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Digital Asset Treasury (DATs) companies – firms that put bitcoin on the balance sheet – were the talk of the town during BTC Asia in Hong Kong.
But corporate adoption of Bitcoin can be a double-edged sword, says Alessio Quaglini, CEO and Co-Founder of crypto custodian Hex Trust. While treasury holdings put crypto on the balance sheets of public companies, he warns that leveraged strategies could turn adoption into a source of instability.
“It’s great for the adoption. It’s great because you have basically indirect bitcoin access to billions of people investing in local stock exchanges and Nasdaq,” Quaglini told CoinDesk during a recent interview on the sidelines of BTC Asia in Hong Kong.
But he drew a sharp line between healthy diversification and financial engineering.
“If this listing company exists for the sole purpose of holding crypto, well then, it’s a hedge fund that is publicly traded. It’s a financial engineering kind of exercise,” he continued.
Quaglini, like many others in the industry, is concerned about excessive levels of leverage. A recent report from Galaxy illustrates the risk, showing loan volumes at their highest since 2022 alongside a $1 billion liquidation wave, while Korean regulators have already stepped in to freeze new lending products as they grow concerned about leverage straining markets.
“If these companies deploy leverage, and they issue debt to buy Bitcoin with strong triggers, then it’s a big issue,” Quaglini said. In public markets, debt covenants are transparent, meaning traders can anticipate forced selling. “You might be in the situation of the prisoner dilemma… You can have this kind of spiral effect that brings more volatility to the industry.”
Even so, Quaglini sees today’s treasury players as a first step.
“The next step is that you have real companies that do have a lot of operating cash flow, and they’re sitting on huge amounts of cash, like Apple, Google, etc.,” he said. If those firms start allocating reserves into BTC, the shift would be “extremely positive.”
In the end, the real test of the viability of DATs isn’t whether small firms turn themselves into bitcoin proxies, but whether the world’s largest corporates are willing to put their cash piles on-chain.
Market Movement
BTC: Bitcoin is in the green changing hands above $109K. The world’s largest digital asset is stabilizing after August saw a rare rotation out of BTC spot ETFs into ETH funds, which has weighed on relative BTC demand in recent weeks. Broader macro remains supportive but price action is still consolidating beneath mid‑August highs
ETH: Ether is trading at $4,298. Market participants are easing on profit‑taking after notching record levels late last month and bumping into resistance near the high‑$4,000s. The August ETF flow trend favored ETH, but near‑term consolidation dominates after the run‑up
Gold: Gold is holding near a four‑month high on mounting bets for a September Fed rate cut and a softer U.S. dollar, both of which typically support bullion
Nikkei 225: Asia-Pacific markets mostly rose as investors weighed tariff uncertainty and the Shanghai Cooperation Organization summit, with Japan’s Nikkei 225 up 0.31% after a U.S. court ruled most of Trump’s global tariffs illegal.
Elsewhere in Crypto:
Author: Sam Reynolds
