Remember when public companies holding Bitcoin felt revolutionary? That was 2020. Five years later, the game just leveled up again – and this time it’s not Bitcoin leading the charge.
A small-cap company that used to develop cancer drugs just pulled off one of the boldest pivots I’ve seen in years. They raised fresh capital, changed their name, brought the creator of Litecoin onto the board, and stacked almost a million LTC as their primary treasury reserve. Yes, you read that right – Litecoin, not Bitcoin.
Meet Lite Strategy (NASDAQ: LITS), formerly MEI Pharma. What they just did might quietly become the blueprint for the next wave of corporate crypto adoption.
From Cancer Drugs to Crypto Treasury: The Great Pivot
Let’s be honest – most corporate “strategic shifts” are polite ways of saying the old business wasn’t working. But sometimes the pivot is so dramatic it deserves its own category.
Late last year, MEI Pharma started a strategic review. They sold their most promising clinical asset (now called WE-868) to Aardvark Therapeutics. Then in July 2025 they closed a $100 million PIPE. The plan? Simple but audacious: become the Litecoin version of what MicroStrategy did for Bitcoin.
By September 30, 2025 – the end of their first fiscal quarter under the new strategy – they already held 929,548 LTC. At current prices that’s roughly $130 million of Litecoin sitting on a public company balance sheet. For context, that makes them one of the largest corporate holders of any cryptocurrency that isn’t Bitcoin.
Who’s Behind the Wheel Now
The board moves tell you everything about how serious this pivot is.
- Charlie Lee – yes, the actual creator of Litecoin – joined as a board member
- Joshua Riezman, U.S. Chief Strategy Officer at crypto market maker GSR, also came aboard
- They signed a strategic partnership with GSR itself for treasury execution and governance
When the inventor of the asset you’re stacking joins your board, that’s not marketing. That’s alignment at the deepest level.
“We recently celebrated Litecoin’s 14th anniversary and its unblemished track record of reliability and uptime. LITS provides investors the only US publicly traded company to gain institutional exposure to Litecoin.”
– Charlie Lee, Board Member, Lite Strategy
Why Litecoin Specifically?
This is the question everyone asks. Bitcoin has the brand. Ethereum has the ecosystem. Why bet the entire corporate treasury on the “silver to Bitcoin’s gold”?
The answer actually makes more sense the deeper you dig.
First, Litecoin has something almost no other large-cap crypto can claim: fourteen straight years of 100% uptime. No forks, no halts, no drama. In a world where chains go down regularly, that’s boring in the best possible way – exactly what a corporate treasurer wants.
Second, the supply dynamics are interesting. With Bitcoin halvings now behind us and institutional demand still growing, many analysts expect upward pressure on BTC price. Litecoin, with its faster block times and lower fees, could benefit from overflow demand as merchants and payment processors look for scalable alternatives.
Third – and this part is crucial – Litecoin has almost no direct public equity exposure right now. Bitcoin has MicroStrategy, countless ETFs, and miners. Ethereum has ETFs coming. Litecoin? Pretty much nothing. That asymmetry creates opportunity.
The Numbers Behind the Move
Let’s look at the actual holdings and math because this is where it gets really interesting.
| Metric | Value (Sept 30, 2025) |
| Litecoin Held | 929,548 LTC |
| Approximate USD Value* | $130+ million |
| Cash Raised in PIPE | $100 million |
| Working Capital | $12.21 million |
| Outstanding Debt | $0 |
| Share Repurchase Program | $25 million authorized |
*At ~$140/LTC average during accumulation period
They essentially took $100 million of fresh capital, converted the vast majority into LTC, and still have operating cash plus a buyback authorization. That’s textbook treasury optimization if the asset appreciates.
The Buyback Angle Nobody’s Talking About
In October they announced a $25 million share repurchase program. Read that again – they’re willing to buy back their own stock while sitting on nearly a million Litecoin.
This is actually brilliant. If LITS trades at a meaningful discount to its net asset value (mostly the LTC holdings), they can arbitrage that discount by repurchasing shares. Every share they buy back effectively increases the LTC per share for remaining holders. It’s the same playbook MicroStrategy has used masterfully, but with an altcoin twist.
As CEO Jay File put it: “We will consider opportunities to deploy our recently announced $25 million stock buyback program until our discount to NAV is normalized.” Translation: if the market doesn’t price in our Litecoin properly, we’ll do it ourselves.
How This Differs From Bitcoin Treasury Plays
Everyone compares this to MicroStrategy, and the comparison is fair – but there are key differences.
- Lite Strategy has no operating business competing for attention – they sold the pharma assets
- Their treasury is almost entirely LTC, making them a purer play than companies with mixed holdings
- Litecoin has significantly less public equity exposure, potentially creating more torque
- The market cap is tiny compared to MSTR, meaning price discovery could be violent (in either direction)
In my view, this actually makes LITS more interesting than another “me-too” Bitcoin treasury company. The risk/reward asymmetry feels different when you’re early to an entirely new narrative.
Risks (Because They’re Real)
Look, I’m excited about this – but we need to talk about the elephant in the room.
Litecoin’s price action has been… let’s call it “quiet” for years. If LTC doesn’t move, LITS becomes a very expensive way to hold a stagnant asset. The company has acknowledged this explicitly in their forward-looking statements, warning about potential impairment charges if LTC price drops significantly.
There’s also regulatory risk, custody risk, and the simple fact that this is still an experimental strategy. One bad quarter of LTC underperformance and the stock could get punished hard.
But honestly? That’s exactly what makes these opportunities interesting. The market rarely prices in asymmetric upside perfectly.
What Happens Next
The company still has some legacy pharma assets they’re trying to monetize (voruciclib, zandelisib), but make no mistake – the story now is Litecoin.
If Litecoin enters a sustained bull phase – especially if Bitcoin rallies and capital rotates into major altcoins – LITS could become one of the highest-beta ways to play that move in public markets.
More importantly, they might spark a wave of “altcoin treasury” strategies. We’ve seen Bitcoin treasury companies. We’ve seen Ethereum exposure through various vehicles. But dedicated Litecoin exposure through a Nasdaq-listed stock? This is genuinely new.
Sometimes the most interesting investments aren’t the biggest – they’re the ones that force you to update your mental models. Lite Strategy just did that for me.
The question now isn’t whether corporate treasury adoption of crypto is real – we settled that years ago. The question is which assets get adopted next, and who gets there first.
Lite Strategy just placed a very large, very public bet on Litecoin being part of that answer.
Whether they’re early or crazy remains to be seen. But in this market? Sometimes those are the same thing.
