Morning Minute: The DAT Meltdown Is On

Morning Minute is a daily newsletter written by Tyler Warner. The analysis and opinions expressed are his own and do not necessarily reflect those of Decrypt. Subscribe to the Morning Minute on Substack.

GM!

Today’s top news:

• Crypto majors chop over weekend; BTC briefly loses $94k before rebounding
• Crypto Fear & Greed remains deep in Extreme Fear
• Tom Lee’s BMNR appoints new CEO amidst 46% share decline
• Harvard adds ~$350M in Bitcoin via IBIT in Q3, up 257% on the quarter
• Monad public sale goes live today at $2.5B FDV on Coinbase Token Sales

📉The DAT Meltdown Is On

Crypto majors might be down bad right now.

But not as bad as the Crypto DATs. And it’s a major concern for many.

📌 What Happened

The latest leg down in Bitcoin and Ethereum has spilled over into the public companies (digital asset treasury companies, or DATs) that created their entire business models around buying them.

Saylor’s Strategy has captured the headlines, now down over 50% from its intra-year high at $455 (now $200).

One of the other leading Bitcoin DATs in Metaplanet is down close to 80%.

The ETH treasuries have it even worse. SharpLink (SBET) has “plummeted nearly 90%” from its 2025 highs (70% from local high). Tom Lee’s $11B ETH treasury bet via BMNR is now down roughly 34% in the latest ETH slide.

Put it together and you’ve got a brutal picture:

• BTC: down ~20% from the 2025 ATH
• Strategy: down ~50%
• Metaplanet: down ~80%
• ETH: down 36% from 2025 ATH
• SharpLink: down ~70%
• BitMine: down ~46%

And some have already reverted to selling.

• ETHZilla (ETH-focused DAT) sold about $40M of ETH, roughly 10% of its treasury, to fund a share buyback
• Sequans (BTC-focused DAT) sold about 970 BTC, roughly 30% of its Bitcoin stack, to pay down convertible debt

That selling has driven wide concern that other major players will be forced to join.

🗣️ What Are They Saying

“When DAT stocks trade below the value of their crypto holdings, it means the market is no longer rewarding them for outsized accumulation in the same way it once did. This doesn’t make them dead, but they are under real pressure, as trading below their holdings could force them to sell some of their holdings to cover costs.” – Yaroslav Patsira, Fractional Director at CEX.IO

“For the stronger Bitcoin names, this looks more oversold than finished. Bitcoin-focused treasuries with cleaner balance sheets are holding up better than multi-asset DATs, many of which chase higher-risk tokens.” – Fakhul Miah, Managing Director of Gomining Institutional

🧠 Why It Matters

Here’s the entire DAT trade can be summarized in a single statement—mNAV has completely compressed to well below 1 for all the crypto majors, and now is trading closer to 80% for most.

That means the value of the DAT is trading at less than the combined value of the digital assets they hold.

Many prophesied that this would be the end result of the DATs, to trade below spot (because why would someone pay a premium for a holding company vs just the underlying asset). But few thought it would unwind this fast.

Now the question is—what happens from here?

More of the smaller and more exotic (i.e. riskier tokens) DATs will likely continue to sell. Some will unwind. Some may be acquired.

But the biggest players (Strategy, BMNR, SBET) will survive. The ETH strategies led by Joe Lubin and Tom Lee are still in their infancy and haven’t even really unlocked the yield-bearing benefits of their ETH balance sheets.

And Saylor has been doing this so long, he’s effectively lindy and hard to see his path to implosion.

With that said, it could certainly be a lot more near-term pain for even the best DATs if the bearish price action continues.

Prospective buyers will likely need even more convincing to buy after this drawdown, so the DAT leaders had better be fine-tuning their pitches during this downturn…

🌎 Macro Crypto and Memes

A few Crypto and Web3 headlines that caught my eye:

In Corporate Treasuries / ETFs

In Memes / Onchain Movers

💰 Token, Airdrop & Protocol Tracker

Here’s a rundown of major token, protocol and airdrop news from the day:

• Monad’s public token sale goes live today at 9 am ET on Coinbase Token Sales, selling 7.5% of the token supply at $2.5B FDV
• Polymarket registered 15.8M visitors in October, ranking 5th among trading and gambling apps
• Rekt Drinks announced a launch across 200 Giant Eagle stores in the midwest

🚚 What is happening in NFTs?

Here is the list of other notable headlines from the day in NFTs:

• NFT leaders were mostly red and continuing their decline; Punks -1% at 31.3 ETH, Pudgy -1% at 5.37, BAYC even at 6.3 ETH; Hypurr’s +3% at 705 HYPE
• Chromie Squiggles (+25%) and Mocaverse (+15%) were top movers
• The CryptoPunk floor briefly fell below $100k over the weekend, down over 50% in the past 5 weeks