Institutional DeFi platform Sentora revealed a brand new report on Thursday, arguing that the company adoption of bitcoin
as a treasury asset, whereas widespread, resembles a “steadiness sheet roulette.”
“Bitcoin’s shortage and programmability make it an unprecedented company asset — however with out scalable yield and sturdy financing, most present adopters are taking part in a harmful sport of steadiness sheet roulette,” Patrick Heusser, Head of Lending at Sentora, acknowledged within the report.
The report analyzed the methods of 213 public, personal and authorities entities that collectively maintain 1.79 million BTC, price $214 billion as of August 2025. Publicly listed corporations account for 71.4% of those holdings, which suggests roughly 1.27 million BTC is a part of company steadiness sheets.
The buildup technique relies on a centuries-old wealth-building playbook: borrow fiat to amass a scarce, onerous asset. With its provide capped at 21 million, bitcoin is a provably scarce asset that has outperformed each different main asset by leaps and bounds over the past decade.
“Technique distinguished itself by engineering the publicity like a capital allocator—utilizing long-dated financing, uneven timing, and shareholder alignment to create an artificial BTC by-product inside a public car,” the report stated.
Unfavourable carry threat
Nevertheless, the report recognized a vital flaw: the technique of accumulating cash with borrowed cash is a “destructive carry commerce,” as a result of BTC, by itself, is a zero-yielding asset like gold.
In contrast to land or productive actual property, bitcoin does not generate earnings or money circulate by itself. It simply sits on the steadiness sheet. The price of borrowing cash to purchase bitcoin, due to this fact, is a direct, ongoing expense with no offsetting money circulate.
The return from the technique, due to this fact, is wholly depending on capital positive aspects stemming from continued worth appreciation, which makes it structurally fragile.
If the carry commerce breaks because of extended worth stagnation or a market drop, the outcomes might be “binary and reflexive”. A drop in bitcoin’s worth would threaten the collateral backing their debt, inflicting their inventory worth to say no and making it tough for them to lift new capital.
It’s because many of the corporations which have collected BTC as a treasury asset are both unprofitable or closely depending on BTC mark-to-market positive aspects to look solvent.
These corporations may then begin promoting their core BTC holdings to fulfill their obligations, which might additional push the worth down, making a downward spiral.
The report explicitly acknowledged, “There isn’t a lender of final resort right here—no circuit breaker, no refinancing facility.”
The report attracts a parallel to gold, noting {that a} “gold treasury firm” by no means emerged as a result of gold additionally does not yield and is cumbersome to retailer and transfer.
The bitcoin treasury technique faces the identical elementary problem: till bitcoin can mature into “productive digital capital” that generates a scalable, dependable yield, it stays a dangerous, speculative wager, the report famous.
Learn extra: Michael Saylor’s Technique Provides $18M of Bitcoin on 5-12 months Anniversary of First Buy
