Strive Vice President Joe Burnett said in a post on X that Bitcoin treasury companies are fundamentally different from altcoins, backing a view put forward by @BitcoinPierre.
Burnett said altcoins typically represent tokenized exposure to protocol fees or staking economics, and that their appreciation may be driven to a large extent by speculation and limited liquidity. Bitcoin treasury companies, in his framing, work differently. Common stock represents a residual claim on a real balance sheet.
NAV per share can outpace Bitcoin under the right conditions
Burnett said that if Bitcoin appreciates faster than a company’s cost of capital, the company can use dollar liabilities to buy more Bitcoin and create leverage. In that setup, net asset value per share can grow faster than Bitcoin itself.
He also drew a line between NAV-per-share growth and stock performance. Even if NAV per share rises faster than Bitcoin, that does not ensure the stock will outperform BTC in the short term. The price paid relative to NAV per share matters. If investors buy at a high premium and that premium later compresses, the stock may still lag Bitcoin.
Premiums and discounts create capital-markets optionality
Burnett said premiums and discounts to NAV per share create a distinct form of capital-markets optionality.
- If a company trades at a sufficient premium to NAV per share, it can issue common stock and buy Bitcoin, increasing Bitcoin holdings on a per-share basis.
- A company can also issue dollar-denominated liabilities to acquire more Bitcoin and expand its BTC position.
- If the stock trades at a sufficient discount to NAV per share, the company may repurchase shares and increase Bitcoin per share.
He added that these mechanisms can work together. A company could issue dollar liabilities to buy Bitcoin, then later reduce leverage by issuing common stock when valuation is attractive, while increasing Bitcoin per share and potentially keeping leverage at a similar level. Burnett said that process does not require Bitcoin itself to rise.
Burnett compared the premium logic to Bitcoin futures
He said the rationale for a premium is relatively straightforward. If bullish Bitcoin investors expect that a properly structured leveraged Bitcoin position, valued at 1x NAV per share, will produce NAV-per-share growth faster than Bitcoin, then paying a premium for that exposure can be reasonable.
Burnett compared that setup to Bitcoin futures, which often trade at a premium to spot because demand for leveraged long Bitcoin exposure may exceed demand from the other side of the trade.
He said the difference is that the premium on a leveraged Bitcoin position can itself have an effect. A higher premium creates greater optionality to increase Bitcoin per share, which may support a higher premium and then drive further growth in Bitcoin per share.
In Burnett’s view, that reflexivity changes the question. The issue is no longer whether a premium should exist, but how large that premium should be.