Crypto Treasury Model Fades as Investors Lose Faith in Premium Pricing
The crypto treasury model has lost its early advantage as most digital asset treasury (DAT) companies no longer command the premiums that allowed them to raise capital and accumulate more cryptocurrency without diluting existing shareholders.
A new report from DWF Ventures found that only four of the 20 largest DATs by assets under management trade above an mNAV of 1, meaning their market value exceeds the value of their crypto holdings. These companies are Bit Digital, Strive, Hyperliquid Strategies, and BitMine.
The widespread discounts suggest investors are no longer willing to pay the same premium for crypto exposure through publicly traded companies. Since Michael Saylor's Strategy pioneered the Bitcoin treasury model in 2020, most DAT stocks have underperformed simply holding the underlying cryptocurrency asset, according to DWF.
Even among the DAT stocks that have outperformed, DWF found that the advantage over simply holding the cryptocurrency has generally been small. The report comes as Sequans Communications, a French semiconductor company that launched a Bitcoin treasury strategy last year, disclosed that it sold its remaining 314 BTC, completing an exit it began by redeeming its convertible debt in May.