Analysis of the Binary Relationship Between Listed Companies and Crypto Assets

Introduction

The election of Trump as President of the United States in 2024 will have a significant impact on the global Crypto Assets industry. Subsequently, a series of favorable policies were introduced, including Bitcoin as a national reserve and stablecoin legislation. The Crypto Assets industry is gradually moving towards compliance and embracing regulation.

At the same time, many publicly listed companies have begun to emulate the strategy of becoming BTC hoarders. There are numerous globally listed companies, some of which have seen their market value significantly shrink and are facing liquidity shortages. By becoming hoarders, some shell companies have found new financing channels to supplement their liquidity. Even some companies unrelated to Crypto Assets or finance have joined the ranks of hoarders, such as the U.S. luxury car modifier ECD, which became one of the Bitcoin hoarders through a $500 million equity financing.

However, recently listed companies are choosing to hoard a wider range of Crypto Assets, with several coins 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 play a larger role. This article will explore in detail the relationship between hoarders and Crypto Assets, as well as thoughts on decentralization.

1. A Public Company Perspective on Crypto Assets

There is no doubt that the primary demand for listed companies choosing to finance the purchase of Crypto Assets lies in market value management. Currently, there are 34 listed companies holding BTC. At the same time, the management of several companies is proactively transforming the company into a coin hoarder 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 listed companies.

Sharplink Company previously focused on sports betting and completed approximately $425 million in private placement financing in May 2025, heavily purchasing ETH as its main treasury reserve asset. The company's stock price rose from $2.97 to $124 within 10 days, an increase of over 40 times. Blockchain early project investment company Cypherpunk Holdings was renamed SOL Strategies in September 2024, with its stock price increasing from $0.08 to $4.24 within 3 months, an increase of over 50 times.

A large number of listed companies see transforming into coin hoarders as a panacea for boosting stock prices, with the purchased Crypto Assets expanding from BTC to SOL, HYPE, BNB, and others. In fact, many companies buying coins are simply following the trend, as the management does not fully understand Crypto Assets and lacks long-term strategic planning for purchasing coins. This chapter will select suitable Crypto Assets for purchase from the perspective of listed companies, based on different needs.

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

The initial public understanding of listed companies holding coins originated from Strategy's one-time purchase of over 20,000 BTC in 2020, with CEO Michael Saylor asserting that they would only buy and not sell BTC in the future. Coinciding with the BTC bull market of 2020-2021, Strategy's visibility continued to rise, and purchasing Crypto Assets allowed listed companies to transform their fortunes, 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 to complete block production and obtain BTC rewards. Before Strategy buys BTC, Bitcoin mining companies such as Marathon, Riot, Cleanspark, etc. primarily engage in mining to obtain BTC, therefore there are portions of unsold Crypto Assets on their balance sheets.

For listed companies, the issue with PoW blockchain assets like BTC is similar to gold; after purchase, they can only serve as strategic reserves, making it difficult to achieve "money making money". PoS blockchains grant more weight to tokens, and transactions on PoS blockchains require node block production approval. To become a node, a certain amount of governance tokens must be staked, with Ethereum fixed at 32 ETH and Solana having no restrictions. Token holders can share a certain percentage of transaction gas fees as rewards (, and different blockchains have different revenue-sharing mechanisms ).

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

1.2 How listed companies choose PoS public chain Crypto Assets

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 companies may prefer to buy crypto assets with higher price volatility; some may lean towards purchasing crypto assets with a higher degree of decentralization; and there are others that cannot build their own nodes and need to buy crypto assets that have mature liquid staking platforms. The table below summarizes the characteristics of various tokens from multiple dimensions, providing comprehensive reference for listed companies planning to purchase crypto assets.

The staking yield can be compared to the dividend yield of stocks. From the perspective of the needs of listed companies, the demand for becoming PoS token holders mainly falls into three categories: ( obtaining high staking yields, covering financing costs while having positive cash flow. ) obtaining high asset appreciation, driving stock price growth. ( occupying a core position in the ecosystem, strategically laying out around the public chain ecosystem. The following text will select suitable targets based on the different goals of listed companies.

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

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

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

The formula's numerator, which represents the blockchain rewards, has the highest proportion and is related to the public chain's transaction volume. The transaction volume on the Solana public chain has maintained rapid growth over the past five years, with a monthly transaction volume of 2.97 billion in June. On the denominator side, the current SOL staking rate has reached over 65%, so there will not be a large influx of SOL into staking that would lead to a decrease in yield. Overall, the staking rewards of 7% for Solana network nodes are relatively stable.

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From the perspective of 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 their own nodes. Solana network nodes require high-performance servers as hardware support, with a minimum configuration of a 64-core processor, 256G memory, and 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, and 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 process of building their own nodes is deemed complex, publicly listed companies can choose liquidity staking platforms or RPC node services.

Jito is currently one of the main liquidity staking platforms on the Solana network, and the staking operation is relatively simple; by connecting a wallet and entering an amount, you can earn an annualized return of 7.19% as of July 3, 2025. However, using a staking platform will reduce the returns to some extent, and the platform will not display the direct commission rate. Professional staking platforms can obtain higher Tips and MEV floating returns through staking, while stakers receive a fixed annualized return.

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For companies looking to achieve excess returns through Tips and MEV, but wanting 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 bare metal servers from the service provider to ensure minimum latency )<50ms( and high throughput, meeting the high performance requirements of Solana validators. Unlike staking platforms like JITO, where user returns are fixed and platform profits fluctuate; service providers like Helius charge users a fixed fee ) with different package costs (, while floating returns from MEV and Tips belong entirely to the users.

In summary, each of the three options has its pros and cons. Staking platforms are suitable for low-investment lightweight coin holders, RPC node outsourcing services are suitable for medium-sized coin holders with a certain level of investment, while building your own nodes is suitable for coin holders with relatively strong capital and 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.

)# 1.2.2 Pursuit of Value Growth: HYPE trading fee repurchase mechanism, coin price has achieved 10 times growth

For listed companies facing liquidity shortages, the primary demand in the short term remains to enhance stock market value and maintain normal operations through means such as reducing stock holdings. As coin hoarders, listed companies commonly increase stock prices by purchasing high-growth or highly valued assets. HYPE is the mainstream Crypto Asset for market value growth in the first half of 2025. If listed companies become HYPE coin hoarders, their stock prices will be linked to HYPE token prices, potentially achieving rapid growth in company market value in the short term.

Compared to public chains like SUI, TRON, and XRP, which have also seen significant market value growth over the past year, HYPE's advantage lies in its refined token supply and demand management, ensuring the scarcity of HYPE tokens. Over the past six months, Hyperliquid's assistance fund has repurchased approximately $910 million worth of HYPE by reinvesting about 97% of the Gas fee revenue back 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, while nearly 39% of the tokens are designated for community rewards and will be gradually distributed. Since the project has not accepted venture capital funding, there is no external selling pressure, enhancing HYPE's long-term value potential.

The operational nodes of Hyperliquid are more centralized compared to Solana, with only 21 nodes existing in the entire network, maintaining the high-efficiency operation of the public chain to a certain extent. Therefore, even if a publicly 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 gain additional income through staking. This platform has attracted over 10 million HYPE to join staking. Compared to other public chains, the staking yield of HYPE is relatively low, with data showing a yield of only 2.28%.

(# 1.2.3 Pursuing ecological layout: ETH has a high degree of decentralization, and Layer 2 development is relatively easy.

In the field of Crypto Assets, redundancy in public chains is an obvious phenomenon. According to statistics, the total number of public chains in 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 declines year by year.

From the perspective of listed companies, some companies are no longer satisfied with merely being coin hoarders; they hope to build a second growth curve by hoarding coins and developing DeFi or GameFi projects on the public chain. Ethereum Layer 2 modular blockchain has become the first choice for these companies due to its low development difficulty and high flexibility.

Rollups as a Service )RaaS### is a major trend in blockchain infrastructure for 2024-2025. RaaS platforms ( such as Caldera, Conduit, Zeeve ) provide one-stop solutions, including SDKs, templates, testnet faucets, and block explorers, enabling companies to deploy Layer2 networks in minutes, while traditional self-built Rollups may take 6-9 months. For example, Caldera claims to complete Rollup deployment within 30 minutes. This convenience significantly lowers the technical barrier, allowing publicly traded companies to focus on business innovation rather than infrastructure management.

In terms of Ethereum DA layer, the data availability of Celestia and Near ### DA ( layer provides companies with efficient and low-cost solutions. Celestia separates data storage from execution through modular design and data availability sampling ) DAS (, significantly reducing transaction costs and