Best Crypto Treasuries Are ‘doing Something Hard:’ Bitwise 2025

Investors are better off buying ETFs than buying shares in a firm that’s simply putting a crypto asset on its balance sheet, argues Bitwise’s Matt Hougan.

Bitwise chief investment officer Matt Hougan says digital asset treasuries need to start taking the hard path if they want to stand out from the crowd; otherwise, investors are better off investing in crypto exchange-traded funds instead.

One of the best ways to discern whether a digital asset treasury (DAT) is worth looking at is to ask the question, “Are they doing something hard?” Hougan argued in an X post on Wednesday.

“Buying a crypto asset and putting it on a balance sheet today isn’t hard. It was hard at one point, but it’s not hard now. If that’s all a DAT is doing, you are better off owning an ETF. This is true even if the DAT is staking, as ETFs now stake,” he said.

Bitwise has launched a range of ETFs tied to crypto, including a Solana (SOL) ETF that offers staking.

There are a few ways for DATs to stand out, Hougan said, such as participating in the DeFi ecosystem through actions like smart loans, and other income-generating strategies like writing covered calls against crypto.

“These aren’t all necessarily good ideas, and not everyone will do them well. But they are not trivial, and if done well, there is a chance they will be rewarded,” he said.

Hougan argues that Michael Saylor’s Bitcoin hoarding company, Strategy is “doing something hard.” Strategy is a flagship DAT and by far the largest holder with 641,205 in Bitcoin (BTC), worth over $66 billion.

“MicroStrategy already owns $64 billion of Bitcoin against $8 billion of debt, and it’s issuing debt against that position. It is hard to have $56 billion in Bitcoin equity. Go try to raise $56 billion in equity capital to buy Bitcoin in a corporate structure, debt-free. Not easy,” he said.

The number of crypto treasuries has exploded this year, with an October report from Bitwise tracking 48 new instances of companies adding Bitcoin to their balance sheets. The number of Bitcoin treasury companies totals 207, and they collectively hold over one million tokens, worth over $101 billion.

Source: CoinTelegraph