The 2026 outlook for crypto treasury firms
There’s never a dull moment onchain. Here’s what you need to know this week:
Bitcoin seesawed on macro uncertainty. Meanwhile, tokenized gold has seen a rapid rise in popularity.
The outlook for crypto treasury firms in 2026. The biggest firms keep adding crypto, but what about the rest of the sector?
Prediction markets set a new all-time high in daily volume. And more key stats from around the cryptoverse.
MARKET BYTES
Crypto prices swing amid fast-evolving tariff picture
Crypto prices dipped sharply and then began to bounce back this week, as geopolitical tensions and the threat of new tariffs on many European nations waxed and waned against the backdrop of the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland.
Early on Wednesday, bitcoin dropped below $88,000, down more than 10% for the week. Ethereum fell even more, dipping to around $2,900, a decline of more than 13%. Altcoins also experienced a “severe sell-off,” per CoinDesk.
But later on Wednesday, President Trump announced that he would withdraw the planned tariffs after having “formed the framework of a future deal with respect to Greenland” with NATO. Following the news, BTC climbed back above $90,000.
Leveraged bets on crypto futures have accelerated recent price movements. When bitcoin fell below $90,000 on Tuesday night, around $1 billion in leveraged BTC bets were liquidated, helping drive prices down further.
Interestingly, it appears that crypto whales — some of the world’s biggest holders — have taken advantage of recent volatility to increase their holdings. “Such a divergence often signals a transfer of assets from short-term traders to long-term holders, which can indicate a floor in selling pressure,” as one analyst told Decrypt. (Of course, only time will tell if that ends up being the case.)
Here’s more news you need to know this week…
Tokenized gold has seen explosive growth
One asset class that has benefited from all this increasing uncertainty has been gold, which set a new record above $4,800 an ounce on Wednesday, having nearly doubled in price in the last year.
But rather than buying gold directly, investors are increasingly relying on vehicles including gold-backed ETFs and crypto-powered tokenized gold products like Paxos Gold (PAXG) to gain exposure to the asset class. (Paxos is a Coinbase Ventures portfolio company.)
According to a new report, tokenized gold products have actually surpassed all but one U.S.-listed gold ETF in the last year. The category saw trading volumes surge to $178 billion in 2025 and its market cap spike 177% to more than $4.4 billion. (Which, it’s worth noting, is still just a small fraction of gold’s $32 trillion market cap.)
“If tokenized gold were an ETF, it would already rank as the second-largest by trading volume,” the report said.
Why tokenize gold?… “Unlike some tokenized assets, which are restricted to accredited investors, gold tokens allow fractional ownership and no minimum investment for individual investors,” reports CoinDesk. “That enables a broader swath of investors to participate.”
Bermuda announces plans for “fully onchain” economy
This week at Davos, the government of Bermuda announced plans to bring its national economy “fully onchain.”
“The initiative aims to pilot stablecoin payments across government agencies, expand USDC adoption among local businesses, and support financial institutions integrating tokenization and other digital finance tools,” noted Decrypt.
Bermuda currently faces high payment-processing costs and limited access to traditional financial rails — problems common to small island nations — officials explained.
Bermuda, which was one of the first countries to create a comprehensive regulatory framework for crypto in 2018, is partnering with Coinbase and USDC-issuer Circle on its onchain development plan.
Crypto every day… “An onchain economy means using digital assets as an everyday financial infrastructure,” officials said. “For a country like Bermuda, a highly entrepreneurial economy with thousands of local businesses, traditional payment rails are expensive and restrictive.”
BEHIND THE STRATEGY
Why are the biggest crypto treasury companies doubling down when similar firms are struggling?
Last year, as crypto markets notched a series of new all-time highs, one of the drivers was large purchases by digital asset treasury companies — publicly traded firms that primarily exist to buy BTC, ETH, or other tokens for their corporate treasuries.
Following in the footsteps of Michael Saylor’s bitcoin-accumulation behemoth Strategy, these companies added billions of dollars to their balance sheets last year. And when crypto prices were high, many were rewarded with eye-watering stock price pops.
BitMine Immersion Technologies, which accumulates ETH, saw its share price rise more than 1,000% in a single session.
In the months since, however, crypto prices have dipped and share prices have followed. So why have BitMine, Strategy, and other companies already acquired billions of dollars in crypto in 2026? And what’s the outlook for the category for the rest of the year?
Here’s what you need to know.
What are digital asset treasuries?
Digital asset treasury companies (DATs) are firms that raise funds to buy large amounts of crypto for their corporate treasuries. Investors can then buy shares in these companies and gain exposure to the assets these firms are purchasing without having to own any crypto directly.
The approach was pioneered by Michael Saylor’s company — then known as MicroStrategy — in 2020, when it started adding BTC to its balance sheet. In the five years following, Strategy has accumulated a stack of BTC that is now worth more than $60 billion. For much of 2025 it was one of the best performing stocks in the entire market.
Hundreds of public companies have since followed suit. Collectively, these firms have raised more than $20 billion to buy crypto, from major coins like BTC and ETH, to altcoins like SOL and WRLD, and even memecoins like DOGE.
What is their business case?
The companies’ goals are to accumulate as much crypto as possible. The thinking goes, if crypto keeps rising long-term and companies own significant amounts of certain tokens, their company’s value on the stock market also rises, which makes it easier to raise money to buy more crypto.
Additionally, some firms, like the Ethereum-focused BitMine Immersion Technologies and SharpLink Gaming, use their crypto to generate income with staking or other decentralized finance activities.
What makes for a successful DAT?
The main metric tracked by investors is known as “market net asset value,” or mNAV. This data point compares the value of the company’s stock to the value of the digital assets it holds on its balance sheets.
If the value of the stock outweighs the value of the crypto the company holds, the company is considered to be trading at a “premium.” But if the reverse is true, the company is considered to be trading at a “discount.”
If a company is trading at a premium, it can issue new shares for sale and fund more crypto purchases.
“This creates a crypto-per-share accretive feedback loop: the issuer raises equity, accumulates tokens, and sees its NAV per share increase, further increasing the premium, representing accretive dilution,” said analysts at Macquarie.
But when the company is trading at a discount, it becomes much harder to fund new crypto buys.
How have DATs been performing lately?
Throughout the spring and summer of last year, crypto treasury companies were among the hottest stocks on the market, and a new digital asset treasury firm seemed to pop up weekly.
But following crypto’s selloff in October, treasury firms have struggled to regain momentum and most are trading at a discount to their mNAV.
Strategy, which owns about $62 billion in BTC, has seen its stock price plummet 47% since Oct. 10. BitMine Immersion Technologies, which has accumulated 3.5% of ETH’s circulating supply so far, is down by a similar amount in that same period.
Treasury firms that focused on altcoins have fared even worse, with many down more than 60% since mid-October.
And notably, purchases from many crypto treasury firms have largely ground to a halt. CleanCore hasn’t made a purchase since October; Forward Industries hasn’t made a purchase since mid-November; and until the first week of this year, SharpLink Gaming hadn’t made a purchase since October.
What happens if prices keep falling?
With most treasury firms’ holdings sitting in the red and their stock facing declining demand, issuing new shares to buy more crypto is “more punitive and reduces the probability that the premium inflates, absent a different catalyst,” said Coinbase Global Head of Research David Duong.
In an investor note at the end of 2025, analysts at Macquarie pointed out that a prolonged reversal of the factors that created the rapid growth of crypto treasury firms could force the firms to sell their holdings. “Should any of the key variables — investor sentiment, crypto prices, or capital market liquidity — fall, the [crypto treasury firm] model could unravel,” Macquarie’s analysts wrote.
So why did Strategy and Bitmine just make huge new purchases?
Activity from crypto treasury firms appears to be slowly regaining momentum, but only amongst the biggest players. Out of the top 20 crypto treasury firms by holdings, just five have made purchases in the last 30 days, according to CoinGecko.
But the ones that kept buying have made some huge acquisitions. Since Jan. 1, Strategy has bought around $3.5 billion in BTC, including a $2.1 billion buy on Jan. 20.
BitMine Immersion Technologies has bought nearly $275 million in ETH, bringing the firm to around 70% of their stated goal of owning 5% of ETH’s circulating supply.
And SharpLink Gaming, the seventh largest crypto treasury firm, has bought around $14 million in ETH since the start of the year.
For Strategy and BitMine, it appears likely that they’ll be able to continue making purchases. Strategy has bought bitcoin for 20 weeks straight (except the weeks of Thanksgiving and Christmas), while BitMine’s shareholders recently approved a proposal to raise the limit on how many shares the company can sell in order to raise cash to keep buying ETH. And through BitMine’s staking activity, the company is set to earn nearly $150 million annually in staking rewards.
Monica Long, the president of Ripple, says that 2026 should see a significant increase in crypto treasury firms making similar moves, as crypto evolves “from a speculative asset into the operating layer of modern finance.”
By the end of the year, she says, crypto treasury firms “will hold over $1 trillion in digital assets and roughly half of Fortune 500 companies will have formalized digital asset strategies.”
NUMBERS TO KNOW
$814 million
Prediction market volume recorded on Sunday, an all-time high daily amount, according to data from Dune Analytics. Total trading volume sits around $10.5 billion so far in January, putting prediction activity “within striking distance of December’s $11.5 billion total,” notes The Block.
2.9 million
Number of transactions conducted on the Ethereum blockchain last Friday, an all-time high. Fueled by a recent series of protocol upgrades and low mainnet fees, Ethereum’s surging network activity is also being reflected in staking metrics. A record amount of ETH is currently being staked by validators while exit queues — measuring the amount of ETH being withdrawn — have recently fallen to zero.
80%
Percent of BTC holders who would like to use the digital currency for daily payments, according to a new survey conducted by Bitcoin mining firm GoMining and shared with The Defiant. Around 55% of surveyed HODLers reported rarely or never using BTC for day-to-day spending, citing “limited merchant acceptance” as the primary bottleneck.
TOKEN TRIVIA
How many Bitcoin blocks are mined between halvings?
A
210,000
B
420,000
C
630,000
D
840,000
Find the answer below.
Trivia Answer
A
210,000
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