A small but growing class of companies is moving beyond holding Bitcoin as a static reserve. They integrate it into the capital strategy and use it to raise funds, secure credit and develop returns. These Digital Asset Treasuries (DATs) are the first laboratories to test how a decentralized asset can function as productive capital within the architecture of corporate finance.
The phenomenon began with Strategy, but has since expanded. Japan’s Metaplanet, France’s The Blockchain Group and Europe’s Twenty One Capital are major examples of companies that have each developed models that position bitcoin not just as an investment, but as a functioning financial instrument. Their experiments accelerate a larger process: the funding of Bitcoin and potentially other tokens as well.
From asset to balance infrastructure
Historically, bitcoin served as an alternative store of value, an uncorrelated hedge against monetary deterioration. DATs expand that equation. By using bitcoin to access liquidity through loans, convertible debt or fund structures, they treat it as programmable security and a productive asset. This shift from ownership to exploitation marks bitcoin’s entry into mainstream corporate finance.
Convertible issuance 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’s appreciation. Investors achieve asymmetric payout potential while issuers optimize their cost of capital. It is an inversion of the traditional view that volatility is solely a risk factor; in this new model, upside volatility becomes part of the value proposition.
Measuring resilience through mNAV
To evaluate these new treasury models, investors have begun to rely on a metric known as market Net Asset Value, or mNAV, a measure of how efficiently a company converts digital holdings into real, productive capital.
The key to understanding the sustainability of these strategies lies in the market’s net asset value, or mNAV, multiple. It bridges traditional valuation logic with crypto market dynamics.
The MNAV of a DAT correlates directly with the underlying asset’s price, which explains much of the short-term volatility in these companies’ stock valuations. But what matters most is not the absolute level of mNAV, but the many investors are willing to assign it. This multiple reflects confidence in a company’s ability to create “alpha” beyond bitcoin’s base performance through disciplined capital allocation, balance sheet construction and incremental return generation.
When mNAV multiples compress on average, it signals a market that rewards risk management over speculation. When the multiples fall for a particular company, it highlights idiosyncratic risks. Recent data show both patterns. DATs that pursued aggressive debt issuance or relied on frequent equity dilution have seen their mNAV multiples fall below 1x, suggesting investor skepticism about the sustainability of their approach. Conversely, companies that maintain liquidity buffers and diversified treasury structures retain 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 serves as the new price-to-book ratio for digital asset finance, an institutional benchmark that separates financial stewardship from opportunism.
A new discipline for a new asset
Bitcoin’s integration into financial management also imposes new limitations. The share prices of DATs now move almost in lockstep with Bitcoin, adding to the volatility. That link 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 crypto exposure.
Well-managed DATs borrow lessons from traditional finance, stress-test leverage ratios, set hedging limits, implement forward-looking cash flow and liquidity management schemes, 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 transitions from a speculative position to a managed component of financial infrastructure.
Institutional parallels
A similar rebalancing is visible outside of corporations. Various crypto funds now manage government bonds that combine native tokens with traditional assets such as cash, ETFs and fixed income. Their goal is not to reduce digital exposure but to stabilize it, an approach logically identical to the multi-asset portfolio theory.
In traditional finance, asset managers diversify between 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 that process – it sits at its core.
From companies to states
This dynamic is no longer limited to the private sector. The US government announcing a strategic bitcoin reserve, the first US states like New Hampshire or Texas following suit, or Luxembourg’s Intergenerational Sovereign Wealth Fund investing 1% of its holdings in bitcoin are modest steps. But they illustrate how the adoption of bitcoin from a store of value over a programmable security to ultimately a productive asset pioneered by businesses can also scale into public finances.
When government or institutional treasuries start holding bitcoin as part of long-term reserves, the asset moves from speculative wealth to the category of usable financial infrastructure. At that point, the conversation is no longer about adoption, but integration: how to manage, lend, and secure bitcoin within a regulated framework.
The way forward
Bitcoin will remain unstable. That is its nature. But volatility does not preclude utility; it simply requires sophistication. More funds, loans, derivatives markets and structured products are being built around it, each adding depth to a maturing market.
DATs are where this new system will be pressure tested first. Their success will not depend on how much bitcoin they accumulate, but on how effectively they convert volatility into capital efficiency by using transparency, balanced reserves and disciplined financial management to build trust.
In that sense, Digital Asset Treasuries can be seen as a proof-of-concept for bitcoin’s next step towards institutional adoption. Their evolution will tell us how quickly the world’s first digital asset can become not just a store of value, but a functioning building block of modern finance.
