Today’s news might be a wake-up call for many.

The Head of Research at CoinShares recently made a public statement: the bubble of Digital Asset Treasury (DAT) companies has completely burst.

Sounds technical? What it really means is—those projects over the past year that relied on “hoarding tokens and spinning stories,” with valuations soaring to three, five, or even ten times their market cap net asset value (mNAV), are now collapsing across the board. Many can’t even maintain a 1x ratio.

But it’s not just about valuations dropping.
This is the simultaneous collapse of three layers of logic:

First layer: business models propped up by treasuries
Second layer: valuation models built on market cap stories
Third layer: operations relying on retail investors as exit liquidity

The bursting of the bubble isn’t necessarily a bad thing. It means the market is finally starting to liquidate those overinflated narratives.

Next, I’ll break down the ins and outs of this bubble for you.

**How did the DAT bubble inflate? The core trick: using the treasury as a growth engine**

You’ve probably seen projects like this:

- Treasury assets of $500 million
- Token market cap of $5 billion
- mNAV pumped to 10x
- All their messaging is about “strong reserves”