policy consulting, monetary mechanism research, and financial institution assessments. This gave him the rare 'dual capability'—understanding both derivatives trading and the language and rhythm of regulatory agencies.
This is a person who has been dealing with the intersection of political power, Wall Street capital, and information for over ten years.
He had already heavily invested in Bitcoin and Ethereum with his own funds back in 2013, with a total investment of about $7 million. By 2017, he publicly stated in an interview with CNBC: "In the past two years, I've made over $250 million from crypto assets."
But he is neither a 'native' of the crypto industry nor a typical speculator. His real turning point occurred in 2015—when he suffered losses in the Brazilian interest rate market due to heavy positions, he exited Fortress and temporarily retreated from front-line investment. It was during this 'window period' that he first seriously examined Bitcoin and reestablished his understanding of currency, credit, and financial infrastructure.
However, Novogratz did not stop at 'holding bitcoin' like many early crypto evangelists. His ambition is to establish a new 'financial system design' belonging to the on-chain world. He said, 'What I see is a systemic void—liquidity in the crypto world is deepening, but there is no structure.'
In his view, the entire chain of asset management, market making, clearing, ETF custody, PIPE financing, audit disclosure, and regulatory lobbying in the traditional financial world has no counterparts in the crypto world. This is a "regulatory wasteland" that urgently needs reconstruction.
Galaxy Digital was born in this structural gap.
In 2018, Novogratz invested $350 million of his own money and successfully went public through a reverse merger with Canadian shell company Bradmer Pharmaceuticals, becoming the first full-stack service crypto-financial platform for institutions. This company is designed as the "Wall Street version of an on-chain investment bank."
However, it took Galaxy Digital a total of 1,320 days, nearly four years, to go from a Canadian exchange to NASDAQ. During this period, the company experienced nine rounds of feedback from the SEC, countless legal reviews, and invested over $25 million to meet compliance requirements. In a whole crypto industry collectively hampered and frequently 'going overseas' during the regulatory winter, Galaxy gritted its teeth and persevered.
It is not a trading platform, nor a VC, but a 'financial structure service provider' in the crypto field. Galaxy Digital was designed by him to be the 'Wall Street version of an on-chain Goldman Sachs.' Its structural design shows the imprint of his Wall Street background everywhere.
The service list benchmarks Goldman Sachs: covering asset management, market making, OTC trading, proprietary research and investment, risk management, and financial advisory;
The trading structure benchmarks Citadel: supporting dark pool matching, low-latency derivatives systems, and liquidity matching with ETFs;
The policy pathway benchmarks Brookings: establishing a policy research team, writing reports, participating in hearings, and entering regulatory sandboxes;
The compliance pathway benchmarks Deloitte and EY: building a 'legitimate digital asset packaging system' that supports financial report accounting and audit disclosures.
And at the core of all this is the 'political-business circle' established by Galaxy's board.
Among the board members of Galaxy Digital is Tyler Williams, a former Deputy Assistant Secretary of the U.S. Treasury, who in 2025 was borrowed by the current Treasury Secretary as a special advisor on digital assets—he can translate crypto language into regulatory language, serving as an important bridge between Galaxy and institutions like the SEC, CFTC, and FASB.
There is also board member Doug Deason, one of the most influential real estate and energy lobbyists in Texas. He has participated in the promotion of several legislations related to mining sites, electricity prices, and taxes, and is a key figure behind Galaxy's successful transformation of Bitcoin mining sites into AI computing centers.
This structure of 'policy-capital-technology' convergence gives Galaxy an extremely rare 'policy influence capability' among crypto companies.
In the new financial structure he has built, Galaxy is not just doing trading and asset management, but is also a "legitimate power supplier" for traditional companies entering the on-chain world.
Compared to CZ's extreme operational ability and SBF's aggressive funding strategy, Mike Novogratz is a different type of founder. He never emphasizes 'decentralization' but rather 'structural arrangements'; he has never used token prices as the sole metric but focuses more on whether privacy, regulation, systems, finance, custody, and compliance pathways are truly in place.
This also explains why, although Galaxy is not the strongest in terms of traffic, it became the only player able to secure large orders, complete settlements, and reassure counterparties in that quiet transaction of 80,000 bitcoins.
Many people believe that Galaxy Digital's moat is funding, but the real advantage is its political and business sensitivity.
The banker behind the crypto treasury
The 80,000 bitcoins are just a corner of this network of relationships, with companies represented by the Chinese billionaire CZ also beginning to see Galaxy Digital as a 'political passport' to compliance.
In mid-2025, a new mainstream narrative in U.S. stocks quietly emerged: crypto stock. The U.S. stock market is staging a capital 'shell game': putting BTC and ETH into listed companies, allowing crypto assets to take the stage on Wall Street under the guise of financial reports.
But just before the end of 2023, this was still seen as a 'forbidden zone' in the capital market.
It is actually very difficult for American companies to 'legally hold assets' because the financial system cannot accommodate it. According to the then FASB accounting standards, crypto assets like Bitcoin could only be accounted for as 'intangible assets'—if the coin price drops, it must be impaired, but if it rises, it cannot be counted as income, resulting in severely distorted corporate financial reports, making audits difficult to pass.
For example, if you bought 10,000 ETH, you immediately need to account for losses if it drops, but if it rises, you act as if you didn't see it, which cannot count as profit. This makes corporate financial reports look bad and creates chaos in auditing.
The new FASB regulations will only begin to be valued at 'fair value' in the fiscal year 2025, with rising coins counted as income, which will truly open up the path for 'compliant holding.'
Galaxy is one of the earliest service providers to enter and bring a number of listed companies into the 'legitimate entrance.'
The earliest to sense the opportunity were a group of ancient ETH whales. They quietly bundled their ETH into U.S. shell companies, using a left-hand-to-right-hand approach to complete disguised cashing out without alarming the market. SharpLink Gaming is the leader in this 'cashing out' technique.
Soon, the Chinese billionaire CZ also followed suit—stuffing his company's platform token BNB into a U.S. company, using a reverse merger, packaging, and listing, turning the platform token into a compliant asset, and then entering the capital valuation system.
And behind this series of operations, Galaxy Digital has quietly emerged—it is the orchestrator of the entire script.
It tailor-made 'crypto treasury' narrative plans for these companies: from OTC building, asset custody, to compliance disclosure and staking income, every step is inseparable from the political and business pathways it has built, each step precisely treading the gray area between regulatory blind spots and capital leverage.
Galaxy Digital's core business has three directions: OTC trading + custody + strategic consulting.
It has the top crypto OTC trading capabilities in the U.S., able to complete large matching and risk hedging for clients during volatility; it also provides compliant asset management services such as ETF custody, staking, and tax reporting, managing billions of dollars in digital assets; it is deeply involved in the strategic planning of enterprise-level clients, from PIPE financing to asset classification, financial accounting, disclosure pathways, and even coordinating investments with its own funds to help traditional companies transform into 'crypto treasuries.'
Take SharpLink Gaming, a leading company in ETH treasury, as an example. This company bought ETH in bulk through Galaxy's OTC and signed an asset management agreement with it. It has part of the ETH purchased by the company held in custody at Galaxy and, under Galaxy's guidance, designs the entire process from financing to disclosure. It provides clients with a complete set of 'on-chain financial structures,' helping companies achieve both discreet and compliant building.
According to SEC disclosures, Galaxy and ParaFi Capital charge an annual tiered management fee of 0.25% - 1.25%, with a minimum of 1.25 million USD. As SharpLink increases its holdings, Galaxy will receive stable long-term income.
This is no longer a single transaction, but a clearly structured, stable-yield 'on-chain treasury business.' In the institutional path of crypto finance, Galaxy is becoming an unavoidable entry point for companies that want to 'legally hold assets.'
This template is not a standardized copy, but a complete set of pathways:
First, helping you buy coins discreetly but compliantly: providing OTC channels, cooperating with PIPE investment structures, directed placements, and warrant plans.
Second, teaching you how to 'put crypto assets into financial reports': how to get auditors to confirm these coins really exist?
Third, solving American political pathways for you: the compliance pathway for U.S. stocks, how to disclose, a one-stop solution. In the process of traditional companies transforming into crypto treasuries, Galaxy was involved in nearly every key action.
CEO Novogratz said in the Q2 conference call: "Almost all traditional institutions on Wall Street are preparing for a completely new financial architecture—assets moving from accounts to wallets, funds and stocks beginning to be tokenized, and stablecoins becoming mainstream payment vehicles."
What Galaxy has done is to make these institutional changes move from 'concept' to 'financial statements.'
For many listed companies, choosing Galaxy Digital is not just choosing a crypto service provider, but rather choosing a channel with a 'politically legitimate identity.'
The power structure of the crypto industry is being reshuffled.
In 2025, the crypto industry seems to be ushering in a spring of normalization: ETF approvals, stablecoin legislation, corporate holding accounting—all moving closer to traditional finance.
But in this wave of 'compliance,' the real winners are not the natives who have been shouting for decentralization for ten years, but a small group of political and business intermediaries who are well-versed in institutional language and policy rhythms.
From the crypto circle to Wall Street, from wallets to financial reports, the path of crypto assets superficially seems compliant, but at its core, it is a typical institutional arbitrage—whoever can build a bridge between regulation and capital possesses pricing power.
In the Q2 earnings call of 2025, an analyst asked: "How do you view the development opportunities for stablecoins and asset tokenization?"
Novogratz's answer hardly touched on products, but rather a seemingly simple yet highly institutional judgment: "Assets are migrating, accounts are moving to wallets, and compliance pathways will become core competitiveness." It was also in this quarter that Galaxy Digital began turning a profit.
Galaxy Digital is the hidden intermediary in this power transfer. It does not issue tokens or narrate stories, but is skilled in structural design, wrapping on-chain assets in every link of PIPE financing, ETF custody, and audit disclosures, using a complete set of compliance grammar to legitimize new finance.
What it sells is not services, but structures; what it earns is not market money, but the seams of compliance systems.
This is the real power structure of the crypto industry: when the surface market prices, protocols, and narratives rise and fall, the underlying institutional structure has long been firmly controlled by a few.
More and more crypto projects and traditional companies are completing 'political entry' through it. And the ones truly being fed are not the developers or investors, but those with dual language abilities who can freely switch between crypto, traditional finance, and power.
As compliance becomes a scarce resource, a new hierarchical order is quietly taking shape: the era no longer rewards those who run fast, but power returns to the masters of rules.
