Gold Banned from What BTC, XRP, TON & ETH Are Doing to Wall Street—Here’s Why It Matters
Wall Street’s old guard is getting left behind—while crypto rewrites the rules.
Gold, the ancient safe-haven asset, is legally barred from pulling off the same high-stakes maneuvers Bitcoin (BTC), Ripple (XRP), Toncoin (TON), and Ethereum (ETH) are executing with ruthless efficiency. The difference? Crypto doesn’t play by the same rulebook.
The End-Run Around Traditional Finance
Decentralized networks slash through red tape, bypassing legacy gatekeepers. No waiting for settlement, no begging for approvals—just code enforcing trust. Meanwhile, gold sits in vaults, gathering dust and regulatory cobwebs.
Why This Stings
Institutional investors—the same ones who once scoffed at "internet money"—are now funneling billions into crypto. Why? Because unlike gold, digital assets actually *do* something: they power smart contracts, enable instant cross-border payments, and—let’s be honest—print life-changing gains while goldbugs nap through inflation.
Funny how fast "barbarous relic" becomes "strategic allocation" when the SEC blinks.
TradFi assets don’t work as treasury assets in the same way
Traditional financial assets do not lend themselves to this structure. Gold, for example, triggers classification under the Investment Company Act of 1940 if it dominates the balance sheet without active business operations.
That designation brings fund-level scrutiny, something most firms prefer to avoid. Additionally, the presence of ETFs like GLD renders standalone gold-holding companies redundant. Gold’s lack of yield and narrative momentum further limits its utility as a branding mechanism.
Real estate similarly falls short. While REITs offer a standardized framework for public real estate investment, they are constrained by strict distribution requirements and income tests. They deliver yield, not speculation, and therefore lack the same memetic or branding potential.
Equities and commodities, often held by conglomerates like Berkshire Hathaway or in inventory forms by corporates, must tie directly to operational strategies. They cannot be abstracted into a treasury identity without breaching legal or narrative coherence.
Digital assets break the mold for treasury assets
Crypto’s structural fit arises from a confluence of factors: regulatory ambiguity, speculative upside, staking yields, and token-based incentives. Unlike traditional assets, crypto enables firms to both hold and participate.
Holding ETH, for example, creates exposure while also unlocking staking rewards, ecosystem credibility, and potential airdrops. In the case of tokens like TON, firms gain direct alignment with community narratives, developer interest, and Layer-1 ecosystem growth. These advantages are simultaneously technical and financial, and no legacy asset category offers a similar package.
The implications are notable. Publicly listed companies acting as holding entities for ETH or TON mirror the function of ETFs, but without the corresponding regulatory burden. They also resemble early-stage venture investments, yet maintain daily liquidity and public disclosures.
For retail traders, they operate like meme stocks, except with tangible crypto reserves behind the narrative. While an entity like “The Ethereum Holding Company” might once have sounded absurd, it is now a very real strategic formation.
However, these companies do sit in a regulatory gray zone, for now. Classification risk WOULD rise if the SEC or equivalent bodies were to treat them as de facto investment funds. As the regulatory perimeter sharpens, firms holding digital assets as their primary value proposition could eventually face pressure to evolve into true operating entities or spin off their holdings.
Still, under the TRUMP administration, this appears extremely unlikely, thus leading to the influx of new crypto treasury companies.
For now, crypto’s rare compatibility with public market strategies will continue to fuel the trend. Unlike gold or real estate, tokens can function as both treasury and narrative, offering upside, yield, and relevance in a single package. As long as regulatory ambiguity persists, the model will remain viable, a structural loophole transforming exposure into a highly profitable business model.
