The era of buying bitcoins and calling it a treasury strategy is over.
By early 2026, more than 200 publicly traded companies have digital assets on their balance sheets and collectively manage more than $115 billion (DLA Piper, October 2025). The total market capitalization of these companies reached approximately $150 billion in September 2025, almost four times more than the previous year. However, several of these companies now trade at discounts to the value of the assets they own. The market is sending a clear signal: accumulation alone is no longer enough.
Investors want to see capital discipline and economic return. 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 generation of returns – from “DAT 1.0” to “DAT 2.0” – is now the defining theme of the sector.
Three major models are emerging. Each carries a different risk and return profile and poses different demands on governance, technical capacity and infrastructure.
Participation and participation in infrastructure.
The protocol’s most native approach involves staking tokens to support the network consensus and earn rewards in return. For bitcoin-focused treasuries, this increasingly extends to the Lightning Network and other native infrastructures that generate fees based on routing and liquidity. Staking requires careful analysis of technical security and smart contract risks.
The numbers have grown rapidly. Bitmine Immersion Technologies reported over 3 million ETH staked as of early 2026, with total holdings of $9.9 billion and annualized staking revenue of approximately $172 million (SEC filing, March 2026). Its proprietary validation network marginally outperformed Ethereum’s composite participation rate, demonstrating the advantage that institutional-grade infrastructure can offer even in a protocol-level performance environment.
SharpLink Gaming deployed $200 million in ETH to restore infrastructure through EigenCloud, aiming for higher returns by protecting applications ranging from AI workloads to identity verification (SEC Filing, 2025). Reset – Where already staked ETH is used to secure additional services, with careful governance.
Active trading and market-driven income
A second set of strategies takes advantage of market structure: funding rate arbitrage, basis trading, and option premiums. These can be effective and often market neutral, but require trading expertise, robust risk controls and 24-hour monitoring. The governance implications are significant: this approach effectively turns a treasury function into a business operation. Like any trading function, it can be difficult to find the trained staff needed to monitor complex positions and correlation risks.
A prominent Japanese publicly traded company illustrates both the potential and the complexity. Holding over 35,000 BTC by the end of 2025, it generated the equivalent of approximately $55 million in bitcoin revenue through options-based strategies, with operating profit growth over 1,600% year-over-year. However, the same company recorded a substantial net loss due to non-monetary mark-to-market revaluations under local accounting standards (TradingView; Kavout, 2026). For investors, this disconnect between operating cash flow and reported earnings makes evaluation substantially more difficult and underscores why governance and transparency are as important as overall returns.
Galaxy Digital offers a contrasting hybrid model, combining its own digital asset treasury with institutional services including secured lending, strategic advisory and infrastructure. In the third quarter of 2025, Galaxy reported a record adjusted gross profit of more than $730 million (Mint Ventures Research, 2025). Notably, the company has diversified its sources of income beyond pure cryptocurrencies by repurposing its Helios mining facility as an AI computing campus secured by long-term contracts, a sign that the most resilient treasures may be those that earn income from multiple, uncorrelated sources.
Credit deployment and net interest margin
A third route treats digital assets as productive balance sheet capital. The model involves borrowing against non-recourse cryptocurrency holdings, receiving liquidity from stablecoins, and deploying it into higher-yielding private credit. It preserves long-term exposure to the underlying asset while generating recurring interest income from short-duration loans in the real economy. In particular, this strategy requires expertise in yield, credit risk and fixed income.
The mechanisms are based directly on traditional banking: liquidity management, underwriting, governance and controlled leverage. Under this type of model, a company acquires bitcoin, borrows against those holdings on a non-recourse basis (meaning the downside is limited to the collateral), and deploys the proceeds into diversified private credit portfolios that back borrowing from the real economy. If bitcoin appreciates, the company retains the advantage after repaying the loan, combining potential capital gains with recurring interest income.
For credit deployment models to work credibly, they must be based on operational financial infrastructure rather than built from scratch. The approach is most effective when extended from an existing platform with real credit relationships and established customer accounts. In our view at Greenage, this is also an area where governance and due diligence frameworks are particularly important, given that capital is being deployed into third-party lending opportunities that need to 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 underpin cross-border payments, real-time settlement, and T+0 (same-day settlement) clearing for businesses (Foley & Lardner, January 2026). The total market capitalization of stablecoins from Coinbase Institutional projects could reach $1.2 trillion by 2028 (Coinbase Institutional, August 2025). For credit deployment strategies, stablecoins provide a robust means for capital deployment in lending markets.
The new measure of maturity
Recent market conditions have reinforced a simple truth: price appreciation alone is not a treasury strategy. The growing range of performance solutions reflects an industry learning from its own history: sustainable revenue generation makes digital assets more productive components of the corporate balance sheet.
No model is definitive. The most effective treasuries will combine approaches depending on risk appetite, operational capacity and governance structure. But the direction of travel is clear. Passive holding is no longer enough to justify digital assets’ place on the balance sheet. Yield is becoming the central measure of treasury maturity and the central factor in how the market values companies with exposure to digital assets.
The winners in this next phase will not be the largest holders. They will be the most disciplined operators.
Important notice:
This article has been prepared by Greengage & Co. Limited for informational and thought leadership purposes only. It is intended solely for corporate, professional counterparties and institutional market participants and is not intended for retail consumers. It does not constitute financial advice, investment advice, 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 performance is not indicative of future results. All investments involve risks, including possible loss of principal. The forward-looking statements and market projections referenced herein come from third party research and do not represent the opinions or predictions of Greengage & Co. Limited.
Greengage & Co. Limited is not authorized or regulated by the Financial Conduct Authority for investment business. Greengage acts solely as an introducer for independent third-party service providers and does not arrange investments or provide lending, custody or investment management services.
Readers should seek independent professional advice before making any investment decisions.
