Bitcoin Treasuries building The Future Of Financial Services
The more I study what is happening around Bitcoin treasuries, the clearer it becomes that this is not a side show or a speculative corner of the market. It looks increasingly like the early architecture of an entirely new financial system being built on top of Bitcoin. If they implement properly, the most disciplined Bitcoin Treasury Companies are not just “Bitcoin with leverage”. They start to resemble challenger banks for a future Bitcoin standard and, in time, potential rivals to today’s incumbent banks – and even the existing reserve banking model.
Don’t get me wrong. My default position is very simple. Buy Bitcoin, secure it in self custody for the long term, and sleep well. That remains the foundation. A low risk buy and HODL approach in your own wallet still has a strong claim to being the cleanest expression of what Bitcoin makes possible.
In the last cycle – a second layer of opportunity has emerged alongside that base case, especially for your capital that already sits in traditional shares and funds rather than in sats.
I think Bitcoin early adopters are starting to recognise this. Many are no longer only stacking in cold storage. They’ve been taking a portion of capital and selectively rotating it into Bitcoin Treasury Companies in order to participate in building the banking layer on top of Bitcoin rather than only watching it evolve from the outside.
This makes a lot more sense to me. I was thinking that everyone was simply selling out but instead what we’re seeing is a shift in focus from the question “how much Bitcoin do I own” to the deeper question “who will run the balance sheets that define the next monetary era and how do I own a slice of those”.
Self Sovereignty Versus Institutional Structure
The tension here is easy to state. Bitcoin’s ethos is self sovereignty. The phrase “not your keys, not your coins” exists for a reason. Direct self custody with a robust setup removes the counterparty layer and aligns closely with the original intent that money can be moved into an effectively uncontrollable location, outside the reach of fragile intermediaries or government bodies.
Corporate treasuries are solving different problems. Institutional capital operates under mandates, regulations and operational controls that make direct self custody difficult at scale. While I’ve been working hard to solve this, and we are working on some very legitimate solutions, the reality – as Stafford Masie repeatedly reminds me – is that pension funds, insurers and many asset managers are still required to live inside audited accounts, listed instruments and tightly defined risk frameworks.
For that world internationally, Bitcoin Treasury Companies act as a sort of regulatory wrapper. They provide access to Bitcoin exposure through familiar tools like equities, prospectuses and board governed treasury policies, without the excessive fees of ETFs.
These companies also have access to something individuals usually do not. As listed entities they can issue shares and debt, especially convertible notes, to raise fiat capital and convert that into Bitcoin. When managed with discipline, this turns the corporate into a Bitcoin accumulation machine. The key metric becomes Bitcoin per share rather than only earnings per share.
Over time, successful treasuries increase that figure and long term holders gain a form of intelligent leverage on the underlying asset. This is the part of the Treasury Company that I don’t particularly enjoy. Using FIAT methodologies – which I’ve spent so much time explaining and studying – just feels wrong as a Bitcoiner. That’s a tension you have to deal with if you go down the Treasury Company pathway.
Austrian Economics And The Shift In Monetary Foundations
From an Austrian economics perspective the deeper story is not only about a new asset. It is about a change in who controls the balance sheets that shape money and credit. Traditional banking and reserve banking sit on top of an elastic, centrally managed money supply. Policy makers attempt to steer credit and interest rates through committees and models.
Austrian thinkers like Mises and Hayek highlighted how limited those planners are in the information they can actually access, and how that limitation leads to mispricing, malinvestment and repeated boom bust cycles. Contrary to the popular opinion, this doesn’t mean the players are evil – just stuck with poor tools and even worse education, without an alternative avenue. Bitcoin delivers that alternative.
With hard money as a base, Bitcoin treasuries respond to this in a different way. They base their capital structure on a form of private property that is absolutely scarce, transparent and globally verifiable. A large on chain Bitcoin treasury is, in practice, a pool of pristine collateral. That collateral does not depend on the solvency of a central bank or the promises of a state. It is visible in real time, can be audited by anyone and cannot be diluted by decree.
This foundation allows these companies to behave more like market entrepreneurs than central planners. They are exposed to competitive discovery. If they misprice risk, over extend leverage or misallocate capital, shareholders can respond immediately. Prices move, management gets challenged, capital flows elsewhere. That messy process is far closer to the decentralised, spontaneous order Austrian economics expects, where institutions evolve by trial, error and improvement rather than by design from above.
The risk, of course, is that – as Saifedean reminds us – on a hard money standard weak actors go bust – and if your selected Treasury Company makes significant judgement errors or takes unnecessary risk – your investment in them could leave you a rather dishevelled creditor in their liquidation.
From Treasury Company To Challenger Bank
A well run Bitcoin treasury has the potential to grow into something that looks very similar to a challenger bank but on a Bitcoin standard. If it stays conservative and transparent over time, it can:
- Accumulate a large, visible Bitcoin reserve on chain
- Use that reserve as collateral for low cost borrowing in fiat or future Bitcoin denominated markets
- Provide credit and liquidity to clients who cannot yet hold Bitcoin directly or who need working capital
- Support payment, settlement and treasury services built on top of that reserve
At that point the line between “Bitcoin stock” and “monetary institution” becomes blurred. The reserve asset is Bitcoin. The services are familiar financial services, yet grounded in an asset base that is harder and more transparent than traditional reserves. This is where the quiet conflict with the legacy system becomes more visible. Existing money centre banks and reserve banks will not find it comfortable to compete with entities that hold harder collateral, attract global capital and, over time, may even help define a new reference rate for low risk borrowing anchored in Bitcoin rather than in policy meetings.
Resistance to this shift is already visible in the form of potential index exclusions, narrative attacks about systemic risk, and aggressive shorting of Strategy – the leader of the Bitcoin treasuries. These pressures introduce obvious risks for shareholders. They may also, at times, create the very mispricings that attract new long term capital when balance sheets remain strong and execution remains careful.
Why Strategy Looks More Like Monetary Infrastructure Than A Simple Punt
Strategy (MSTR) is an obvious case study. On a price chart it looks highly volatile and deeply tied to the Bitcoin price cycle – but with more volatility. It is not a gentle ride by any stretch of the imagination. Underneath that volatility sits a very deliberate project: converting a traditional corporate balance sheet into a very large Bitcoin treasury, using capital markets intelligently to keep increasing Bitcoin per share and treating Bitcoin as the central strategic reserve.
This does not remove risk. Companies can still make mistakes, face regulatory challenges or encounter governance failures. The endemic risk of the custodian of all the bitcoin still remains a massive industry-wide problem (unless your coins are in your own custody).
At the same time, the sheer size of the treasury and the use of leverage so far mean it is possible to view Strategy less as a high beta tech punt and more as an early form of Bitcoin native monetary infrastructure. That framing does not change the risks, although it perhaps does change the potential upside of owning a part of this company over the next twenty to thirty years.
African Context: Africa Bitcoin Corporation And Reg 28
In South Africa, Africa Bitcoin Corporation offers a useful local example. If Regulation 28 is amended or interpreted in a way that allows retirement funds to gain meaningful Bitcoin linked exposure through a listed vehicle, that creates a channel for very conservative, rule bound capital to start interacting with Bitcoin in a structured way.
But ABC has been clever in opening up listings in other continental domiciles. There, they may be able to accept Pension fund investors sooner, giving other African nations a chance to gain more Bitcoin exposure before South Africa can enter the market.
Retirement money demands governance, transparency and compliance that trustees can defend to regulators and members. A listed Bitcoin treasury that meets those safeguards can, in theory, become a core holding inside that world. The potential scale is obvious. So are the likely challenges. Regulatory and political scrutiny, liquidity constraints in a smaller market and public concern that this represents an informal route around current prohibitions are all likely hurdles.
Regulation28 prohibits investment by pensions into crypto assets whether “directly or indirectly” – a blow to those who thought they could side-step the regulations and buy a converted share like AltVest and get instant exposure to Bitcoin.
If a structure like ABC manages those pressures, builds its treasury conservatively and leans into disclosure, then short term volatility and occasional attack may look different in hindsight.
ABC has a unique model in the space with the existing Credit Fund that loans capital to SMMEs – now launching in other African markets. Their strategy to build Bitcoin exposure in this while empowering people and growing their treasury is one to watch.
Self Custody As Base, Treasuries As Parallel Experiment
None of this replaces the role of self custodial Bitcoin. That remains the base layer for anyone who cares about sovereignty and long term wealth preservation. A simple, well designed HODL strategy in cold storage still stands on its own, without needing any extra packaging or financial engineering on top.
Bitcoin treasuries sit in a different bucket entirely. They are corporate structures built above that base layer, with all the usual strengths and weaknesses of public companies. Boards, auditors, regulations, incentives, reporting cycles, index rules and market sentiment all matter. In return, these structures hold the potential to evolve into the balance sheets that may start to look like the banks and quasi reserve banks of a more Bitcoin anchored financial system.
It does not have to be a binary choice between the two. It is possible to treat self custody as the strategic foundation, then observe or engage with Bitcoin treasuries as a separate, higher risk experiment. The interesting part, at least to me, is the timing. It is unusual to live through a period where a possible new reserve asset is still being monetised while the first generation of institutions that might one day operate on top of it are also taking shape in public markets.
In my opinion, if you’ve got Bitcoin in self custody – enough to retire on – and you want to be part of the banks of the future – then it may be worth exploring Bitcoin Treasuries.
Every path comes with trade offs, blind spots and unknowns. The simple fact that individuals can today hold both the base money in self custody and, if they choose, small pieces of the corporate balance sheets building on that money, feels historically significant enough to at least pay attention to.
