Public companies beefing up their balance sheets with billions in crypto was one of the year’s biggest trades.

But in 2026, digital asset treasury competition will shift from a land grab to a survival-of-the-fittest.

“There will always be a place for high-quality DATs as stock market investors look for ways to get leveraged crypto exposure,” Dom Kwok, a former Goldman Sachs analyst who co-founded development platform EasyA, told DL News.

“Only the highest quality DATs will survive.”

Digital asset treasuries are winding down 2025 with a whimper.

After a year flush with cash, nearly 200 public companies bought up roughly $96 billion in Bitcoin, while another 68 treasuries added more than $22 billion in Ether to their balance sheets.

Though Michael Saylor’s Strategy, a traditional business intelligence firm, led the charge, the gamut of companies dipping into crypto spread far and wide.

These include a Japanese nail salon, a Spanish coffee roaster, and a Chinese cultural industry enterprise dubbed Pop Culture Co.

Each time a company announced it would buy crypto for its balance sheet, its stock price soared.

Semler Scientific, a healthcare firm, saw its price rise fivefold after it announced its transformation to a Bitcoin treasury back in May.

Another emblematic case is Metaplanet, the budget hotel operator turned treasury. Since it began buying Bitcoin in 2024 to offer Japanese investors exposure to the cryptocurrency, shares are up over 3,000%.

Now, many of those same firms are clamouring for air.

Since the start of the year, shares in Strategy have plummeted 52%; Semler’s stock is down 74%; and though Metaplanet enjoyed a heady rise in the summer, DN3 stock is officially down 1% today.

Since Bitcoin plummeted 30% from its October high, treasuries have been in a death spiral — and it’s not just their stock prices.

‘Premium era is over’

A primary metric for assessing the health of a digital asset treasury is called market-to-net-asset value, or mNav.

It measures how much equity value investors are buying for every $1 of crypto the company holds.

If a company’s mNav is, say, 3.0, then investors are paying $3 for every $1 of tokens. That’s considered a premium and suggests investors believe the company’s structure and management add value to the token holdings beyond simple spot exposure.

Premiums also allow companies to issue additional shares to buy more crypto without diluting shareholders.

Strategy, the standard-bearer for the treasury trade, once traded at a sevenfold premium.

Nowadays? It has a 21% discount.

Metaplanet plunged to 10% today from 237% in July.

And shares in Nakamoto, the self-proclaimed “Bitcoin treasury for Bitcoin treasuries,” tradetrades at a 63% discount to its $TK billions in Bitcoin holdings.

“The premium era is over,” said John Fakhoury of Stacking Sats in a December 11 report that showed how dire things have become for Bitcoin treasuries.

“We’re entering a phase where only disciplined structures and real business execution are going to survive.”

Survival of the fittest

Even the survivors who have weathered 2025’s brutal drawdown will have their work cut out for them.

Maintaining significant cash reserves is how to separate winners from losers.

Strategy announced a $1.4 billion cash reserve that covers roughly 21 months of preferred dividend payments to investors.

That war chest means Strategy won’t be forced to sell Bitcoin to meet obligations during bear markets.

For some, that discipline is paying off.

“I personally think there is good value in major names like MSTR already,” André Dragosch, European head of research at Bitwise, told DL News. “Low valuations and mNAV discounts will most likely provide enough value for major names like MSTR to form a bottom here.”

But cash reserves alone won’t save a treasury.

A lot of it comes down to which cryptocurrency a company has decided to add to its balance sheet.

Riskier altcoins move aside

According to Brian Huang, CEO of investment platform Glider, investors need to forget about most altcoin treasuries.

“DATs of major tokens like ETH, BTC, and SOL will perform,” Huang told DL News. “Do not expect the riskier altcoin DATs to recover.”

Bitcoin has brand loyalty, an easy-to-understand value proposition, and the deepest liquidity. It also has the most significant institutional adoption, with more than $147 billion held in exchange-traded funds and nearly $100 billion in treasuries.

Ethereum has its own allure for investors.

That includes staking yields, hosting the majority of the $300 billion stablecoin market, and the fact that Ethereum remains the backbone for the wider decentralised finance niche.

Finance heavyweights, in fact, have said that it is their industry’s blockchain of choice.

“Ether is ‘very much what I call the Wall Street token,’” Jan van Eck, CEO of the $132 billion asset manager Van Eck, told Fox Business on August 28.

Equally, Solana shares some of Ethereum’s attributes and is garnering significant investor attention.

“There’s a lot of pent-up demand for Solana,” Matt Hougan, chief investment officer at Bitwise, previously told DL News, projecting the firm’s Solana ETF will surpass $3 billion in assets by next year.

As for smaller tokens?

“Lower market cap tokens do not have the same liquidity and are too hinged on the success of small unproven protocols,” Huang said.

Beyond buy and hold

If the strategy in 2025 was to simply buy and hold, the end-of-year collapse proves that the model just isn’t enough.

“In a world where Bitcoin and Ethereum each have multiple DATs, and crypto ETFs are becoming increasingly popular, it will also be important for DATs to have strategies beyond buying and holding,” Kwok said.

The most aggressive companies might adopt hedge-fund tactics, including shorting altcoins against Bitcoin longs, using derivatives to protect themselves against falling prices, or actively trading around core positions, Kwok said.

Still, other better-capitalised firms may take advantage of the lull.

Katherine Dowling, president of Bitcoin Standard Treasury Company, expects the strongest treasuries to emerge from 2025’s collapse stronger than ever — by acquiring the weak.

“Bitcoin DATs will push through this current noise as well. We will also likely see some DAT M&A opportunistic activity,” Dowling told DL News.

With 195 treasury companies around but only a handful trading above net asset value, failed treasuries could eventually become acquisition targets.