Crypto Treasury Firms Could Become Long-Term Giants like Berkshire Hathaway, Analyst Says

Crypto treasury firms that stockpile tokens could germinate from speculative wrappers into long-run economical engines for blockchains, argues Syncracy Capital co-founder Ryan Watkins.

Digital plus treasury (DAT) firms are publically traded companies that rise superior to get and negociate crypto connected their equilibrium sheets.

In a Sept. 23 blog post and an accompanying thread connected X, Watkins said DATs already clasp astir $105 cardinal successful assets crossed bitcoin, ether and different majors, a standard that fewer marketplace participants person afloat considered.

His halfway claim: a tiny fig of these firms whitethorn mature into durable operators that assistance finance, govern and physique wrong the networks whose tokens they hold.

Beyond speculation

Watkins said astir attraction has fixated connected near-term trading dynamics — premiums to nett plus value, fundraising announcements and “what’s the adjacent token”—which misses the larger arc.

“We ideate prime DATs becoming for-profit, publically traded counterparts to crypto foundations, but with broader mandates to deploy capital, run businesses, and enactment successful governance,” helium wrote.

Because immoderate DATs already power meaningful slices of token supply, their treasuries tin beryllium much than vaults; they tin beryllium argumentation and merchandise levers wrong ecosystems.

He pointed to crypto-native examples wherever standard matters: connected Solana, RPC providers and proprietary marketplace makers that involvement much SOL tin amended transaction landing and dispersed capture; connected Hyperliquid, beforehand ends that involvement much HYPE tin little idiosyncratic fees oregon summation instrumentality rates without raising costs.

Access to large, imperishable pools of autochthonal assets tin assistance specified businesses bootstrap and scale, helium said.

Programmable money, productive equilibrium sheets

Watkins contrasted these plays with MicroStrategy’s bitcoin-only strategy, which is mostly astir superior operation astir a non-programmable asset.

He went connected to accidental that by comparison, tokens connected astute declaration platforms — ETH, SOL, HYPE — are programmable and tin beryllium enactment to enactment on-chain.

DATs holding them tin involvement for fees, proviso liquidity, lend, enactment successful governance and get “ecosystem primitives” specified arsenic validators, RPC nodes oregon indexers, turning treasuries into yield-generating equilibrium sheets.

Structurally, helium likened winning DATs to a hybrid of acquainted models: the imperishable superior of closed-end funds and REITs, the balance-sheet predisposition of banks, and the compounding ethos of Berkshire Hathaway.

What makes them distinct, helium said, is that returns accrue successful crypto per stock alternatively than via absorption fees, making the vehicles person to axenic plays connected underlying networks than to accepted plus managers.

He argued that tools similar communal equity, convertibles and preferreds springiness DATs flexible backing to grow equilibrium sheets, portion on-chain yields tin assistance negociate that backing implicit time.

Winners—and risks

Watkins cautioned that “not each DATs volition marque it.”

He expects galore first-generation vehicles—those dense connected fiscal engineering and airy connected operating substance — to slice arsenic conditions normalize. As contention intensifies, helium anticipates consolidation, experiments with much exotic financing and, astatine times, reckless balance-sheet moves if premiums flip to discounts and unit builds.

In his view, the survivors volition beryllium those that brace disciplined superior allocation with operating chops, recycling currency flows into token accumulation, merchandise gathering and ecosystem expansion. “Over time, the champion managed ones could germinate into the Berkshire Hathaways of their blockchains,” helium wrote.