1 week ago
Institutional DeFi level Sentora published a caller report connected Thursday, arguing that the firm adoption of bitcoin (BTC) arsenic a treasury asset, portion popular, resembles a "balance expanse roulette."
"Bitcoin’s scarcity and programmability marque it an unprecedented firm plus — but without scalable output and durable financing, astir existent adopters are playing a unsafe crippled of equilibrium expanse roulette,” Patrick Heusser, Head of Lending astatine Sentora, stated successful the report.
The study analyzed the strategies of 213 public, backstage and authorities entities that collectively clasp 1.79 cardinal BTC, worthy $214 cardinal arsenic of August 2025. Publicly listed companies relationship for 71.4% of these holdings, which means astir 1.27 cardinal BTC is portion of firm equilibrium sheets.
The accumulation strategy is based connected a centuries-old wealth-building playbook: get fiat to get a scarce, hard asset. With its proviso capped astatine 21 million, bitcoin is simply a provably scarce plus that has outperformed each different large plus by leaps and bounds implicit the past decade.
"Strategy distinguished itself by engineering the vulnerability similar a superior allocator—using long-dated financing, asymmetric timing, and shareholder alignment to make a synthetic BTC derivative wrong a nationalist vehicle," the study said.
Negative transportation risk
However, the study identified a captious flaw: the strategy of accumulating coins with borrowed wealth is simply a "negative transportation trade," due to the fact that BTC, by itself, is simply a zero-yielding plus similar gold.
Unlike onshore oregon productive existent estate, bitcoin doesn't make income oregon currency travel connected its own. It conscionable sits connected the equilibrium sheet. The outgo of borrowing wealth to bargain bitcoin, therefore, is simply a direct, ongoing disbursal with nary offsetting currency flow.
The instrumentality from the strategy, therefore, is wholly babelike connected superior gains stemming from continued terms appreciation, which makes it structurally fragile.
If the transportation commercialized breaks owed to prolonged terms stagnation oregon a marketplace drop, the results tin beryllium "binary and reflexive". A driblet successful bitcoin's terms would endanger the collateral backing their debt, causing their banal terms to diminution and making it hard for them to rise caller capital.
This is due to the fact that astir of the companies that person accumulated BTC arsenic a treasury plus are either unprofitable oregon heavy babelike connected BTC mark-to-market gains to look solvent.
These companies could past commencement selling their halfway BTC holdings to conscionable their obligations, which would further propulsion the terms down, creating a downward spiral.
The study explicitly stated, "There is nary lender of past edifice here—no circuit breaker, nary refinancing facility."
The study draws a parallel to gold, noting that a "gold treasury company" ne'er emerged due to the fact that golden besides doesn't output and is cumbersome to store and move.
The bitcoin treasury strategy faces the aforesaid cardinal challenge: until bitcoin tin mature into "productive integer capital" that generates a scalable, reliable yield, it remains a risky, speculative bet, the study noted.
Read more: Michael Saylor's Strategy Adds $18M of Bitcoin connected Five-Year Anniversary of First Purchase
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