In May, inflows into digital asset treasury companies (DAT) totaled $180.5 million, down from $4 billion the previous month. Almost all of this amount was attributed to firms holding Bitcoin on their balance sheets.

Source: DefiLlama.

This figure is 95% lower than in April and approximately 93% below the average for January to May. This decline followed two months of heightened activity: $4.28 billion in March and $4 billion in April.

Companies with Bitcoin on their balance sheets accounted for $177.85 million (about 98% of the total). In comparison, this segment attracted $3.88 billion in April. No significant changes were observed for other assets: Zcash and Sui saw slight inflows, while Litecoin experienced an outflow of $1.89 million.

The End of Passive Accumulation Era

According to a report from Galaxy, as the market declined in 2025-2026, premiums for DAT firms began to decrease. Investors are no longer willing to overpay just for access to Bitcoin or Ethereum through the stock market.

A study by Everstake supports this trend: staking accounted for an average of 60% of total revenue for the companies that disclosed their data. Meanwhile, the total net losses for the analyzed firms amounted to $1.41 billion.

Galaxy analysts identified several survival strategies for "DAT 2.0":

  • staking and MEV: operating their own validators to earn rewards and transaction fees;
  • DeFi strategies: providing liquidity in AMMs and arbitraging liquidations;
  • basis trading: using futures to generate returns with neutral risk;
  • mergers and investments: acquiring operational businesses within the ecosystem (media, infrastructure).

An example of market transformation is Nakamoto, which acquired the media holding BTC Inc. and the UTXO Management division. This allowed the firm to generate income independent of Bitcoin's price volatility.

Experts emphasize that the emergence of spot crypto ETFs has removed public companies' monopoly on providing regulated access to crypto assets. Their viability now depends on the effective use of their balance sheets rather than the volume of coins held.

It is worth noting that at the beginning of the year, corporate holders of Ethereum faced billion-dollar "paper" losses following the market correction.