Invest1 publisher3 min readPublished
Powerus stock tokens draw $9.1 million on Solana a day after the Nasdaq merger
Backpack Securities put Powerus stock on Solana as a token a day after Powerus closed its Nasdaq merger, drawing $9.1 million of trading by mid-afternoon. The test is whether the Solana price stays tied to the Nasdaq share between sessions.
The Investor · Invest desk
What happened
- Each token is designed to redeem one for one into a Powerus share and to move back into a brokerage account for eligible investors.
- Powerus itself issued no cryptocurrency, and the asset under the token remains the Nasdaq-listed share.
- Powerus is a Trump-family-backed defense technology company building autonomous drones, counter-drone interceptors and command software.
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Why it matters
- exposure Solana buyers take price exposure to a company whose outside holders together carry about 7% of the votes, so the token's voting terms cannot change who controls Powerus.
- constraint Holders who are not eligible to move tokens into a brokerage account must exit on Solana, and the price link to Nasdaq depends on the eligible group doing the redemptions.
- capability Powerus stock now has a traded price on nights, weekends and holidays, so the next Nasdaq session opens against a quote already formed on Solana.
- precedent Other companies listing by merger into an existing Nasdaq company now have a one-day example of a tokenized share following the close.
Powerus calls the token its own stock, but Backpack Securities issued it and put it on Solana through Sunrise [4]. Powerus issued no cryptocurrency, and the asset underneath is still the Nasdaq-listed share [8]. On the public record, the company's part in the launch is an endorsement. "We're now live on Solana. $PUSA is our common stock onchain, redeemable one to one for the Nasdaq-listed share, trading nights, weekends and holidays," Powerus wrote on X [7].
The one-day timetable needs a correction before it carries much weight. Powerus reached Nasdaq by merging into Aureus Greenway Holdings, a company already listed there, and the deal closed on October 1 [2]. Backpack wrapped the share the next day [4]. The gap is one day from closing, or rather, one day from the moment an existing listing became Powerus Corporation [2]. A token that followed a first-day IPO this quickly would be stronger evidence that these rails reach new stocks at once, because no listed share would have existed the day before.
Control was settled before the token existed. Legacy Powerus holders came out with roughly 83% of the common stock and about 93% of the votes [3]. Everyone else holds about 17% of the common [1] and about 7% of the votes [2]. Divide one by the other and outside holders carry about 0.41 of a vote per unit of economic weight, against about 1.12 for legacy holders [3][4]. A Solana buyer is buying price exposure. Whatever voting terms the token passes through, the outside block it joins carries 7% of the vote [2].
Crypto Briefing, which reported the launch, described tokenized equities as moving investors beyond the brokerage infrastructure that has historically held and traded public stocks [10]. The design keeps a route back, since eligible investors can transfer the token into that infrastructure [5]. By 2:45pm on launch day the token had traded $9.1 million [6]. The report does not say how much PUSA traded on Nasdaq in the same session, or which investors count as eligible. Both matter, because redemption is what ties the Solana price to the Nasdaq one [5].
If redemption works as designed, holders who can swap tokens for shares will close any gap between a weekend Solana price and the next Nasdaq session, and the token becomes the off-hours quote for the stock [5][7]. A narrow eligible group would leave few hands to do that, and the token could drift from the share. The third possibility is that launch-day interest in a Trump-family-backed drone maker [9] drove the volume, in which case $9.1 million [6] will look like a one-off within weeks.
I'd expect the first outcome for a name drawing this much attention, since the one-for-one redemption is the feature that separates the token from a side bet on the ticker [5]. The counter-case is the sample: one listing and one afternoon of trading [6]. If the token closes several weekends at a steady discount to the Nasdaq price, the redemption path is too narrow to hold the price, and this view is wrong.
What to watch
- Whether the Solana token closes its first weekends near the Nasdaq price, which would show the one-for-one redemption is holding it there.
- Any disclosure by Backpack Securities or Sunrise of which investors count as eligible to move tokens into brokerage accounts.
- Daily token volume over the coming weeks measured against the $9.1 million traded by mid-afternoon on launch day.