Written by: Eric, Foresight News
How long has it been since you heard news about Metaplanet?
In the first quarter of 2026, this largest Bitcoin treasury company in all of Japan and even Asia adjusted its capital strategy by choosing not to dilute equity when mNAV is less than 1 (that is, when the ratio of the company's market value to the value of held cryptocurrencies is less than 1). It shifted to strategies that include collateralized Bitcoin financing and stock buybacks to maintain its stock price to some extent.
Although the first quarter financial report shows that Metaplanet still purchased 5,075 Bitcoins, since the beginning of the second quarter, except for the announcement made nearly a week ago about acquiring the Japanese licensed securities company Siiibo Securities to promote bonds backed by Bitcoin and explore tokenization of securities.
Even Strategy, which has vowed countless times never to sell Bitcoin, tried a small-scale sale of Bitcoin to supplement cash and see its impact on the market. The former pledge of "never selling" has now turned into a "guarantee of total volume increase." When the second largest Bitcoin holder, DAT company, is already in a tight spot, it is not hard to imagine the current predicament of other companies.
In fact, besides a few companies such as Strategy, Metaplanet, and BitMine that still insist on holding, the majority of former DAT companies have begun to seek alternative paths.
Two Paths to Survival
In the unexpectedly harsh bear market, many DAT companies have opted to "quit."
ETHZilla is a typical example among them. This company, supported by Peter Thiel, held more than 90,000 ETH at its peak in 2025, but by the end of that year, it sold a total of $115 million worth of ETH twice to pay off debts, and this year directly abandoned the DAT model, shifting towards RWA tokenization and other businesses.
BTC DAT companies like Prenetics Global and Sequans Communications also chose to give up and return to their core businesses. Many follow-up altcoin DAT companies have also done so, with stock prices near zero and coins on hand difficult to liquidate, simply choosing to give up altogether. Data shows that in July 2025, DAT companies bought a total of about $20 billion worth of cryptocurrencies, while in the first quarter of this year, the total purchase volume was only about $3.7 billion.
Faced with the stagnation of the flywheel, apart from withdrawing and giving up, the mid-tier treasury companies have begun a collective strategic shift, which can be broadly summarized into three directions. They all point to a core proposition: that DAT must transform from a passive balance sheet manager into an active ecological participant to truly possess commercial value.
The first direction is to reposition themselves as institutional-level cryptocurrency asset management platforms and yield funds, with SharpLink Gaming being a representative of this path. This company has nearly 100% of its ETH holdings staked from day one, and attributes all staking rewards to shareholders without taking any cut. This contrasts sharply with spot ETH ETFs, which, although they have received staking permission from the SEC, can only stake about 50% of their holdings to meet daily liquidity requirements. On this basis, SharpLink partnered with Wall Street's veteran crypto investment bank Galaxy Digital to launch a $125 million "Galaxy Sharplink On-chain Yield Fund" in early 2026, investing about $100 million of staked ETH into DeFi liquidity protocols to seek excess returns. This company is transitioning from a simple cryptocurrency holding company to a management platform that provides on-chain yield allocation channels for institutional clients.
GameSquare, which holds about 15,000 ETH, is pursuing a more aggressive exploration. This publicly traded company, which owns gaming assets like FaZe Clan, has partnered with crypto asset management firm Dialectic to introduce the latter’s proprietary Medici platform. This platform uses machine learning models and automated algorithms to dynamically allocate funds among 72 to 250 different DeFi protocols, aiming for an annual yield of 8% to 14%, far exceeding Ethereum's standard staking benchmark of 3% to 4%.
The second direction is to transform into blockchain infrastructure operators, particularly evident within the Solana ecosystem. DeFi Development is one of the companies that has gone the farthest. This company not only bought a considerable amount of SOL but also acquired validator companies and launched its own liquidity staking token, dfdvSOL. dfdvSOL has been integrated into several core Solana DeFi protocols like Kamino, Orca, Drift, and Jupiter Lend, serving as collateral for lending and liquidity pool assets. DeFi Development generates fee revenues from every staking operation and protocol integration, creating a self-reinforcing network effect loop.
SOL Strategies has built a complete business line from digital asset holding to infrastructure operation by acquiring three validator companies. It manages over 3.4 million delegated staking SOL, far exceeding its own treasury size, and is transitioning from serving its balance sheet to providing staking infrastructure for institutional clients across the ecosystem.
Forward Industries is similar in that, in addition to launching the liquidity staking token fwdSOL, it has also partnered with Galaxy Digital and Jump Crypto to launch the propAMM project BisonFi. Since its launch, BisonFi has quickly become the highest trading volume DEX on Solana, while the once-dominant HumidiFi has been squeezed to hold less than 4% market share.
These two routes essentially correspond to the capital markets' different attitudes towards Ethereum and Solana. ETH, as an "asset," still has a higher recognition than SOL; ETH treasury companies can position themselves as "funds managing ETH," providing institutions with exposure to yield-generating assets. On the other side, Solana's crypto-native attributes are more pronounced, and SOL treasury companies need to demonstrate their profitability within this ecosystem to reflect their value more closely to the logic of ordinary public companies "viewing financial reports."
Will the Transformation Succeed?
The collective transformation of DAT companies reflects a profound cognitive upgrade that the entire crypto industry is undergoing. The treasury model initially pioneered by Strategy is fundamentally a financial engineering approach that takes advantage of the convenience of public market financing and investor sentiment to conduct capital arbitrage. As participants expand from a few pioneers to hundreds of companies, and from Bitcoin to various altcoins, scarcity becomes diluted, and the premium naturally dissipates. The launch of cryptocurrency ETFs further accelerated this process; when investors can directly purchase ETH ETFs with staking yields at prices close to net asset value through traditional brokerage accounts, the logic of holding DAT stocks at a premium has fundamentally been shaken.
Successful transformation cases indicate that operational capability is the answer. Whether it is SharpLink's 100% staking strategy and institutional-level yield fund, DeFi Development's dfdvSOL ecosystem and validator network, or GameSquare's machine learning-driven yield platform, they are all trying to build operational barriers around crypto assets that are hard to replicate. These barriers may arise from technological advantages, network effects, institutional partnerships, or deep participation in the on-chain financial ecosystem.
However, these transformations are not without risks. The 8% to 14% DeFi yields pursued by GameSquare are based on the risks of smart contracts and protocol vulnerabilities, and any significant DeFi protocol flaw or extreme market event could lead to severe losses. DeFi Development's business model is highly reliant on the healthy development of the Solana network; if the ecosystem cools, its entire business would be impacted.
For the Web3 market, the impact of this transformation is profound and complex. DAT companies that successfully evolve into infrastructure operators and asset management platforms are building bridges between traditional finance and the blockchain ecosystem, promoting the maturity and standardization of institutional-level services. But the process of the DAT model transitioning from frenzy to calm has also released an important signal to the market: in the crypto field, simple capital games are not open to anyone; entities that truly participate in network construction, create real cash flow, and provide user value have a greater ability to withstand cycles.
The DAT movement is transitioning from a capital frenzy to a phase of calm reconstruction. This may not be bad news. An industry can only see clearly who is swimming naked and who is building the ark after the bubble has burst. The collective turn of treasury companies is both a passive response to survival pressure and a necessary growing pain for an emerging industry toward maturity.
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