Corporations could one day own a third of all BTC: Swan Bitcoin CIO
Strive board member Ben Werkman expects thousands of firms to hold BTC, if only “to protect themselves”
botanical illustrations/Shutterstock and Adobe stock modified by Blockworks
Roughly a third of all bitcoin could one day be owned by corporations, Swan Bitcoin Chief Investment Officer Ben Werkman projects.
President Donald Trump’s strategic bitcoin reserve order helped clear the path for companies, meaning the risk-reward for adopting bitcoin “has never been better,” he said.
“I won’t be surprised to see 25-35% of bitcoin held by corporations, but keep in mind it seems we’re also going to have some involvement from sovereign wealth funds and central banks,” Werkman told Blockworks in an interview. “I think the pockets of demand are going to get really wide.”
Werkman is a board member of Strive Asset Management, an investment firm that announced earlier this month that it plans to combine with Asset Entities and form a NASDAQ-listed bitcoin treasury company.
Co-founded by Vivek Ramaswamy, Strive signed a $750 million private investment in public equity with Asset Entities on Tuesday — the proceeds of which would “support the company’s first wave of Bitcoin acquisitions.” The companies also seek to acquire public companies trading below net cash to then buy bitcoin at a discount.
Read more: Why execs say a corporate bitcoin adoption boom is inevitable
Not all companies will become what Werkman called “leveraged bitcoin equities” — the ones that utilize the capital markets to actively accumulate it (like Michael Saylor’s Strategy).
Some could simply choose to make a policy change to allow what they’re holding in US dollars — perhaps 3-5% of corporate reserves — to go toward bitcoin instead, he explained.
A former equity analyst for firms like Strategy, Metaplanet and Semler Scientific, Werkman has also done consulting for public and private companies exploring how to structure BTC treasury strategies.
“I’ve not yet seen a company that’s been evaluating this where they haven’t been open to starting to have these conversations,” he said. “That tells me they’re realizing they’ve got a problem, and all the uncertainty that’s happened over the last six months has really amplified that for them.”
Keep reading for more excerpts from Blockworks’ interview with Werkman.
Blockworks: What were the main contributors to bitcoin hitting a new all-time high last week?
Werkman: Obviously, on the corporate adoption side, you’re seeing a huge amount of capital start to enter the space. The type of foundational buying pressure from long-only participants — people that aren’t sellers — is really growing, so that’s building a foundational bid underneath bitcoin.
But broader than that, I think you’re seeing a lot of weakness in some of the macro markets. Particularly in Japan, you’re seeing the issues currently rising with the rates over there, and people are starting to get a little scared by that.
What we saw when the tariff scare happened was bitcoin essentially made its pivot from a risk-on asset to a risk-off asset. There was tremendous strength that showed up that I don’t think anybody was anticipating.
And people are looking at what’s going to have to come in the US for them to stabilize around rates and the currency, and I think they’re starting to see the path to easing opening back up again.
Blockworks: Kraken CFO Stephanie Lemmerman said last month she expects 20% of the roughly 55,000 public companies to hold BTC a couple of years from now. Do you agree?
Werkman: I think you’re definitely going to see thousands.
Bitcoin got significantly derisked as an asset class when the United States announced a strategic reserve.
When you think about the time and energy you’re putting into building savings in US dollars, only to know that it’s devaluing every year on you, you need to look for an alternative…that has a completely inelastic supply to the demand for it.
It’s maintaining your purchasing power for your corporation and you’ve got a duty to your shareholders to make sure you’re evaluating all the options.
What gets us to the 20% is, you’re going to have a much smaller cohort of these leveraged bitcoin equities, but you’re going to have a broad cohort that just hold bitcoin the asset in corporate reserves to protect themselves.
Blockworks: How do you expect corporate bitcoin adoption to evolve?
Werkman: We used to all think it would accelerate over the next three to five years and now we’re seeing it accelerate today. It seems like every week there’s an announcement about a new company doing this.
But you’re going to see a lot of differentiation that starts to happen in the market. When you start getting too many companies that are running the same playbook with the same setup…you’re going to start to see some consolidation in the types of investments. Some will be more successful than others.
You can really think about it the way that traditional equities are already structured, where you have value companies, growth companies, and hyper-growth companies. You’re going to see segmentation in this market as well.
Strategy is going to be that value company out there; they’ve achieved scale, they’re safe for institutions to invest in and trade in their products. So they’ve achieved escape velocity on that side, and you’re going to see other bitcoin treasuries grow rather rapidly.
Then there’re going to be new strategies being deployed where they’re going to focus on how fast they’re incrementing that bitcoin per share.
Blockworks: Strategy currently owns 580,250 BTC. How much more do you expect them to accumulate, and can anyone catch up?
Werkman: Strategy really defined the initial playbook that a lot of these companies can follow. That was a really important role for them to fill, because the one thing that really needed to happen was the markets needed to be proved out for each of these different types of offerings, and you needed to really get a sense of who your buyer was on the other side of these transactions.
It’s going to start getting a lot harder to put up the same [acquisition] numbers, because now you’re starting to see the demand’s coming and the part that gives is the price. So you’re going to have to keep buying it at a higher price, which means you’re going to be getting less bitcoin.
So achieving a reserve stack like Strategy has is going to be very difficult for any other company; they’ve got a significant moat because if a buyer came in and started to try to buy [580,000] bitcoins right now, that market’s going to move.
I think [Strategy] is probably targeting a million BTC, but it’s going to become a lot harder to get there because there are so many people who are buying and not selling.
Blockworks: Have you seen situations where it might not make sense for a company to deploy a bitcoin treasury strategy?
Werkman: To deploy the active strategy, yes. But most companies always have an ability or a business case for creating a bitcoin treasury strategy.
It could be something as small as creating an insurance policy for yourself. You don’t want to be the last person that decides to make the change; that’s not a good look for your company.
This interview was edited for clarity and brevity.
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