Most investors still judge Digital-Asset Treasuries (DATs) through the single lens of mNAV (market-cap / net-asset-value). This note—compiled from the dashboard built by our partners at Pantera—widens the frame. We disaggregate what actually drives value, how treasuries are managed, and why issuance discipline matters more than the headline premium.

––––––––––

1. The 2025 DAT Summer Is Cooling

The sector exploded this year as Bitmine (BMNR), Sharplink (SBET) and Solana Company (HSDT) went mainstream. The 30 BTC, ETH and SOL DATs we track now add up to US$117 bn in combined market-cap, up from US$88 bn in March. After the latest draw-down the easy momentum is gone, yet the conversation on Twitter, in sell-side notes and even in boardrooms is still stuck on “is it trading at 1.3× or 0.9× book?” That is not enough.

––––––––––

2. Power-Law Reality: Heads Win, Tails Vanish

Like most network assets, DATs follow a ruthless power law. In each bucket—BTC, ETH, SOL—the top three names swallow 70-85 % of NAV and volume. Long-tail issuers trade below cash, struggle to raise, and eventually become shells. The shake-out is healthy: the few DATs that pair real assets with differentiated treasury policy are turning into a new class of listed crypto-capex vehicles; the rest are penny-stock roadkill.

––––––––––

3. Value ≠ Sentiment: Decomposing the Drivers

We split total shareholder return into two clean parts:

A. Intrinsic compounding – Δ(NAV per share) driven by coin price, staking yield, or operating cash-flow ploughed back into crypto.

B. Multiple re-rating – Δ(mNAV) driven purely by sentiment, liquidity and technicals.

Since the spring sell-off, BMNR, HSDT and ETHM have kept NAV/share rising even as their stock prices fell; the entire downside came from multiple compression. Most other names saw both legs drop, but the decomposition shows that the asset side is still working—the market just stopped believing.

––––––––––

4. The Reflexive Flywheel Looks Fragile in a Downturn

The DAT playbook is simple when coins and equities grind higher: issue expensive equity, stack more crypto, grow NAV/share, keep the premium, repeat. In a falling market the loop snaps. Management must choose between (i) doubling down and risking dilution death-spiral or (ii) defending the share count and watching NAV/share erode as the coin mark-to-market drags. Bitmine, MSTR and HSDT have played defence by slowing issuance and using modest leverage; several smaller miners kept printing at discounts and have already diluted themselves into irrelevance.

––––––––––

5. A Two-Lens Evaluation Checklist

Stop staring at mNAV in isolation. A useful appraisal needs two independent scores:

1. Fundamental growth – Is NAV per share rising faster than the native coin?

2. Capital discipline – Is the firm issuing responsibly (i.e. only when mNAV > 1.2× and into accretive coin purchases) and/or using debt that is matched by cash-flow or staking yield?

If either answer is “no”, the DAT is probably destroying value no matter how glossy the slide-deck sounds.

––––––––––

6. Data Gaps Are Holding the Sector Back

Quarterly 10-Qs, PDF tear-sheets, Twitter screenshots, PIPE warrants buried in appendices—DAT disclosure is a circus. The resulting stale share-counts and stale coin marks make mNAV quotes meaningless for days or weeks after big moves. The ecosystem needs (i) a standardised daily template (coins held, shares out, warrants, prefunded, debt, derivatives) and (ii) on-chain attestation of treasury wallets. Until that happens, “transparent” is just marketing.

––––––––––

7. What Exactly Is a DAT?

A DAT is an operating public company whose balance sheet is majority crypto. Investors get BTC, ETH or SOL exposure inside a regulated brokerage account without seed phrases, KYC queues or 1099-decentralised-quest chaos. Unlike ETFs or trusts, DATs can trade, stake, borrow against or even mine their coins; they can also issue equity or debt at will. The NAV is the mark-to-market of those coins plus cash; the market-cap is what equity investors pay for the bundle. Premium or discount to NAV is the market’s real-time vote on management’s ability to compound faster than dilution.

––––––––––

8. Why Anyone Cares

Trad-fi audience: DATs plug digital assets into 401(k)s, SMAs and pension schemes that cannot touch spot crypto directly.

Crypto audience: each new share equals coins taken off the float, deeper staking sets, and another buyer in the secondary market.

PIPE funds: they buy shares (often with a warrant kicker) before the registration statement drops, betting on the flywheel. When it works, everybody gets a levered coin return; when it breaks, the PIPE discount is accused of front-running retail. The data show both stories are true—timing and governance decide which one dominates.

––––––––––

9. Reading the Vital Signs

NAV – Simple sum of coins × spot + cash − debt. Watch the footnotes: some DATs tuck DeFi tokens, NFTs or convertibles into “digital assets”.

mNAV – Market-cap / NAV. >1× usually signals growth credibility; <1× can be either distress or deep value.

Coins per share – The only metric that cannot be fudged by accounting. If it is rising through cycles, management is doing its job.

Turnover (volume ÷ market-cap) – A cleaner liquidity gauge than raw dollar volume because each DAT embeds a different coin price.

Supply capture % – Coins locked in DAT treasuries ÷ total circulating supply. For BTC DATs the number is already 3.2 %; for ETH it is 2.9 %; for SOL only 1.1 % but climbing fast.

––––––––––

10. Where the Raw Data Lie

SEC filings lag, warrants hide in 424B5s, prefunded tranches sit in NAV but not in share count, and some firms announce coin buys on Telegram. The worst sin is ignoring pro-forma dilution: once in-the-money warrants are exercised, NAV is unchanged but share count jumps, collapsing NAV/share and mNAV. Pantera’s dashboard tries to normalise for these ghosts; even so, the error bars on any daily mNAV quote are ±5-10 %.

––––––––––

11. Debt Matters—Adjusted NAV

DATs that lever up via convertible notes or stable-coin loans can look cheap on headline mNAV while actually trading through the floor once debt is netted. The fix is simple: report an adjusted NAV (coins + cash − total liabilities) and an adjusted mNAV. This puts pure-treasury plays such as MSTR on the same footing as hybrid operators like BMNR or SBET and shows whether leverage is amplifying coin returns or just masking equity dilution.

––––––––––

12. Bottom Line

mNAV is a thermometer, not a diagnosis. A DAT that trades at 0.8× but grows coins per share at 15 % a year through disciplined raises and staking yield is probably cheap; a 3× name that funds itself by printing into every rally and has flat coins per share is a melting ice-cube. Look past the multiple, watch the treasury wallet, and demand daily disclosure. The DAT sector will not mature until investors stop asking “what’s the premium?” and start asking “is the flywheel still turning?”

Most investors still judge Digital-Asset Treasuries (DATs) through the single lens of mNAV (market-cap / net-asset-value). This note—compiled from the dashboard built by our partners at Pantera—widens the frame. We disaggregate what actually drives value, how treasuries are managed, and why issuance discipline matters more than the headline premium.

––––––––––

1. The 2025 DAT Summer Is Cooling

The sector exploded this year as Bitmine (BMNR), Sharplink (SBET) and Solana Company (HSDT) went mainstream. The 30 BTC, ETH and SOL DATs we track now add up to US$117 bn in combined market-cap, up from US$88 bn in March. After the latest draw-down the easy momentum is gone, yet the conversation on Twitter, in sell-side notes and even in boardrooms is still stuck on “is it trading at 1.3× or 0.9× book?” That is not enough.

––––––––––

2. Power-Law Reality: Heads Win, Tails Vanish

Like most network assets, DATs follow a ruthless power law. In each bucket—BTC, ETH, SOL—the top three names swallow 70-85 % of NAV and volume. Long-tail issuers trade below cash, struggle to raise, and eventually become shells. The shake-out is healthy: the few DATs that pair real assets with differentiated treasury policy are turning into a new class of listed crypto-capex vehicles; the rest are penny-stock roadkill.

––––––––––

3. Value ≠ Sentiment: Decomposing the Drivers

We split total shareholder return into two clean parts:

A. Intrinsic compounding – Δ(NAV per share) driven by coin price, staking yield, or operating cash-flow ploughed back into crypto.

B. Multiple re-rating – Δ(mNAV) driven purely by sentiment, liquidity and technicals.

Since the spring sell-off, BMNR, HSDT and ETHM have kept NAV/share rising even as their stock prices fell; the entire downside came from multiple compression. Most other names saw both legs drop, but the decomposition shows that the asset side is still working—the market just stopped believing.

––––––––––

4. The Reflexive Flywheel Looks Fragile in a Downturn

The DAT playbook is simple when coins and equities grind higher: issue expensive equity, stack more crypto, grow NAV/share, keep the premium, repeat. In a falling market the loop snaps. Management must choose between (i) doubling down and risking dilution death-spiral or (ii) defending the share count and watching NAV/share erode as the coin mark-to-market drags. Bitmine, MSTR and HSDT have played defence by slowing issuance and using modest leverage; several smaller miners kept printing at discounts and have already diluted themselves into irrelevance.

––––––––––

5. A Two-Lens Evaluation Checklist

Stop staring at mNAV in isolation. A useful appraisal needs two independent scores:

1. Fundamental growth – Is NAV per share rising faster than the native coin?

2. Capital discipline – Is the firm issuing responsibly (i.e. only when mNAV > 1.2× and into accretive coin purchases) and/or using debt that is matched by cash-flow or staking yield?

If either answer is “no”, the DAT is probably destroying value no matter how glossy the slide-deck sounds.

––––––––––

6. Data Gaps Are Holding the Sector Back

Quarterly 10-Qs, PDF tear-sheets, Twitter screenshots, PIPE warrants buried in appendices—DAT disclosure is a circus. The resulting stale share-counts and stale coin marks make mNAV quotes meaningless for days or weeks after big moves. The ecosystem needs (i) a standardised daily template (coins held, shares out, warrants, prefunded, debt, derivatives) and (ii) on-chain attestation of treasury wallets. Until that happens, “transparent” is just marketing.

––––––––––

7. What Exactly Is a DAT?

A DAT is an operating public company whose balance sheet is majority crypto. Investors get BTC, ETH or SOL exposure inside a regulated brokerage account without seed phrases, KYC queues or 1099-decentralised-quest chaos. Unlike ETFs or trusts, DATs can trade, stake, borrow against or even mine their coins; they can also issue equity or debt at will. The NAV is the mark-to-market of those coins plus cash; the market-cap is what equity investors pay for the bundle. Premium or discount to NAV is the market’s real-time vote on management’s ability to compound faster than dilution.

––––––––––

8. Why Anyone Cares

Trad-fi audience: DATs plug digital assets into 401(k)s, SMAs and pension schemes that cannot touch spot crypto directly.

Crypto audience: each new share equals coins taken off the float, deeper staking sets, and another buyer in the secondary market.

PIPE funds: they buy shares (often with a warrant kicker) before the registration statement drops, betting on the flywheel. When it works, everybody gets a levered coin return; when it breaks, the PIPE discount is accused of front-running retail. The data show both stories are true—timing and governance decide which one dominates.

––––––––––

9. Reading the Vital Signs

NAV – Simple sum of coins × spot + cash − debt. Watch the footnotes: some DATs tuck DeFi tokens, NFTs or convertibles into “digital assets”.

mNAV – Market-cap / NAV. >1× usually signals growth credibility; <1× can be either distress or deep value.

Coins per share – The only metric that cannot be fudged by accounting. If it is rising through cycles, management is doing its job.

Turnover (volume ÷ market-cap) – A cleaner liquidity gauge than raw dollar volume because each DAT embeds a different coin price.

Supply capture % – Coins locked in DAT treasuries ÷ total circulating supply. For BTC DATs the number is already 3.2 %; for ETH it is 2.9 %; for SOL only 1.1 % but climbing fast.

––––––––––

10. Where the Raw Data Lie

SEC filings lag, warrants hide in 424B5s, prefunded tranches sit in NAV but not in share count, and some firms announce coin buys on Telegram. The worst sin is ignoring pro-forma dilution: once in-the-money warrants are exercised, NAV is unchanged but share count jumps, collapsing NAV/share and mNAV. Pantera’s dashboard tries to normalise for these ghosts; even so, the error bars on any daily mNAV quote are ±5-10 %.

––––––––––

11. Debt Matters—Adjusted NAV

DATs that lever up via convertible notes or stable-coin loans can look cheap on headline mNAV while actually trading through the floor once debt is netted. The fix is simple: report an adjusted NAV (coins + cash − total liabilities) and an adjusted mNAV. This puts pure-treasury plays such as MSTR on the same footing as hybrid operators like BMNR or SBET and shows whether leverage is amplifying coin returns or just masking equity dilution.

––––––––––

12. Bottom Line

mNAV is a thermometer, not a diagnosis. A DAT that trades at 0.8× but grows coins per share at 15 % a year through disciplined raises and staking yield is probably cheap; a 3× name that funds itself by printing into every rally and has flat coins per share is a melting ice-cube. Look past the multiple, watch the treasury wallet, and demand daily disclosure. The DAT sector will not mature until investors stop asking “what’s the premium?” and start asking “is the flywheel still turning?”