Zhu Weisha, January 4, 2026
I. The “Treasury Phenomenon” of Listed Companies: Bitcoin as a New Reserve Asset
A trend known as the “Treasury Phenomenon” is emerging: listed companies are incorporating Bitcoin into their balance sheets and hoarding it, relying on its long-term appreciation to enhance corporate profits and net assets. The benchmark in this regard is Strategy Inc. (formerly MicroStrategy), which has been continuously purchasing Bitcoin. As of the end of 2025, its holdings have reached approximately 672,497 BTC, accounting for about 3.2%-3.3% of Bitcoin’s circulating supply. Valued at the current Bitcoin price of approximately $91,000, its Bitcoin assets are worth about $61.2 billion. If viewed as a cryptocurrency company, its market capitalization would rank 8th.
The company’s founder, Michael Saylor, is the core evangelist of this strategy. He defines Bitcoin as “digital property” or the “ultimate store of value tool” and predicts its long-term growth will far surpass traditional assets. He believes that against the backdrop of persistent global fiat currency inflation, Bitcoin has the potential to achieve substantial long-term value growth. For listed companies, assets that can offer such high expected returns are extremely scarce. Although short-term volatility risks for Bitcoin persist, its volatility has shown signs of convergence as mainstream institutional participation deepens. Furthermore, it often receives strong buy-side support at key price support levels—the hash rate bottom (i.e., the potential price bottom range constituted by the global average production cost for miners). In the future, if the banking system more widely accepts Bitcoin as collateral, the liquidity and financial risks associated with such treasury strategies are expected to decrease further. Satoshi Nakamoto wrote on February 14, 2010: “I’m sure that in 20 years, there will either be very large transaction volume, or no volume at all.” Those who had the insight and seized this opportunity back then were fortunate. The “Treasury Phenomenon” is precisely the historic opportunity bestowed by our era upon contemporary enterprises; the key lies in whether one can recognize and grasp it.
II. The Underlying Logic: Hedging Against Systemic Monetary Inflation
The deep-seated reason for Bitcoin’s acceptance into corporate treasuries lies in hedging against the long-term devaluation trend of fiat currencies. This choice is essentially a collective pursuit and valuation storage of a non-sovereign, absolutely scarce asset by global capital outside the sovereign credit money system. Under the fiat currency system, governments tend to oversupply money to cover fiscal deficits, leading to the continuous erosion of purchasing power. History shows that the lifespan cycle of credit money is approximately 100 years. As detailed in my previous articles “The USD’s Annual Compound Inflation Rate Exceeding 8.1% Against Gold Over the Past Fifty Years is the Main Cause of Wealth Polarization” and “Predicting the Collapse of the USD from the Natural Growth Curve“, the current US dollar system faces similar long-term challenges.
The “Treasury Phenomenon” is precisely the defensive response of microeconomic entities. This trend began with keen individual investors, was adopted by pioneering enterprises like Strategy Inc. in 2020, and subsequently spread to more listed companies and institutions. Following the approval of US spot Bitcoin ETFs in 2024, traditional capital gained large-scale, compliant, and convenient access. Currently, the total Bitcoin holdings of various US institutions (including ETFs, listed companies, and private funds) far exceed 2 million coins. The year 2020 marked the starting point for enterprise participation, while 2024, with the approval of spot ETFs, ushered in a new era of large-scale capital involvement. Looking ahead to the next cycle (most likely 2027), we may witness the prelude to the US national level beginning to accumulate Bitcoin as a strategic reserve. This decentralized, global pattern of asset ownership is benign. It makes Bitcoin, like gold, difficult to be controlled by a single entity, and its development path as a store-of-value tool is becoming increasingly clear. Undoubtedly, this process is being led by the US market.
III. Derived Strategy: Hoarding Bitcoin and the “Dividend” Demand
With the proliferation of the “Treasury Phenomenon,” a demand has arisen in the market to generate cash flow from hoarded Bitcoin—a demand for “dividends.” The current mainstream approach is to hold spot Bitcoin ETFs while simultaneously selling covered call options, using the premium income as high “dividends” distributed to investors, sometimes achieving quite considerable annualized yields.
However, the essence of this strategy is to sacrifice part of Bitcoin’s future upside potential in exchange for deterministic current income. In strong bull markets, the returns from simply holding the spot asset often significantly outperform this covered call strategy. The popularity of this strategy is ultimately rooted in the unwavering belief in Bitcoin’s long-term upward trend.
IV. A New Perspective: The “Natural Growth” and Financialization Potential of High-Quality Antiques
In the long-term context of fiat currency inflation, assets possessing scarcity and store-of-value functionality all exhibit anti-inflation attributes and long-term appreciation trends. Bitcoin’s exploration of financialization points the way for a broader range of scarce assets. Following the thread of ‘value storage’ and ‘expectation discounting,’ we may turn our gaze to an even more ancient domain—antiques. In the article “Redefining the Valuation Metrics for Antiques“, I have already used this long-term upward trend as a core metric for evaluating high-quality antiques. If the “long-term upward trend” itself is regarded as a quantifiable value indicator (similar to a stock’s growth rate), then once an antique is financialized (e.g., by issuing corresponding digital equity certificates on-chain), the issuer can design innovative financial products based on this “growth expectation.” Unlike Bitcoin with its fixed total supply or physically dispersed gold, a single antique asset, after its equity is divided and issued, allows its issuer to create a “dividend”-like mechanism based on the assessment of the underlying item’s long-term value growth, providing cash flow to holders.
This cash flow does not stem from the physical yield of the asset itself but originates from the partial discounting or equity distribution of its future value growth. Of course, the dividend rate must be set prudently, preferably not exceeding a certain proportion (e.g., half) of its long-term growth trend, to ensure the sustainability of the mechanism. In this way, holders can both enjoy the appreciation potential of the asset itself and periodically receive “interest.” Its characteristics are superior to fixed-income bonds (which themselves typically do not appreciate), and the credit and operational risks borne are far lower than those of corporate bonds.
This is a profound exploration of the intrinsic financial attributes of high-quality antiques. The financialization of antiques holds the potential to give rise to a new asset category akin to “utility dividend stocks,” thereby significantly enhancing the liquidity and overall investment appeal of high-quality antiques and opening a new chapter in their value discovery.
