Gone are the days of buying Bitcoin and calling it a Treasury strategy.
By early 2026, more than 200 publicly traded companies will have digital assets on their balance sheets, collectively managing more than $115 billion (DLA Piper, October 2025). The market capitalization of these companies reached approximately $150 billion by September 2025, nearly quadrupling year-over-year. However, some of these companies are currently trading at a discount to the value of their holdings. The market is sending a clear signal that accumulation alone is no longer enough.
Investors want capital discipline and economic returns. Management has responded with a share repurchase program and transparency metrics such as:$BTC (AMINA Bank Research, 2026). The transition from passive accumulation to active yield generation, or from ‘DAT 1.0’ to ‘DAT 2.0’, is currently a defining theme for the sector.
There are three main models available. Each has a different risk and return profile and places distinct demands on governance, technical capabilities, and infrastructure.
Infrastructure participation and staking
Most protocol-native approaches involve staking tokens to support network consensus and earning rewards in return. With the Bitcoin-focused Treasury, this increasingly extends to the Lightning Network and other native infrastructure that generates routing and liquidity-based fees. Staking requires careful analysis of technical security and smart contract risks.
Their numbers grew rapidly. Bitmine Immersion Technologies reports over 3 million stakes $ETH By early 2026, total holdings will be $9.9 billion and annual staking revenue will be approximately $172 million (SEC filing, March 2026). Its proprietary validator network slightly exceeded the composite Ethereum staking rate, demonstrating the advantage that institutional-grade infrastructure can provide even in a protocol-level revenue environment.
SharpLink Gaming invested $200 million $ETH Restaking your infrastructure via EigenCloud for higher yields by securing applications from AI workloads to identity verification (SEC filing, 2025). Re-staking – if already staked $ETH Used to secure additional services with careful governance.
Active trading and market-driven income
The second set of strategies takes advantage of market structure: funding rate arbitrage, basis trading, and option premiums. These are effective and often market-neutral, but require trading expertise, robust risk management, and 24-hour monitoring. The governance implications are significant. This approach effectively transforms finance functions into trading operations. As with other trading functions, finding the skilled staff needed to oversee complex positions and correlated risks can be difficult.
One prominent Japanese listed company illustrates both the possibilities and the complexities. Holds over 35,000 $BTC By the end of 2025, it had generated approximately $55 million worth of Bitcoin revenue through its options-based strategy, with operating income growth of over 1,600% year-over-year. However, the same company recorded a large net loss due to non-cash mark-to-market revaluations based on local accounting standards (TradingView; Kavout, 2026). For investors, this disconnect between operating cash flow and reported earnings makes valuation significantly difficult and highlights why governance and transparency are just as important as headline returns.
Galaxy Digital offers a contrasting hybrid model that combines proprietary digital asset treasury with institutional services such as secured financing, strategic advisory, and infrastructure. In Q3 2025, Galaxy posted record adjusted gross profit of over $730 million (Mint Ventures Research, 2025). Notably, the company is diversifying its revenue streams beyond pure cryptocurrencies by repurposing its Helios mining facility as an AI computing campus secured by long-term contracts. This suggests that the most resilient Treasurys may be those that derive their income from multiple, uncorrelated sources.
Credit development and net interest margin
The third route treats digital assets as productive balance sheet capital. The model involves borrowing your crypto holdings on a non-recourse basis, receiving stablecoin liquidity and deploying it into high-yield private credit. Generate regular interest income from short-term real economy loans while maintaining long-term exposure to the underlying assets. In particular, this strategy requires expertise in yield, credit risk, and fixed income.
This mechanism directly incorporates traditional banking practices, including liquidity management, underwriting, governance, and controlled leverage. In this type of model, a company acquires Bitcoin, borrows against its holdings on a non-recourse basis (i.e., downside is limited to collateral), and deploys the proceeds into a diversified private credit portfolio that supports real economy lending. As Bitcoin rises, the company maintains the rise through potential capital gains and recurring interest income even after the loan is repaid.
For a credit deployment model to work reliably, it must be built on an operational financial infrastructure, rather than being built from scratch. This approach is most effective when expanding from an existing platform with real lending relationships and established customer accounts. In Greenage’s view, this is also an area where governance and due diligence frameworks are particularly important, given that capital is deployed in third-party credit opportunities that must be evaluated on a counterparty-by-counterpart basis.
The success of this model is also related to the maturation of stablecoins as institutional infrastructure. By 2026, stablecoins will support cross-border payments, real-time payments, and T+0 clearing for businesses (Foley & Lardner, January 2026). Coinbase Institutional predicts that stablecoin market capitalization could reach $1.2 trillion by 2028 (Coinbase Institutional, August 2025). In credit deployment strategies, stablecoins provide a sound medium for capital deployment in the lending market.
A new measure of maturity
Recent market conditions confirm the simple truth that price appreciation is not the only financial strategy. The expansion of the range of yield solutions reflects the sector learning from its own history, where sustainable income generation makes digital assets a more productive component of corporate balance sheets.
No single model is definitive. The most effective Treasurys combine approaches depending on risk appetite, operational capacity, and governance structure. But the direction is clear. Passive ownership alone is no longer enough to justify the place digital assets occupy on balance sheets. Yields are becoming a central measure of the maturity of government bonds and are a core element of how markets value companies with digital asset exposure.
The winner in this next stage will not be the largest holder. They will be the most disciplined operators.
Important notice:
This article was produced by Greengage & Co. Limited for informational and thought leadership purposes only. It is intended solely for use by businesses, professional counterparties, and institutional market participants and is not intended for retail consumers. This does not constitute financial advice, investment advice, financial promotion, or a recommendation or solicitation to buy, sell, or hold any property, security, or financial instrument.
Digital assets can be subject to significant price fluctuations and regulatory changes. Past performance is not indicative of future results. All investments involve risk, including the possible loss of capital. The forward-looking statements and market forecasts referenced herein are based on third-party research and do not represent the views or forecasts of Greengage & Co. Limited.
Greengage & Co. Limited is not authorized or regulated in the investment business by the Financial Conduct Authority. Greengage acts solely as an introducer to independent third-party service providers and does not arrange, finance, store, or provide investment management services for investments.
Readers should seek independent professional advice before making any investment decisions.
