Bitwise CIO Matt Hougan recently warned that digital asset treasuries (DATs) face a “high hurdle.” His reasoning was simple: structural drag.
Illiquidity, expenses, and risk compound over time and unless firms find a way to offset them, most DATs will trade below the value of their underlying crypto.
He’s right. But he’s also describing a model that’s quickly being replaced.
From Treasuries to Circulating Ecosystems
Crypto’s institutional wave has exposed the limitations of balance-sheet treasuries — they hold $BTC, $ETH, or stablecoins, but rarely move them. Their role is passive, their value dependent on external price action and investor sentiment.
Ecosystems like W Group, born from the evolution of WhiteBIT, flip that logic completely.
Instead of warehousing assets, they circulate them through active products — exchange, blockchain, payment systems, digital banking, liquidity programs, and crypto infrastructure.
This turns static value into motion:
$BTC and $ETH flow through real markets, not spreadsheets.
Custody risk becomes revenue via Wallet-as-a-Service and Crypto-as-a-Service.
Expenses are offset by activity — lending, staking, liquidity provision.
That’s how ecosystems transform drag into self-reinforcing liquidity loops.
Architecture That Solves the DAT Problem
At its core, W Group unites eight companies:
WhiteBIT – Europe’s largest crypto exchange by traffic.
Whitepay – SaaS crypto payment platform.
Whitechain – fast, low-cost EVM-compatible blockchain.
PayUniCard and HashBank – bridging fintech and digital banking.
white.market, ByHi, and The Coinomist – driving culture, content, and retail access.
Together, they create a closed liquidity network that redefines what a “digital treasury” can be — a system where every transaction feeds another business unit.
Even the group’s institutional division now services 1,300+ clients with custody, OTC, liquidity provision, and crypto portfolio tools, making W Group more resilient to the risks that Hougan described.
Why This Matters
Hougan said, “most DATs will trade at a discount.”
True — because they isolate assets from the ecosystems that could make them productive.
W Group shows what happens when design beats structure: instead of storing $BTC, it uses it to fuel activity. Instead of defending value, it creates it.
And that might be the ultimate evolution of crypto treasuries — from passive vaults to living economies.
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