A small but growing class of businesses is moving beyond holding Bitcoin as a static reserve. They integrate it into their capital strategy, using it to raise capital, obtain credit and generate returns. These Digital Asset Treasuries (DATs) are the first laboratories testing how a decentralized asset can function as productive capital within the architecture of enterprise finance.
The phenomenon started with strategy but has since expanded. Metaplanet in Japan, The Blockchain Group in France, and Twenty One Capital in Europe are major examples of companies that have each developed models that position bitcoin not just as an investment, but as an effective financial instrument. Their experiments accelerate a larger process: the financialization of Bitcoin, and potentially other tokens as well.
From asset infrastructure to balance sheet infrastructure
Historically, bitcoin has functioned as an alternative store of value, an uncorrelated hedge against currency depreciation. DATs expand this equation. By using Bitcoin to access liquidity through loans, convertible debt or fund structures, they treat it as programmable collateral and a productive asset. This shift from ownership to use marks bitcoin’s entry into the traditional corporate financial sector.
The issuance of convertible securities has become a common feature of this strategy. Zero-coupon bonds and equity-linked notes allow companies to raise fiat capital while maintaining upside exposure to Bitcoin appreciation. Investors benefit from asymmetric return potential, while issuers optimize their cost of capital. This is a reversal of the traditional view that volatility is solely a risk factor; in this new model, upward volatility becomes an integral part of the value proposition.
Measuring resilience using mNAV
To evaluate these new cash flow models, investors have begun to rely on a metric known as market net asset value, or mNAV, which measures how efficiently a company converts its digital assets into real, productive capital.
The key to understanding the sustainability of these strategies lies in the market net asset value multiple, or mNAV. It connects traditional valuation logic to cryptocurrency market dynamics.
The mNAV of a DAT is directly correlated to the price of the underlying asset, which explains much of the short-term volatility in these companies’ stock valuations. Yet what matters most is not the absolute level of mNAV, but what multiple investors are willing to attribute to it. This multiple reflects confidence in a company’s ability to create “alpha” beyond bitcoin’s baseline performance through disciplined capital allocation, balance sheet engineering, and incremental return generation.
When mNAV multiples compress on average, it signals a market that rewards risk management rather than speculation. When the multiple declines for a specific company, it highlights idiosyncratic risks. Recent data shows both trends. DATs that have made aggressive debt issuances or resorted to frequent equity dilution have seen their mNAV multiples fall below 1x, implying investor skepticism about the sustainability of their approach. Conversely, companies that maintain liquidity cushions and diversified cash structures preserve their premium, albeit at a somewhat reduced level, showing that the market values prudence and operational discipline even in a high beta environment.
In this sense, mNAV functions as the new price-to-book ratio for digital asset financing, an institutional criterion distinguishing financial management from opportunism.
A new discipline for a new asset
The integration of Bitcoin into cash management also imposes new constraints. DAT stock prices now move almost in lockstep with Bitcoin, amplifying volatility. This connection is inevitable, but the difference between fragility and resilience lies in structure: how a company manages its debt, equity issuance and liquidity in relation to its exposure to cryptocurrencies.
Well-governed DATs borrow lessons from traditional finance, test leverage ratios, set coverage limits, implement long-term cash flow and liquidity management programs, and establish risk committees to manage their crypto positions with the same rigor applied to currencies, commodities, and other traditional assets. This is how Bitcoin moves from a speculative position to a governed component of financial infrastructure.
Institutional parallels
A similar rebalancing is visible beyond businesses. Different crypto foundations now operate treasuries combining native tokens with traditional assets such as cash, ETFs, and fixed income. Their objective is not to reduce exposure to digital but to stabilize it, an approach identical in its logic to the theory of the multi-asset portfolio.
In traditional finance, asset managers diversify across currencies, commodities, and credit to optimize liquidity and duration. DATs now replicate this logic on-chain, mixing native and fiat assets to achieve the same goal. The difference is that bitcoin is no longer peripheral to this process: it is at its heart.
From companies to sovereigns
This dynamic is no longer limited to the private sector. The announcement by the US government of a strategic Bitcoin reserve, the first US states like New Hampshire or Texas to follow suit, or the Luxembourg Intergenerational Sovereign Fund investing 1% of its assets in Bitcoin are modest measures. But they illustrate how adopting bitcoin as a store of value rather than programmable collateral to ultimately become a productive asset, as businesses have done, can also extend to public finances.
When government or institutional treasuries begin holding bitcoin as part of their long-term reserves, the asset moves from speculative wealth to the usable financial infrastructure category. At this point, the conversation is no longer about adoption, but about integration: how to manage, lend, and collateralize bitcoin within regulated frameworks.
The way forward
Bitcoin will remain volatile. It’s his nature. But volatility does not exclude utility; it just requires sophistication. More and more funds, loans, derivatives markets and structured products are being built around it, each adding depth to a maturing market.
It is in the DAT that this new system is first tested under pressure. Their success will depend not on how much bitcoin they accumulate, but on how effectively they convert volatility into capital efficiency, using transparency, balanced reserves, and disciplined cash management to build trust.
In this sense, Digital Asset Treasures can be seen as a testing ground for Bitcoin’s next step towards institutional adoption. Their evolution will tell us how quickly the world’s first digital asset can become not only a store of value, but also a functional element of modern finance.
