Crypto Treasury Firms Poised to Become Next Berkshire Hathaway-Sized Titans, Analysts Predict

Crypto treasury management companies are positioning themselves as the future giants of finance—potentially reaching Berkshire Hathaway-level dominance within digital asset markets.

The New Financial Architects

These firms aren't just storing digital assets—they're building comprehensive treasury ecosystems that handle everything from yield generation to risk management. They're creating infrastructure that traditional finance took decades to develop.

Market Evolution in Real-Time

Unlike traditional investment houses that measure growth in quarterly increments, crypto treasury operations move at blockchain speed. They're leveraging DeFi protocols, staking mechanisms, and cross-chain interoperability to maximize returns.

The Institutional Gateway

As more corporations add crypto to their balance sheets, these specialized firms become essential partners. They provide the security and sophistication that Fortune 500 companies require—something most traditional custodians still can't deliver properly.

Of course, watching crypto firms aspire to become the next Berkshire does raise the question: will Warren Buffett finally acknowledge Bitcoin exists by the time they get there? Probably not—some traditions die harder than others.

Beyond speculation

Watkins said most attention has fixated on near-term trading dynamics — premiums to net asset value, fundraising announcements and “what’s the next token”—which misses the larger arc.

“We imagine select DATs becoming for-profit, publicly traded counterparts to crypto foundations, but with broader mandates to deploy capital, operate businesses, and participate in governance,” he wrote.

Because some DATs already control meaningful slices of token supply, their treasuries can be more than vaults; they can be policy and product levers inside ecosystems.

He pointed to crypto-native examples where scale matters: on Solana, RPC providers and proprietary market makers that stake more SOL can improve transaction landing and spread capture; on Hyperliquid, front ends that stake more HYPE can lower user fees or increase take rates without raising costs.

Access to large, permanent pools of native assets can help such businesses bootstrap and scale, he said.

Programmable money, productive balance sheets

Watkins contrasted these plays with MicroStrategy’s bitcoin-only strategy, which is largely about capital structure around a non-programmable asset.

He went on to say that by comparison, tokens on smart contract platforms — ETH, SOL, HYPE — are programmable and can be put to work on-chain.

DATs holding them can stake for fees, supply liquidity, lend, participate in governance and acquire “ecosystem primitives” such as validators, RPC nodes or indexers, turning treasuries into yield-generating balance sheets.

Structurally, he likened winning DATs to a hybrid of familiar models: the permanent capital of closed-end funds and REITs, the balance-sheet orientation of banks, and the compounding ethos of Berkshire Hathaway.

What makes them distinct, he said, is that returns accrue in crypto per share rather than via management fees, making the vehicles closer to pure plays on underlying networks than to traditional asset managers.

He argued that tools like common equity, convertibles and preferreds give DATs flexible funding to expand balance sheets, while on-chain yields can help manage that funding over time.

Winners—and risks

Watkins cautioned that “not all DATs will make it.”

He expects many first-generation vehicles—those heavy on financial engineering and light on operating substance — to fade as conditions normalize. As competition intensifies, he anticipates consolidation, experiments with more exotic financing and, at times, reckless balance-sheet moves if premiums flip to discounts and pressure builds.

In his view, the survivors will be those that pair disciplined capital allocation with operating chops, recycling cash flows into token accumulation, product building and ecosystem expansion. “Over time, the best managed ones could evolve into the Berkshire Hathaways of their blockchains,” he wrote.