Pushing Back on the Digital Asset Treasury Narrative with DeFi Data
Challenged a trending sector narrative using on-chain data from the largest Bitcoin treasury holder and worked the team toward a shared decision.
Onkar Thakur
Investment Team at Hashed Emergent
From their time as
Investment Team
Hashed Emergent β’ 2025 - 2025
Overview
While working on the African landscape slides at Hashed Emergent, Onkar's team identified digital asset treasury as a trending theme worth including. The prevailing view was that institutional adoption of Bitcoin and digital asset treasuries was accelerating.
The Story
While working on the African landscape slides at Hashed Emergent, Onkar's team identified digital asset treasury as a trending theme worth including. The prevailing view was that institutional adoption of Bitcoin and digital asset treasuries was accelerating.
Onkar had a different read. He had been tracking MicroStrategy, the largest Bitcoin treasury holder, and had noticed they were selling out of their Bitcoin position to hold fiat and stablecoins instead. To him, that was a signal that the digital asset treasury trend had already peaked rather than being on the rise.
He pulled data from DeFi Llama and news reports to support his position and brought it to the team. Their initial response was that MicroStrategy was a single data point. Onkar pushed back: it was not just any data point, it was the largest holder in the category, and ignoring it would mean building a narrative on incomplete evidence.
The team heard him out. They landed on a shared decision: either dig deeper into the market before including the theme, or hold off on it for now. It was a resolution Onkar had proposed, and the team adopted it.