Many DATs ‘Will Disappear’ With Bleak 2026 Outlook: Execs

Digital asset treasury (DAT) firms face a grim future heading into 2026, with shares in lots of the largest gamers sharply down, business executives say.

“Going into the following 12 months, I believe that the outlook for DATs is trying a bit bleak,” Altan Tutar, co-founder and CEO of crypto yield platform MoreMarkets, advised Cointelegraph.

Giant numbers of crypto treasury firms emerged in 2025 to present Wall Avenue traders one other avenue to entry cryptocurrencies. The share costs of many initially shot up as heavyweight traders poured in billions as Bitcoin (BTC) rose to a peak in October, however a broad crypto market decline has since harm their valuations.

With the market more and more crowded, Tutar predicted the herd will skinny out dramatically.

“Most Bitcoin treasury firms will disappear with the remainder of the DATs,” he predicted.

Tutar mentioned crypto treasuries centered on altcoins “would be the first to go” as they gained’t have the ability to maintain their firm’s market worth above the worth of their crypto holdings, a key metric to traders known as mNAV.

“I think that the flagship DATs for big property like Ethereum, Solana, and XRP will observe that method fairly rapidly too,” he mentioned.

Nonetheless, Tutar mentioned the crypto-buying firms almost definitely to win are these offering extra worth in addition to their massive stash, reminiscent of providing merchandise that “present robust, constant returns on their holdings, and move them on to stakeholders.”

Yield methods wanted to outlive downturn

Ryan Chow, the co-founder of the Bitcoin platform Solv Protocol, advised Cointelegraph that the variety of firms shopping for and holding Bitcoin grew from 70 in the beginning of 2025 to over 130 by the center of the 12 months.

Chow mentioned {that a} Bitcoin treasury “isn’t a one-stop resolution to infinite greenback development” and in addition tipped that many are “unlikely to outlive the following downturn.”

“People who do would be the ones that deal with their Bitcoin holdings as a part of a broader yield technique reasonably than a brief maintain of worth,” he added.

Chow mentioned the crypto treasury firms that noticed the most important wins in 2025 had been those who used “on-chain devices to generate sustainable yield, or collateralized property for entry to liquidity throughout market drawdowns.”

Associated: Bitcoin dips under $85K as DATs face ‘mNAV rollercoaster’

The forms of crypto treasuries that fared worse, and which have needed to promote their crypto to cowl enterprise prices, are those who “handled accumulation as a advertising and marketing narrative with no correct treasury framework to assist it,” he added.

“The mannequin must evolve from speculative to structured monetary administration,” Chow mentioned. “Treasury holders have to transcend simply holding Bitcoin and take into consideration actively managing it as digital capital inside a clear, yield-generating system.”