While traditional financial vehicles, such as ETFs, have continued to remain popular investment avenues for many, the last couple of years have seen the rise of digital asset treasury companies (DATCOs), particularly in terms of crypto-exposure. To this point, as of Q3 2025, public DATCOs collectively held over $100 billion in digital assets, with more than 200 U.S. companies announcing treasury strategies aimed at raising an estimated $102 billion for various crypto-centric acquisitions.
These numbers clearly talk to the advantages of these entities as they can, for starters, trade continuously on stock exchanges, providing 24/7 liquidity through their underlying assets even when traditional markets are closed. This effectively creates meaningful arbitrage opportunities and capital efficiency improvements that static ETF structures simply cannot duplicate at this point.
Also, unlike ETFs which are restricted to holding predetermined assets, DATCOs can strategically reallocate treasury holdings across multiple cryptos as well as adjust positions based on market conditions. Not only that, they can even deploy capital into yield-generating protocols.
Validators, Staking, and RWAs
The distinction between passive holding and active treasury management is arguably the most consequential evolution in corporate digital asset strategies. In this regard, most modern DATCOs operate validator nodes across different proof-of-stake (Pos) networks, transforming idle balance sheet assets into revenue-generating infrastructure.
Furthermore, newer DATCOs even incorporate real-world asset (RWA) strategies to improve diversification, collateral efficiency, and liquidity across their treasury holdings. The tokenization of gold, U.S. Treasuries, and other commodities, in particular, have been important in this regard as they have helped counterbalance issues of crypto volatility while bringing investors the operational advantages (such as transparency) of the blockchain.
This expansion has even created opportunities to construct genuinely diversified treasuries combining crypto exposure, yield-generating staking operations, and traditional asset backing within a single, well-regulated equity wrapper. In fact, all of this operates under legal corporate structures, providing investors with familiar governance frameworks, quarterly financial reporting, and securities law protections that direct cryptocurrency ownership lacks.
Forging a new path
Amidst the aforementioned developments, BTCS has carved a niche for itself and transformed into Europe’s largest DATCO. Based in Warsaw and being Poland’s first publicly traded blockchain infrastructure company, it doesn’t rely on passive accumulation alone rather utilizes what it calls an “active treasury strategy” model, wherein its allocations consist of 60% exposure to Bitcoin, 30% to ZIGChain, and 10% to CORE DAO.
Moreover, the project operates multiple validator nodes and provides staking-as-a-service (SaaS) across various networks, enabling investors to earn rewards while actively contributing to the security and stability of these networks. BTCS’ most recent financial disclosures show an approximately 20% higher (YoY) return when compared to other industry players.
Lastly, it bears mentioning that BTCS has integrated Core DAO (TVL of $150+ million) and Solv.Finance, (TVL of $1.4 billion), into its validator and treasury operations while having seen its own market cap increased tenfold to approximately $52 million (with its shares trading at prices significantly above its Series F funding round strike prices).
Therefore, as the DATCO landscape continues to evolve, it will be interesting to see how companies like BTCS continue to provide their investors transparent, compliant exposure to the crypto ecosystem via familiar brokerage account interfaces, thus bypassing many of the complexities involved with direct asset ownership.
