Inside the DAT Bubble Burst: Why 2025’s Hottest Corporate Crypto Trend Is Suddenly Falling Apart

Key Takeaways

• More than 200 nationalist companies adopted Digital Asset Treasury (DAT) strategies successful 2025.

• After a twelvemonth of accelerated expansion, galore DAT stocks person plunged 80%–95%.

• Analysts pass the crisp reversal reflects a bubble unwinding crossed the newest crypto craze.

The crypto markets person ne'er been abbreviated connected manias, but fewer trends person burned arsenic fast—or arsenic brightly—as the eruption of Digital Asset Treasury (DAT) companies successful 2025.

For a moment, it felt similar a replay of the aboriginal pandemic boom: obscure nationalist firms raising millions to bargain Bitcoin (BTC), Ethereum (ETH), and Solana (SOL) for their equilibrium sheets, promising shareholders a shortcut to crypto gains without touching a wallet.

However, arsenic 2025 draws to a close, the communicative looks acold little triumphant.

Stock prices person cratered, indebtedness is piling up, and the full DAT assemblage present sits astatine the borderline of what immoderate analysts see a textbook bubble burst.

What happened? To recognize the collapse, it helps to look astatine however the playbook was written.

The DAT thought didn’t commencement successful 2025; it goes backmost to 2020, erstwhile MicroStrategy, present rebranded arsenic Strategy, began buying Bitcoin astatine astir $10,000.

As BTC surged implicit the years, Strategy accumulated 641,692 BTC astatine an mean outgo of $66,384.56—an tremendous and, truthful far, profitable presumption worthy billions of dollars.

The bold strategy made headlines, transformed the company’s marketplace identity, and inspired dozens of copycats.

CEO Michael Saylor spent years pitching Bitcoin arsenic the eventual treasury plus and adjacent held conferences teaching nationalist companies however to pivot.

By aboriginal 2025, the thesis had gone mainstream. Over 100 publically traded firms present clasp much than 1 cardinal BTC combined. And past came the frenzy.

When Donald Trump returned to bureau with a pro-crypto agenda, the floodgates opened.

More than 200 companies announced DAT plans betwixt April and November, raising astir $15 cardinal done banal deals.

And it wasn’t conscionable Bitcoin anymore. A caller question of treasuries formed astir ETH, SOL, and adjacent XRP:

• Bitmine and SharpLink amassed much than $3 cardinal successful ETH holdings.

• Others built Solana treasuries.

• A fewer leaned into BNB oregon XRP reserves.

Some of the wildest entrants weren’t adjacent crypto firms: a soccer-investment business, a vape company, and different improbable players pivoted simply due to the fact that investors were rewarding thing tied to “digital assets.”

For months, it worked. Strategy’s banal soared much than 1,000% from 2023 lows. Smaller DAT stocks surged connected hype alone.

Wall Street and retail traders treated DATs arsenic leveraged bets connected BTC itself.