Ran Neuner - These Crypto Treasury Stocks Will End the Crypto Cycle - TOKEN2049 Singapore 2025

Hi guys. So if any of you have ever done a talk at token 2049 or any other conference, what you'll know is that they ask you for your topic 3 months before the event. So 3 months before the event, they asked me what do you want to talk about? And at the time I said, "Look, what I want to talk about is how treasury stocks are going to end this crypto cycle. And when it ends, it's going to be pretty bad."

But you know, in crypto, 3 months is like a lifetime. And in those three months, I changed my mind. Or maybe I didn't change my mind because maybe it was actually the debts that changed. And so for those of you who came here to watch a talk about how these crypto treasury stocks will end the cycle, uh spoiler alert, they're not going to end the cycle. In fact, I want to change the talk to say how these crypto treasury stocks will make this crypto cycle.

So, if you came here for the first talk, I mean, you're welcome to leave. Otherwise, I'm going to just carry on with a completely new talk about how crypto treasury stocks are actually going to be the best thing that happened to the crypto cycle. So, I said to you that I didn't change my mind. It was the DATs that actually changed. Right?

Let me explain to you what happened. Right? First, the DATs launched. Joe Luben launched a DAT. Tom Lee launched a DAT.

And those were the charts, right? These treasury companies started trading at multiples of their net asset value. Literally multiples of their net asset value. sometimes 20 times their net asset value, sometimes five times their net asset value. But that was the chart when they announced that they're launching, which by the way isn't a bad thing.

They're trading at multiples of their NAV. Obviously, they need to have a very good business model, right? if they're going to be trading at multiples like that of their net asset value, I was almost sure that they had a business model to back it up. But then I dug into the business model and the business model was totally flawed. Why?

Because they all said, "Look, we took the micro strategy playbook." What is the micro strategy playbook? Well, you buy Bitcoin, you hold Bitcoin, you do not sell your Bitcoin. That's the playbook. On top of that, what these guys also said was all we do, we buy ETH, we stake ETH, we grow ETH per share.

Okay, that's great. I can also buy ETH. I can also stake ETH and I'm not trading at a four times my lead asset value. So their business model was completely flawed. On top of that, anyone who really understands Micro Strategy understands that where Micro Strategy made all their money was in leverage.

They found a way to take fixed income investors and give them crypto returns in a market where interest rates were going down. Problem is that when I spoke to the treasury companies, they all told me they're taking no leverage. I was like, "Okay, hold it. So, you're going to buy ETH, you're going to hold ETH, you're going to stake ETH. you're not going to take leverage, which means the only way that you can actually raise money is selling shares at market.

How do you justify trading even 10% above net asset value? Mathematically, it's impossible. And for those of you who doubt it, go back and look at the micro strategy playbook and you'll see that ever since Michael Sailor stopped taking debt, he's really struggled to raise capital. So much so that probably the next move is going to be going back to leverage. To make matters worse, what we know is we know that the staking ETFs are coming soon and so you're just going to be able to buy an ETF at NAV which stakes ETH soul or whatever else.

So then why are these treasury companies trading at a premium to net asset value? I don't know. Then it got a little bit worse because then the geniuses that were running these DATs said the next move multi-asset DATs Salana, ETH, Bitcoin, BNB all in one debt. amazing idea except that in the 1920s before the great crash, the thing that crashed the market was a thing called investment holding companies or investment trusts. And all they did was they bought shares on the market and they traded at a premium to net asset value.

Believe it or not, literally they'd go and buy shares, equities on the open market and these equities would these companies would trade at a premium to their net asset value. You know what I call that? I call that leverage. It's not the same leverage that you take on by bit, but anything that users are paying above net asset value is leverage. And you know the one thing about leverage, crypto doesn't like leverage so much anymore, right?

Because every cycle in crypto ends or ended because of too much leverage. You all remember the leverage that Luna created in the ecosystem which Celsius then releveraged and three arrows capital re-releveraged and that caused the correction. And so if the dads would have continued the same way they were going, this would have been the leverage that ended the cycle. And so when token came to me and said, "Do you want to do a talk?" I was like, "Yes, I have to do a talk, but I have to do it urgently about how leverage will end the cycle."

Fast forward three months, we didn't need to do anything because the market repriced the DATs and the same DATs that were trading up there are now trading well below net asset value. Most of the DAT today except maybe BMNR and maybe one or two others, you can actually buy below net asset value. That means that if they hold $1,000 a share worth of ETH, you can buy it at $900. It's probably one of the best arbitragees on the market right now. That's what happened to the premium to NAV.

The market woke up and realized if you're just going to buy ETH, stake ETH, hold ETH, then I'm not paying you a premium, you are going to pay me to hold your asset. They started trading at a discount. So now these geniuses who thought they could come to the market and just get 10 times premium to nav are sitting here and going, "Oh now what? We all thought we could just listed that and everyone would become rich and retail would be the idiots that pick up the tab." But now it's flipped.

Because now these guys are holding $100 worth of ETH and their shares are trading at $90 and they're sitting here scratching their heads thinking what's our next move and it's the best thing that happened to the cycle because they used to say we buy ETH, we stake ETH, we hold ETH and now they're going Am I allowed to say I said it anyway. They said Now we have to become asset managers. So first we were just going to buy ETH, hold ETH, stake ETH. Now we all have to put on suits and ties because now we have to become asset managers. And becoming asset managers isn't going to be enough.

We actually need to become asset managers on steroids because otherwise the market is always going to price us under our assets. And this is the best thing that happened to the market. I always ask the $1 million question or for some of you the $1 billion question. The question is, if you have a million dollar worth of Salana or ETH or TON or BNB, are you better off holding it and managing it yourself or selling it and buying the same amount of DAT shares at net asset value? Ultimately, that's the only question.

Because if the answer is that you would rather hold the asset yourself, these debts have no value. If the answer is that it's more worth your while to sell your Salana and give it to KL Smani's debt, then these guys actually have value. Okay, so to do that, what do the DATs need to do? Well, they need to buy ETH. They need to hold ETH.

They need to stake ETH. They need to run nodes. They need to do liquidity staking. They need to do yield farming. They need to go to Tradfi, borrow money from Tradfy at five and 6% and stake it and get eight to 9%.

They need to seed projects with initial liquidity in return for tokens and equity. They need to become investment houses. They need to accelerate projects. They need to run Y combinators for crypto projects on the chain. They need to raid other DATs.

If there's a DAT trading at 80% of NAV and there's another DAT trading at 100% of NAV, the one trading at 100% should do a hostile takeover of the one doing 80%. And most importantly, what these guys need to do is they need to become venture capitalists. Why? because you have all this Salana, you have all this ETH, you put the ETH to work and you start earning equity in everything that's building on ETH. So what did these debts become or what will some of these debts become?

The only way that I can think about it, the only way that I can rationalize or or find a term for this, they become the bank. the Salano Bank, the BNB bank, the Ton Bank, I don't have one here which but the Sooie Bank. There's a a very good treasury company called SU and that they their vision is to become a bank. What does a bank do? A bank uses its USDT deposit book to provide capital for investments, liquidity, and loans to generate cash flow which is then used to accumulate more USD so that the bank can use its USD to provide more capital for investments, liquidity, and loans to generate cash flow which is then used to accumulate more USD.

So that you get where I'm going, right? These treasury companies need to use their token book to provide capital for investments, liquidity and loans so that they can generate cash flow which is then used to buy the token. And that's why I think the model for the treasury company is no longer going to be we buy ETH, we hold ETH, we stake ETH. These guys are going to become banks. And they're going to become banks on the ecosystem.

And what these banks are going to be is they're going to be a replacement for the current foundation. Because we all know that the foundation is a model. I don't feel I'm allowed to say Okay, doesn't matter. The foundation is a model. It was started because everyone was scared that the token issue would be a security.

So this foundation based in Switzerland or some friendly jurisdiction launched to support the chain. But now that is going to be replaced by a bunch of highly capitalistic entrepreneurial beasts running these crypto banks which loan money which provide staking which invest in projects and ultimately they land up being the entrepreneurial highly capitalistic foundation well not foundation enterp prize that drives the chain. So, now we go back to the million-doll question. If you have a million dollars worth of soul today, should you hold the soul and stake the soul yourself or should you give it to a treasury company managing the money if it's trading at net asset value? Let me tell you that I did a full 180.

First, I said, "There's no way I'm giving these DATs money." And today I'm in the process of liquidating my liquid token holdings, not all of them, and finding the best bank managers, fund managers, investment managers on every ecosystem and giving them the job of compounding my returns because I don't have the time to stake, to restake, to run validators on behalf of everyone else. I don't have enough firepower to get into real deals like a Kamani would get into a deal. And you want to know how how extreme I think this eventually happens? As an example, I believe that one day Multicoin Capital, which is a Salana based VC company, I believe that one day they'll just merge with the DAT and that will be one of the acquisitions that the DAT actually makes and then you'll get a master VC investor inside this DAT, which is actually the Salana Bank.

So, I hope you've seen what I've seen. And I think now you got to ask yourselves the $1 million question. Is it better for you to hold your own tokens or to give it to someone who's got all the access, all the capital, all the deal flow because they can compound your assets even further? Let me know, guys. Thank you very much.