Analysis of the Binary Relationship between Public Companies and Crypto Assets

Preface

The election of Trump as President of the United States in 2024 will have a significant impact on the global Crypto Assets industry, with crypto-friendly policies becoming one of the core tenets of his governance. Following this are a series of favorable policies such as Bitcoin national reserves, stablecoin legislation, and the listing of Circle. The Crypto Assets industry is gradually moving towards compliance and embracing regulation.

Meanwhile, many listed companies have begun to follow Strategy's BTC hoarding model. There are tens of thousands of listed companies globally, and many companies have seen their market value severely shrink, leading to a lack of liquidity. By becoming hoarders, some shell companies have gained new financing channels to replenish liquidity. Even some companies unrelated to Crypto Assets or finance have joined the hoarding ranks, such as the American luxury car modifier ECD, which raised $500 million through equity financing to become one of the Bitcoin hoarders.

However, recently the options for publicly listed companies to hoard coins have become increasingly diverse, with many tokens from the top 100 crypto assets being listed as alternatives. In fact, many project tokens are not suitable for long-term holding. Moreover, many tokens are relatively centralized, with significant decision-making power held by the founding team, making it difficult for hoarders to exert a greater influence. This article will explore the binary relationship between hoarders and crypto assets in detail, as well as thoughts on the topic of decentralization.

1. The Perspective of Public Companies on Crypto Assets

There is no doubt that the primary demand for publicly listed companies choosing to finance and purchase Crypto Assets is market value management. According to statistics, there are currently 34 publicly listed companies holding BTC. At the same time, the management of several companies is actively transforming their companies into hoarders of ETH, SOL, HYPE, and other Crypto Assets by 2025, in order to emulate the successful path of Strategy. This strategy has indeed brought significant growth to the stock prices of publicly listed companies.

Sharplink previously focused on sports betting and completed a private placement financing of approximately $425 million in May 2025, significantly purchasing ETH as its main reserve asset. The company's stock price rose from $2.97 to $124 within 10 days, an increase of over 40 times. The early blockchain investment firm Cypherpunk Holdings rebranded to SOL Strategies in September 2024, indicating its focus on Solana-based strategies. The company's stock price increased from $0.08 to $4.24 within 3 months, an increase of over 50 times.

Many listed companies see the transformation into coin hoarders as a panacea for boosting stock prices, and the purchased Crypto Assets have expanded from BTC to SOL, HYPE, BNB, and others. In fact, many companies buy coins as a follow-the-crowd behavior, and the management does not fully understand Crypto Assets, lacking long-term strategic planning for coin purchases. This chapter will filter suitable Crypto Assets for purchase based on different needs from the perspective of listed companies.

1.1 In terms of covering financing costs, PoS public chain tokens > PoW public chain tokens

The initial public awareness of publicly listed companies holding coins originated from Strategy's one-time purchase of over 20,000 BTC in 2020, with CEO Michael Saylor claiming that they would only buy and not sell BTC in the future. Coinciding with the BTC bull market of 2020-2021, Strategy's reputation continued to grow, and purchasing Crypto Assets allowed publicly listed companies to turn their fortunes around, becoming a classic case in the capital market.

Bitcoin is the representative public chain of PoW( proof of work), continuously performing hash collisions in mining pools through CPU, GPU, ASIC, and other chip computing power, ultimately completing block production to earn BTC rewards. Before strategizing to buy BTC, Bitcoin mining companies like Marathon, Riot, Cleanspark, etc., mainly engage in mining, and their balance sheets contain some unsold Crypto Assets.

For listed companies, assets like BTC and other PoW public chain assets are similar to gold; once purchased, they can only serve as strategic reserves and are difficult to generate "money from money" through other means. PoS public chains, on the other hand, assign more weight to the tokens themselves. Transactions on PoS public chains require node block approvals, and to become a node, a certain amount of governance tokens must be staked. In the Ethereum network, nodes must stake a fixed amount of 32 ETH, while in the Solana network, there is no limit on the staking amount. Holders of governance tokens can share a certain percentage of transaction Gas fees as rewards ( different public chain revenue-sharing mechanisms differ ).

For publicly listed companies that rely on debt financing, holding PoS public chain governance tokens and staking can yield an annualized return of 2%-7%. This portion of the income may cover the company's debt financing costs. Even if the company's performance declines, companies holding PoS public chain tokens do not need to worry about interest repayment issues.

How listed companies choose PoS public chain Crypto Assets 1.2

Compared to the "Buy and Hold" strategy for BTC, the selection and purchase of PoS public chain governance tokens by listed companies is a more complex system engineering task. Some listed companies may prefer to purchase cryptocurrencies with higher price volatility; some may prefer to buy cryptocurrencies with a higher degree of decentralization; and some companies may be unable to build their own nodes, thus requiring the purchase of cryptocurrencies that have established liquid staking platforms. The table below summarizes the characteristics of various tokens from multiple dimensions, serving as a comprehensive reference for listed companies planning to purchase Crypto Assets.

The staking yield can be compared to the dividend rate of stocks. Starting from the demand of listed companies, the demand for becoming PoS token hoarders can be divided into three categories: ( to obtain high staking yields, covering financing costs while having positive cash inflow. ) to achieve high asset appreciation, driving the growth of stock prices. ( to occupy a core position in the ecosystem, strategically layout around the public chain ecosystem. The following text will filter suitable targets based on the different objectives of listed companies.

)# 1.2.1 Pursue High Staking Returns: SOL staking yield is high, and the public chain transaction volume is stable.

For publicly listed companies with high costs associated with issuing new stocks or bonds, high-yielding Crypto Assets have strong appeal. According to data, the 7-day annualized return rates of public chains such as Polkadot, Cosmos, and Celestia all exceed 10%. However, these Crypto Assets have a very weak price preservation capability due to their own high inflation rates. The aforementioned three types of assets have fallen 42%, 36%, and 71% respectively over the past year. Staking yields cannot cover the decline in coin prices, making them not the optimal choice for publicly listed companies.

In contrast, SOL has maintained an upward trend in token price over the past two years while offering a relatively high staking yield, with the maximum price drawdown being 52%, indicating strong stability. In the Solana staking yield model, node staking yield = ( blockchain rewards + MEV income + Tips income ) / total staking amount.

On both ends of the formula, the numerator shows the highest proportion of blockchain rewards, which are related to the transaction volume of public chains. The transaction volume of the Solana public chain has maintained rapid growth over the past 5 years, with a monthly transaction volume of 2.97 billion in June. On the denominator side, the current staking rate of SOL has reached over 65%, so there will not be a situation where a large amount of SOL joining the staking nodes causes a decrease in yield. Overall, the staking rewards for Solana network nodes at 7% are relatively stable.

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From the perspective of publicly listed companies, the relatively difficult step in the business model of becoming a SOL coin hoarder through targeted issuance or bond financing and obtaining positive cash flow through node staking is building nodes independently. Solana network nodes require high-performance servers as hardware support, with a minimum configuration of a 64-core processor, 256G of memory, and a 1T hard drive. In addition, becoming a network node also requires high-speed network bandwidth support. On the software side, to become a Solana node, one needs to download Git, Rust, Docker, and configuring the node requires certain coding knowledge.

It can be seen that publicly listed companies building their own Solana network nodes require a high technical threshold. If the company determines that the process of building its own nodes is relatively complex, it can choose either a liquid staking platform or RPC node service.

Jito is currently one of the main liquidity staking platforms on the Solana network. Its staking operation is relatively simple; you can connect your wallet and input the corresponding amount to obtain an annualized return of 7.19% as of July 3, 2025. However, using a staking platform will reduce your returns to some extent, as the platform will not show the direct deduction ratio. Specialized staking platforms can obtain higher tips and MEV floating profits through staking, while stakers receive fixed annualized returns.

For companies that hope to obtain excess returns through Tips and MEV, but want to lower the threshold for node setup and fixed capital investment, they can choose RPC node services from node service providers like Helius. Users rent the bare metal servers from the service provider, which ensure the minimum latency )<50ms( and high throughput to meet the high-performance requirements of Solana validators. Unlike platforms like Jito, where user returns are fixed and platform profits fluctuate; Helius and other service providers charge users a fixed fee ) with different package costs (, while floating revenues such as MEV and Tips completely belong to the users.

In summary, each of the three options has its pros and cons. Staking platforms are suitable for lightweight coin holders with lower investments, RPC node outsourcing services are suitable for medium-sized coin holders with a certain level of investment, while self-built nodes are suitable for coin holders with relatively strong capital and certain technical building capabilities. Additionally, being a SOL coin holder also carries certain risks, as the Solana network is relatively centralized and has previously experienced multiple mainnet outages, which can have a certain impact on token prices.

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)# 1.2.2 Pursuit of Value Growth: HYPE Trading Fee Buyback Mechanism, coin price has achieved 10 times growth

For publicly listed companies facing liquidity shortages, the primary short-term demand remains to enhance stock market value, maintaining normal operations of the company through methods such as reducing stock holdings. As hoarders of coins, publicly listed companies commonly boost stock prices by purchasing high growth or highly valued assets. HYPE is the mainstream crypto asset for market capitalization growth in the first half of 2025. If publicly listed companies become hoarders of HYPE, their stock prices will be linked to the price of HYPE tokens, potentially achieving rapid growth in company market capitalization in the short term.

Compared to public chains like SUI, TRON, and XRP, which have also seen significant market cap growth in the past year, HYPE's advantage lies in its refined token supply and demand management, ensuring the scarcity of HYPE tokens. In the past six months, Hyperliquid's assistance fund has cumulatively repurchased HYPE worth $910 million by reinvesting about 97% of the Gas fee income into HYPE buybacks. Currently, only 34% of the total supply is in circulation, with 23.8% of the tokens held by the team locked until 2027-2028, and nearly 39% of the tokens designated for community rewards will be gradually distributed. As the project has not accepted venture capital funding, there is no external selling pressure, enhancing the long-term value potential of HYPE.

The operational nodes of Hyperliquid are more centralized compared to Solana, with only 21 nodes in the entire network, which to some extent maintains the high-efficiency operation of the public chain. Therefore, even if a listed company purchases a large amount of HYPE, it is difficult to become one of the 21 core nodes. The official staking platform of the public chain, StakedHYPE, will become an option for hoarders to obtain additional profits through staking. This platform has attracted over 10 million HYPE for staking. Compared to other public chains, the staking yield of HYPE is relatively low, with current data showing a yield of only 2.28%.

1.2.3 Pursuing ecological layout: ETH has a high degree of decentralization, and the difficulty of Layer 2 development is low.

In the field of Crypto Assets, public chain redundancy is a noticeable phenomenon. According to statistics, the total number of public chains on the entire network has exceeded 200. In fact, most developers choose to develop products on major public chains such as Ethereum, Solana, and Sui, while the trading volume of many independent public chains has been declining year by year.

From the perspective of listed companies, some companies are no longer satisfied with merely being coin hoarders, but instead hope to develop DeFi or GameFi projects on public chains through coin hoarding, thereby constructing a second growth curve for their business. Ethereum Layer2 model