DWF Ventures finds most crypto treasury stocks trade below their holdings’ value

DWF Ventures, a crypto-focused investment firm, has published a ranking showing that most publicly traded “digital asset treasury” companies now trade below the value of the crypto they hold. The finding challenges the premise that has driven billions of dollars into these vehicles: that owning the stock is a better bet than owning the underlying token.

• Only 4 of the top 20 crypto treasury stocks trade above the value of their holdings, per DWF Ventures
• Bit Digital leads the group with a market-value-to-net-asset-value ratio of 1.49x as of September 21
• SovereignAI ranks last at 0.22x, while Strategy, the largest corporate Bitcoin holder, sits at 0.97x

• 1.49x Bit Digital’s mNAV, the highest of the top 20 treasury stocks
• 0.22x SovereignAI’s mNAV, the lowest of the group DWF ranked
• 4 of the top 20 treasury stocks trade above their crypto holdings’ worth
• 38% Cypherpunk Technologies’ share gain over its Zcash holdings since July

A September 24 (Thursday) report from DWF Ventures, shared alongside a ranking posted on X, found that just 4 of the top 20 crypto treasury companies trade above the value of the tokens sitting on their balance sheets, according to reporting by BeInCrypto. Digital asset treasuries, or DATs, are listed firms whose business model centers on accumulating and holding crypto rather than operating a traditional product or service. The report also found that most of these companies have underperformed the tokens they hold since their treasury strategies began.

Bit Digital’s 1.49x mNAV tops a list where Strategy now trades below its Bitcoin

DWF’s metric is market-value-to-net-asset-value, or mNAV, which compares a DAT’s stock market capitalization against the dollar value of its crypto holdings. A reading above 1 means investors are paying a premium for the shares over the coins themselves; a reading below 1 means the stock trades at a discount to the assets backing it. Using data as of September 21 (Monday), DWF put Bit Digital at the top of its 20-company list with an mNAV of 1.49x.

Strive followed at 1.21x, Hyperliquid Strategies at 1.17x and BitMine at 1.02x. Strategy, the software company that built the largest corporate Bitcoin position in the world, registered 0.97x, meaning its stock now trades slightly below the value of the BTC it holds. SovereignAI sat at the bottom of the ranking at 0.22x. DWF noted that all of these mNAV figures exclude debt and preferred stock, so they measure equity value against crypto holdings rather than a company’s full capital structure.

DWF blames a shrinking ‘access premium’ as ETFs open a direct path to crypto

DWF’s report attributes the compressed valuations to the erosion of what it calls an access premium. Institutions once paid extra for DAT shares because regulated funds could not easily hold Bitcoin, Ethereum or other tokens directly. That constraint has largely disappeared as spot exchange-traded funds, regulated private funds and custody providers now let institutional buyers get exposure without owning a treasury stock as a proxy.

“However, as SEC proposed to quicken the listing process by over 75% for ETFs, the access premium has reduced significantly over the years. Institutional buyers have a lot more assets to choose from for ETFs, regulated private funds and custodian infrastructure allowing for direct deployment, which was not possible before.”

DWF Ventures, September 24 report

The proposed acceleration of the ETF listing timeline widens that gap further. Faster approvals mean more competing products for the same institutional dollars that once had nowhere else to go but treasury stocks.

Hyperliquid Strategies and Cypherpunk lead a rally DWF calls short-lived

Looking at the full period since each DAT began its treasury strategy, DWF found investors would mostly have done better simply holding the token. The handful of companies that beat their own asset base did so by margins too small to justify the added equity risk.

Shorter time frames tell a different story. Since July, DAT shares have outrun their underlying tokens by 15% to 40%, pushing mNAV ratios up from a range of 0.5x-0.8x to a range of 0.7x-1.0x.

Hyperliquid Strategies, which trades under the ticker PURR and holds Hyperliquid’s HYPE token, gained 31% more than HYPE over that window. Cypherpunk Technologies, a Zcash treasury trading as CYPH, beat its underlying ZEC token by 38%. DWF noted that tokens-per-share at these companies barely moved during the rally, meaning the gains reflect investor sentiment rather than any change in how many coins each share represents. Beyond the three-month window, the report found, the token remained the better-performing asset.

The BlockWest read. DWF’s numbers point past valuation math to capital structure risk. Strategy’s preferred dividend obligations and debt seniority mean a sustained mNAV discount could force Bitcoin sales to meet payments, pressuring the stock further and testing whether other DATs with similar leverage can avoid the same feedback loop. Boards raising debt or preferred equity against treasury holdings are the ones allocators should scrutinize first.

DWF Ventures said it expects board decisions and capital structure choices, particularly debt seniority and preferred dividend obligations like those carried by Strategy, to increasingly determine how DATs are valued going forward. The firm warned that if confidence in a heavily leveraged treasury cracks, forced asset sales to cover fixed payments could push its mNAV into a downward spiral, a scenario it flagged specifically for Strategy without saying it has yet occurred.

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