Crypto treasury corporations that stockpile tokens might evolve from speculative wrappers into long-run financial engines for blockchains, argues Syncracy Capital co-founder Ryan Watkins.
Digital asset treasury (DAT) corporations are publicly traded firms that increase capital to amass and handle crypto on their stability sheets.
In a Sept. 23 weblog submit 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 individuals have absolutely thought-about.
His core declare: a small variety of these corporations might mature into sturdy operators that assist finance, govern and construct inside the networks whose tokens they maintain.
Past hypothesis
Watkins mentioned most consideration has fixated on near-term buying and selling dynamics — premiums to internet asset worth, fundraising bulletins and “what’s the following token”—which misses the bigger arc.
“We think about choose DATs changing 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 could 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 may also help such companies bootstrap and scale, he mentioned.
Programmable cash, productive stability sheets
Watkins contrasted these performs with MicroStrategy’s bitcoin-only technique, which is basically about capital construction round a non-programmable asset.
He went on to say that by comparability, tokens on good contract platforms — ETH, SOL, HYPE — are programmable and could be put to work on-chain.
DATs holding them can stake for charges, provide liquidity, lend, take part in governance and purchase “ecosystem primitives” akin to validators, RPC nodes or indexers, turning treasuries into yield-generating stability 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 fairly than by way of administration charges, making the autos 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 increase stability sheets, whereas on-chain yields may also help handle that funding over time.
Winners—and dangers
Watkins cautioned that “not all DATs will make it.”
He expects many first-generation autos—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 occasions, reckless balance-sheet strikes if premiums flip to reductions and stress builds.
In his view, the survivors will probably be people who pair disciplined capital allocation with working chops, recycling money flows into token accumulation, product constructing and ecosystem enlargement. “Over time, the very best managed ones might evolve into the Berkshire Hathaways of their blockchains,” he wrote.