Author: Eric, Foresight News

How long has it been since you last heard news about Metaplanet?

In the first quarter of 2026, this company — the largest Bitcoin treasury company in Japan and all of Asia — adjusted its capital strategy. When mNAV fell below 1 (i.e., the ratio of the company's market cap to the value of its crypto holdings was less than 1), it chose not to dilute equity, shifting instead to strategies including borrowing against Bitcoin and stock buybacks to maintain its share price to some extent.

Although the Q1 financial report showed Metaplanet still purchased 5,075 Bitcoins, from the start of Q2 until now, aside from announcing nearly a week ago that it would acquire Siiibo Securities, a licensed Japanese securities firm, to promote bond products backed by Bitcoin as an underlying asset and explore securities tokenization.

Even Strategy, which has vowed countless times never to sell Bitcoin, tried a small Bitcoin sale to supplement cash, impacting the market. The once "never sell" pledge has turned into "guaranteeing an increase in total holdings." When the top two DAT companies by Bitcoin reserves are already stretched thin, it is not hard to imagine the current predicament of other companies.

In fact, except for a few companies including Strategy, Metaplanet, and BitMine that are still persevering, most former DAT companies have already begun seeking other ways out.

Two Paths to Survival

Caught off guard by the bear market, many DAT companies simply chose to "stop playing."

ETHZilla is a typical example. This Peter Thiel-backed company held over 90,000 ETH at its peak in 2025, but by the end of that year, it had sold a total of $115 million worth of ETH in two transactions to repay debt. This year, it outright abandoned the DAT model, pivoting to businesses like RWA tokenization.

Bitcoin DAT companies such as Prenetics Global and Sequans Communications also chose to give up and return to their core businesses. This is even more true for many altcoin DAT companies that jumped on the bandwagon; their stock prices are near zero, and the coins they hold are difficult to liquidate, so they simply gave up entirely. Data shows that in July 2025 alone, DAT companies purchased a total of approximately $20 billion in cryptocurrencies, while total purchases in Q1 of this year were only about $3.7 billion.

Faced with a stalled flywheel, beyond exiting and giving up, mid-tier treasury companies began a collective strategic pivot, which can be broadly summarized into three directions. They all point to a core proposition: DAT must transform from a passive balance sheet manager into an active ecosystem participant to truly possess commercial value.

The first direction is repositioning themselves as institutional-grade crypto asset management platforms and yield funds, with SharpLink Gaming being a representative of this path. From day one, this company staked nearly 100% of its ETH holdings and attributed all staking yields to shareholders without taking any cut. This stands in stark contrast to spot ETH ETFs, which, although they have obtained SEC permission for staking, can actually only stake about 50% of their holdings to meet daily liquidity requirements. Building on this, in early 2026, SharpLink partnered with Wall Street's veteran crypto investment bank Galaxy Digital to launch the $125 million "Galaxy Sharplink On-Chain Yield Fund," deploying approximately $100 million in staked ETH into DeFi liquidity protocols to seek excess returns. This company is transforming from a pure cryptocurrency holding company into a management platform providing institutional clients with on-chain yield allocation channels.

GameSquare, which holds about 15,000 ETH, is exploring even more aggressively. This publicly listed company, which owns gaming assets like FaZe Clan, partnered with crypto asset management firm Dialectic to introduce the latter's self-developed Medici platform. The platform uses machine learning models and automated algorithms to dynamically allocate capital across 72 to 250 different DeFi protocols, targeting an annualized yield of 8% to 14%, far exceeding Ethereum's standard staking benchmark of 3% to 4%.

The second direction is transforming into blockchain infrastructure operators, which is particularly evident in the Solana ecosystem. DeFi Development is the one that has gone the furthest. This company not only purchased large amounts of SOL but also acquired validator companies and launched its own liquid staking token, dfdvSOL. dfdvSOL has been integrated into multiple core Solana DeFi protocols such as Kamino, Orca, Drift, and Jupiter Lend, used as lending collateral and liquidity pool assets. DeFi Development earns fee income from every staking operation and protocol integration, building a self-reinforcing network effect cycle.

SOL Strategies built a complete business line from digital asset holding to infrastructure operation by acquiring three validator companies. It manages over 3.4 million SOL in delegated stake, far exceeding the size of its own treasury, and is shifting from serving its own balance sheet to providing staking infrastructure for institutional clients across the entire ecosystem.

Forward Industries is doing the same. Besides launching the liquid staking token fwdSOL, Forward Industries also partnered with Galaxy Digital and Jump Crypto to launch the propAMM project BisonFi. After its launch, BisonFi almost immediately became the DEX with the highest trading volume on Solana, squeezing the once-dominant HumidiFi down to less than a 4% market share.

These two routes essentially correspond to the capital market's differing attitudes towards Ethereum and Solana. ETH itself has higher recognition as an "asset" than SOL, so ETH treasury companies can build themselves into "funds that manage ETH," offering institutions yield-generating asset exposure. On the other hand, Solana's crypto-native attributes are more pronounced, so SOL treasury companies need to demonstrate their profitability within this ecosystem, realizing their value through a logic closer to how ordinary listed companies are judged by their financial reports.

Can the Transformation Succeed?

The collective transformation of DAT companies actually reflects a profound cognitive upgrade the entire crypto industry is undergoing. The treasury model initially pioneered by Strategy was essentially a financial engineering exercise that leveraged the convenience of public market financing and investor sentiment for capital arbitrage. When participants expanded from a few pioneers to hundreds of companies, and from Bitcoin to various altcoins, scarcity was diluted and the premium naturally vanished. The launch of cryptocurrency ETFs further accelerated this process. When investors can directly purchase ETH ETFs with staking yields at close to net asset value through traditional brokerage accounts, the logic of holding DAT stocks at a premium is fundamentally shaken.

The answer provided by those successful transformation cases is operational capability. Whether it's SharpLink's 100% staking strategy and institutional-grade yield fund, DeFi Development's dfdvSOL ecosystem and validator network, or GameSquare's machine learning-driven yield platform, they are all trying to build hard-to-replicate operational moats around crypto assets. This moat may come 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 yield that GameSquare pursues is built on smart contract risk and protocol risk; any major DeFi protocol vulnerability or extreme market event could lead to severe losses. DeFi Development's business model is highly dependent on the healthy development of the Solana network; if the ecosystem cools down, its entire business will be impacted.

For the Web3 market, the impact of this transformation is profound and complex. Those DAT companies successfully evolving into infrastructure operators and asset management platforms are building bridges between traditional finance and the blockchain ecosystem, promoting the maturation and standardization of institutional-grade services. But the process of the DAT model moving from frenzy to calm also sends an important signal to the market: in the crypto space, pure capital games are not for everyone. Entities that truly participate in network building, generate actual cash flow, and provide user value are the ones with greater resilience against cycles.

The DAT movement is moving from a capital frenzy into a phase of calm reconstruction. This may not be bad news. Only when the bubble recedes can an industry truly see who is swimming naked and who is building an ark. The collective pivot of treasury companies is both a passive response to survival pressure and a necessary growing pain for an emerging industry on its path to maturity.