Z Squared, a firm that specializes in mining dogecoin (DOGE), the dog-themed memecoin that was propelled to mainstream recognition by Elon Musk in 2021, is merging with biopharmaceutical company Coeptis (COEP).

The merger will enable the resulting company to keep DOGE mining operations going, while Coeptis’ pharmaceutical business will be spun out and operated separately. As a result, the firm will become one of the largest publicly-traded companies with a primary focus mining dogecoin and other cryptocurrencies like litecoin (LTC).

“Going public provides us with broader access to capital markets to fuel the growth of our mining operations and pursue additional strategic opportunities we believe will be accretive to shareholders,” Z Squared CEO David Halabu told CoinDesk in an email.

The transaction is expected to close in the third quarter of 2025. The combined entity will have 9,000 U.S.-based DOGE mining machines. The company declined to share revenue figures with CoinDesk.

Spun out from Bitcoin (BTC) in 2013, Dogecoin follows a similar Proof-of-Work consensus mechanism, meaning that miners compete to solve an algorithmic problem in order to produce the next block on the blockchain; whoever solves it first is awarded coins for their efforts.

At $27 billion in market capitalization, DOGE is currently the eighth largest cryptocurrency, just ahead of Cardano’s ADA and Tron’s TRX.

With the bitcoin mining industry becoming extremely competitive in the last few years, mining operations are seeking new avenues for revenue — by dedicating resources for AI purposes, for example, or mining other cryptocurrencies like dogecoin and litecoin. Bitcoin mining firm BIT Mining (BTCM), for example, announced in December that it had made three times more money mining DOGE and LTC than BTC since it expanded into those cryptocurrencies.

Global bank Citi has predicted 2025 could be a possible inflection point for blockchain adoption driven by stablecoins, akin to the breakout year artificial intelligence (AI) had with popular application ChatGPT.

«2025 has the potential to be blockchain’s ‘ChatGPT’ moment,» the bank’s analysts said in a report published earlier this week.

At the center of the Citi’s projection are stablecoins, a class of cryptocurrencies pegged to traditional currencies like the U.S. dollar. These tokens, led by Tether’s $145 billion USDT and Circle’s $60 billion USDC, have seen tremendous growth recently and are increasingly being used for payments and remittances globally.

Citi sees the asset class potentially growing to $1.6 trillion by 2030 in its base case from the current $230 billion, with the caveat that regulatory support and institutional integration take hold. In the bank’s more optimistic scenario, the market could balloon to $3.7 trillion, though lingering structural challenges could keep the number closer to $500 billion in the bank’s bear case.

A major catalyst is the supportive regulatory stance in the U.S., with a recent presidential executive order directing the formation of a federal framework for digital assets, the report said. The clarity around stablecoin rules could allow these tokens to be more deeply embedded in the financial system, offering faster payments, improved transparency and more efficient asset settlement.

«This could lead to greater adoption of blockchain-based money and spur other use cases, financial and beyond, in the U.S. private and public sector,» the authors noted.

Stablecoin issuers to become major U.S. Treasury holders

Stablecoins are expected to remain heavily dollar-denominated in the future. The report anticipates that around 90% of stablecoins in circulation in 2030 will still be tied to the U.S. dollar, cementing its dominance.

This has major implications for the global financial system. Dollar stablecoin issuers could become one of the largest buyers of U.S. Treasuries, assuming that regulations push toward backing tokens with low-risk, highly liquid traditional financial assets like government bonds. Citibank estimated issuers could hold $1.2 trillion in U.S. government debt by the end of the decade, potentially surpassing all major foreign sovereign holders.

Meanwhile, the central banks of countries in Europe and Asia will likely promote their own digital currencies, or CBDCs, the report noted.

The report pointed to several risks that could hamper the growth. Stablecoins de-pegged nearly 1,900 times in 2023 alone, including more than 600 instances involving major tokens, the report’s authors wrote, citing Moody’s data.

In extreme cases, mass redemptions—like those following the collapse of Silicon Valley Bank (SVB) that consequently hit USDC—can disrupt crypto liquidity, force automated selloffs and ripple through financial markets, the authors added.

Paul Atkins’ first public event as chairman of the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission was a crypto roundtable on Friday, where the new agency chief devoted his inaugural speech to assuring the industry that he’ll continue to remake securities policy to favor digital assets innovation.

The agency and industry have been awaiting congressional action to establish crypto market-structure oversight that will likely set guardrails, and Atkins told an audience at the SEC’s Washington headquarters that the regulator will work toward delivering «a rational, fit-for-purpose framework» for crypto.

However, in answer to a question from CoinDesk after his speech, Atkins indicated that the agency may be able to act to some degree during this wait for new laws.

«It’s always good to have Congress’ input, and if there’s a statute to back up what we’re doing, I think that’s all the better,» Atkins said. «But we have ample room to maneuver under existing rules and laws.»

Atkins further suggested that he thinks the concept of special-purpose crypto broker dealers, a little-used registration most prominently represented by Prometheum, has been very successful and may need to be reconsidered, and he said the agency will look at whether custody rules need to be changed to «accommodate crypto assets and blockchain technology.»

Atkins previously appeared at a swearing-in ceremony earlier this week in the White House, where Trump said «he’s the perfect man to lead this agency» at a time when the digital assets sector needs regulatory clarity, and Atkins said a «top priority of my chairmanship will be to provide a firm regulatory foundation for digital assets.» But Friday’s event at the SEC’s headquarters represented his first full-fledged engagement with the public.

Read More: Crypto Ally Paul Atkins Sworn In to Replace Gary Gensler Atop U.S. SEC

The crypto sector has high hopes for Atkins, though his stand-in for the past few months — Commissioner Mark Uyeda — already took a number of decisive actions to reverse the regulator’s earlier crypto reluctance under former Chair Gary Gensler. As interim chairman, Uyeda reversed or sidelined a number of crypto policy efforts pursued under Gensler and has abandoned most of the regulator’s prominent enforcement actions targeting the industry.

Until now, industry expectations for Atkins’ leadership were based on conjecture rooted in his experience advising and investing in digital assets firms, especially since his Senate confirmation hearing failed to explore his crypto views.

Atkins had served as an adviser to crypto entities such as the Digital Chamber and as a board member of tokenization firm Securitize, and his ties to Off the Chain Capital had previously linked him to its investment stakes in big crypto companies like Digital Currency Group (DCG) and Kraken.

Friday’s roundtable was the third in a series the agency has held on crypto matters, this time focused on custody in the industry. Crypto custody has been a particularly dicey topic at the agency, which under Gensler’s reign had sought to approve a policy demanding investment advisers put their clients’ digital assets only with certain qualified custodians. Gensler had argued that the rule was meant to exclude most of the existing crypto platforms as suitable custodians, but the effort was put on ice.

Read More: U.S. SEC’s Acting Chair Walking Back Agency Proposal on Crypto Trading Platforms

Atkins was asked by reporters on the event’s sidelines about President Trump’s own crypto interests and whether Trump’s memecoin, $TRUMP, will rob credibility from the White House on industry policy.

«I have no comment on any of that,» Atkins said.