The days of buying bitcoin and calling it a financial strategy are over.
By early 2026, more than 200 publicly traded companies have digital assets on their balance sheets and collectively manage over $115 billion (DLA Piper, October 2025). The combined market capitalization of these companies reached approximately $150 billion by September 2025 – a nearly four-fold increase over the previous year. Yet several of these companies are now trading at discounts to the value of the assets they hold. The market is sending a clear signal: Accumulation alone is no longer enough.
Investors want to see capital discipline and financial returns. Management teams have responded with share buyback programs and transparency metrics such as “BTC per share,” designed to show the value a treasury adds beyond the token price (AMINA Bank Research, 2026). The shift from passive accumulation to active yield generation – from “DAT 1.0” to “DAT 2.0” – is now the defining theme of the sector.
Three wide models are emerging. Each has a different risk – return profile and makes clear requirements for management, technical ability and infrastructure.
Infrastructure participation and staking
The most protocol-based approach involves staking tokens to support network consensus and earn rewards in return. For bitcoin-focused Treasuries, this increasingly extends to the Lightning Network and other built-in infrastructure that generates routing and liquidity-based fees. Efforts require careful analysis of the technical security and smart contract risks.
The numbers have grown rapidly. Bitmine Immersion Technologies reported over 3 million staked ETH in early 2026, with a total holding of $9.9 billion and annual staking revenue of approximately $172 million (SEC Filing, March 2026). Its proprietary validator network marginally outperformed the Composite Ethereum Staking Rate, demonstrating the benefit that institutional-grade infrastructure can deliver even in a protocol-level dividend environment.
SharpLink Gaming deployed $200 million in ETH to rebuild infrastructure via EigenCloud, targeting higher returns by securing applications ranging from AI workloads to identity verification (SEC Filing, 2025). Resumption – where already staked ETH is used to secure additional services with careful management.
Active trading and market driven income
Another set of strategies exploits market structure – funding rate arbitrage, basis trading and option premiums. These can be efficient and often market neutral, but they require trading expertise, robust risk controls and round-the-clock monitoring. The management implications are significant: this approach effectively converts a finance function into a trading operation. Like any other trading function, it can be difficult to find qualified personnel required to monitor complex positions and correlation risks.
A prominent Japanese listed company illustrates both the potential and the complexity. With over 35,000 BTC by the end of 2025, it generated the equivalent of approximately $55 million in bitcoin revenue through option-based strategies, with operating profit growth of over 1,600% year-on-year. Yet, the same company recorded a significant net loss due to non-cash mark-to-market revaluations according to local accounting standards (TradingView; Kavout, 2026). For investors, this disconnect between operating cash flows and reported earnings makes evaluation significantly more difficult — and underscores why governance and transparency matter as much as headlines.
Galaxy Digital offers a contrasting hybrid model that combines its own digital wealth fund with institutional services, including secured lending, strategic advice and infrastructure. In Q3 2025, Galaxy had a record adjusted gross profit of over $730 million (Mint Ventures Research, 2025). Notably, the firm has diversified its sources of dividends beyond pure crypto by repurposing its Helios mining facility as an AI compute campus secured by long-term contracts — a signal that the most robust treasuries may be those that derive revenue from multiple, uncorrelated sources.
Credit utilization and net interest margin
A third path treats digital assets as productive balance sheet capital. The model involves borrowing against crypto holdings on a non-recourse basis, receiving stablecoin liquidity and applying it to higher-yielding private credit. It maintains long-term exposure to the underlying asset while generating recurring interest income from short-term real economic lending. This strategy particularly requires expertise in returns, credit risk and interest.
The mechanics draw directly from traditional banking: liquidity management, underwriting, governance and controlled leverage. Under this type of model, a company buys up bitcoin, borrows against those holdings without recourse—meaning the downside is limited to the collateral—and applies the proceeds to diversified private credit portfolios that support real-economy lending. If bitcoin appreciates, the company retains the upside after repaying the loan, combining potential capital gains with recurring interest income.
For credit deployment models to work credibly, they need to be based on operational financial infrastructure rather than being built from scratch. The approach is most effective when it extends from an existing platform with real lending relationships and established customer accounts. In our view at Greenage, this is also an area where governance and due diligence frameworks are particularly important, as capital is deployed in third-party credit facilities, which must be assessed on a counterparty-by-counterparty basis.
The success of this model is also linked to the maturation of stablecoins as institutional infrastructure. By 2026, stablecoins will support cross-border payments, real-time settlement and T+0 clearing (same-day settlement) for businesses (Foley & Lardner, January 2026). Coinbase Institutional projects total stablecoin market cap could reach $1.2 trillion by 2028 (Coinbase Institutional, August 2025). For credit deployment strategies, stablecoins provide a healthy medium for capital deployment in the loan markets.
The new fashion goal
Recent market conditions have reinforced a simple truth: price increases alone are not a financial strategy. The growing range of dividend solutions reflects a sector learning from its own history – sustainable income generation makes digital assets more productive components of a company’s balance sheet.
No single model is final. The most effective sovereign bonds will mix approaches depending on risk appetite, operational capacity and management structure. But the direction of travel is clear. Passive inventory is no longer sufficient to justify the placement of digital assets on the balance sheet. Yield is becoming the central measure of treasury maturity – and the core factor in how the market values companies with digital asset exposure.
The winners in this next phase will not be the largest holders. They will be the most disciplined operators.
Important Notice:
This article was prepared by Greengage & Co. Limited for informational and thought leadership purposes only. It is intended solely for use by businesses, professional counterparties and institutional market participants and is not directed at retail consumers. It does not constitute financial advice, investment advice, a financial promotion or a recommendation or inducement to buy, sell or hold any asset, security or financial instrument.
Digital assets are subject to significant price volatility and regulatory changes. Past results are not indicative of future results. All investments involve risk, including the potential loss of capital. Forward-looking statements and market forecasts referenced herein are derived from third-party research and do not represent Greengage & Co. Limited’s views or predictions.
Greengage & Co. Limited is not authorized or regulated by the Financial Conduct Authority for investment business. Greengage acts solely as an introduction to independent third-party service providers and does not arrange investments, provide loans, custody or investment management services.
Readers should seek independent professional advice before making any investment decision.
