Crypto treasury companies that stockpile tokens may evolve from speculative wrappers into long-run financial engines for blockchains, argues Syncracy Capital co-founder Ryan Watkins.
Digital asset treasury (DAT) companies are publicly traded firms that increase capital to amass and handle crypto on their steadiness sheets.
In a Sept. 23 weblog put up and an accompanying thread on X, Watkins mentioned DATs already maintain roughly $105 billion in belongings throughout bitcoin, ether and different majors, a scale that few market members have totally thought of.
His core declare: a small variety of these companies might mature into sturdy operators that assist finance, govern and construct throughout the networks whose tokens they maintain.
Past hypothesis
Watkins mentioned most consideration has fixated on near-term buying and selling dynamics — premiums to web asset worth, fundraising bulletins and “what’s the subsequent token”—which misses the bigger arc.
“We think about choose DATs turning into for-profit, publicly traded counterparts to crypto foundations, however with broader mandates to deploy capital, function companies, and take part in governance,” he wrote.
As a result of some DATs already management significant slices of token provide, their treasuries will be greater than vaults; they are often coverage and product levers inside ecosystems.
He pointed to crypto-native examples the place scale issues: on Solana, RPC suppliers and proprietary market makers that stake extra SOL can enhance transaction touchdown and unfold seize; on Hyperliquid, entrance ends that stake extra HYPE can decrease consumer charges or enhance take charges with out elevating prices.
Entry to massive, everlasting swimming pools of native belongings can assist such companies bootstrap and scale, he mentioned.
Programmable cash, productive steadiness sheets
Watkins contrasted these performs with MicroStrategy’s bitcoin-only technique, which is essentially about capital construction round a non-programmable asset.
He went on to say that by comparability, tokens on sensible contract platforms — ETH, SOL, HYPE — are programmable and will be put to work on-chain.
DATs holding them can stake for charges, provide liquidity, lend, take part in governance and purchase “ecosystem primitives” similar to validators, RPC nodes or indexers, turning treasuries into yield-generating steadiness sheets.
Structurally, he likened successful DATs to a hybrid of acquainted fashions: the everlasting capital of closed-end funds and REITs, the balance-sheet orientation of banks, and the compounding ethos of Berkshire Hathaway.
What makes them distinct, he mentioned, is that returns accrue in crypto per share relatively than through administration charges, making the automobiles nearer to pure performs on underlying networks than to conventional asset managers.
He argued that instruments like frequent fairness, convertibles and preferreds give DATs versatile funding to broaden steadiness sheets, whereas on-chain yields can assist handle that funding over time.
Winners—and dangers
Watkins cautioned that “not all DATs will make it.”
He expects many first-generation automobiles—these heavy on monetary engineering and light-weight on working substance — to fade as situations normalize. As competitors intensifies, he anticipates consolidation, experiments with extra unique financing and, at instances, reckless balance-sheet strikes if premiums flip to reductions and strain builds.
In his view, the survivors shall be people who pair disciplined capital allocation with working chops, recycling money flows into token accumulation, product constructing and ecosystem growth. “Over time, the very best managed ones may evolve into the Berkshire Hathaways of their blockchains,” he wrote.
