DAT-a crunch: Momentum builds around ETH treasury companies
Ether-focused BitMine Immersion saw its daily trading volumes surge this week
Artwork by Crystal Le
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It’s worth taking another look at those corporations hoarding crypto — particularly as we see momentum around the ones accumulating ETH.
You may know them as crypto treasury companies or, as Blockworks Research’s Dan Smith calls them: DATs (digital asset treasuries).
But no matter the label, they’ve grown big enough for many to notice — and we’re not just talking about Michael Saylor’s Strategy.
Though Strategy (holding 628,946 BTC) has historically dominated trading volumes in this segment of companies, we saw BitMine Immersion (BMNR) eclipse the firm on that metric a few times this week.
BitMine said Monday it held $4.96 billion worth of ether. That means that roughly five weeks after revealing its ETH accumulation plans, the company has the world’s largest corporate ether treasury. BitMine’s stated goal is to own 5% of the ETH supply.
Blockworks’ Smith previously addressed BMNR’s rising daily volumes within a broader “flywheel”:
Another big crypto treasury firm focused on ether is SharpLink Gaming. That’s the one with Ethereum co-founder Joseph Lubin as its board chair.
ETH treasury companies now hold nearly 2% of all ETH — up from about 0.5% a month ago. Not quite the percentage bitcoin treasury companies (mostly MSTR) hold, but getting closer:
To be clear, the market cap of companies building ETH treasuries is only about 11% of those with BTC-buying strategies ($107.6 billion to $12.7 billion).
Benchmark analyst Mark Palmer said he views the recent volume surge for ETH treasury-focused companies as “largely a new-entrant phenomenon.”
“We would expect treasury company launches focused on other cryptocurrencies to see similar surges in trading volume as they start to deploy the capital they have raised and attract investor attention,” he told me.
We’ve mentioned in this newsletter before about the firms looking to hoard crypto assets beyond BTC and ETH (i.e. solana, BNB, SUI and HYPE).
The growing number of these types of firms has spurred some skepticism. Not all will last, some say — particularly any copycats with no differentiation, or those targeting less tested assets. Felix discussed this universe of companies on stage with industry executives at Permissionless IV, and the Empire podcast crew has also weighed in on the space plenty (see here and here).
The ongoing emergence of these models doesn’t necessarily make the segment a bubble (at least in the classic sense), Palmer argued.
“Unlike the dot-com era, when companies chased the same market with similar offerings, crypto treasury firms are taking siloed approaches in which a given firm focuses on a specific cryptocurrency and a single jurisdiction,” he explained. “Or it has a differentiated approach such as a franchise-based model aimed at accelerated token accumulation.”
I’ll be most interested to see the market cap growth of those focused on ETH (and other altcoins) relative to the BTC ones. Compared to Strategy, this segment’s companies are rather young and small. We don’t have to rush to judgment.
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