Over 60 publicly traded companies now hold digital assets on their balance sheets. Your CFO mentioned that Fidelity report about a small Bitcoin allocation in 2019 growing sevenfold. And now you’re wondering if your company should be doing something with crypto instead of watching cash erode in accounts that barely keep pace with inflation. That instinct isn’t wrong.
The Gap Between Interest and Execution
Here’s where things typically fall apart. A company gets interested in digital assets. Someone from finance gets tasked with “looking into it.” They read some articles, maybe attend a webinar, then come back with a recommendation to buy some Bitcoin through a retail exchange.
That’s not a treasury strategy. That’s speculation dressed up in business casual.
A real corporate crypto treasury involves questions most finance teams have never encountered. How does a company custody $10 million in digital assets when a single keystroke error can mean permanent loss? What happens when auditors ask how these holdings are being accounted for under the new FASB fair value rules? Who has authority to move funds, and what controls prevent an insider from draining the wallet?
These aren’t theoretical concerns. They’re the exact questions that separate companies building durable crypto strategies from companies becoming cautionary tales.
Custody Is Where Most Companies Get It Wrong
The phrase “not your keys, not your coins” exists for a reason.
If a company doesn’t control the cryptographic private keys, it doesn’t truly own the assets. Someone else does. And that someone else might be one phishing attack, one disgruntled employee, one hardware failure away from losing everything.
Third-party custodians solve part of this problem. They shift the operational burden to specialists. But now there’s counterparty risk. Remember FTX? Customers trusted that exchange with their assets. Then it collapsed and took those assets with it.
Qualified custodians with proper insurance, SOC certifications, and federally regulated status exist. Digital Wealth Partners, for instance, provides institutional custody through Anchorage, which is the only federally chartered bank for crypto in the United States. Clients get their own wallet with a multi-signature setup. Assets are segregated, bankruptcy-remote, and insured.
But knowing what to look for requires understanding what questions to ask. Most companies don’t.
Tax Treatment Will Surprise You
When a company uses crypto to pay a supplier, that’s not just a payment.
It’s a taxable disposition of an asset. The company needs to calculate capital gain or loss based on cost basis. That requires tracking which specific units are being spent. That requires wallet structures designed for tax compliance from day one, not retrofitted after the accountant starts panicking.
By the way, the new FASB accounting standard (ASU 2023-08) changed everything. Companies can now report crypto at fair market value with changes flowing through the income statement. Both gains and losses get recognized. This is a massive improvement over the old impairment-only model, but it also means quarterly earnings now have more volatility if a company holds meaningful digital asset positions.
The accounting isn’t optional. Get it wrong, and auditors will have questions. Get it really wrong, and regulators will have questions.
Yield Strategies Range From Conservative to Catastrophic
One of the more compelling developments in corporate crypto treasury management is the ability to make holdings productive.
Proof-of-stake networks like Ethereum, Solana, and Avalanche pay rewards to holders who stake their tokens. Yields typically range from 3-8% annually. This is passive income, not trading. Tokenized Treasury bills allow companies to earn traditional money market yields while maintaining blockchain liquidity. Products from BlackRock, Franklin Templeton, and others have made this accessible.
Some companies are generating meaningful revenue from what would otherwise be idle capital. Upexi, a NASDAQ-listed company, disclosed in 2025 that it held approximately 2 million SOL in treasury and was staking nearly all of it at roughly 8% annual yield. That’s about $65,000 per day from holdings that would otherwise just sit there.
But the flip side is real. Put funds into the wrong protocol, and a smart contract exploit can result in total loss. The difference between institutional-grade yield strategies and casino gambling comes down to due diligence and expertise.
Most corporate teams have neither when it comes to crypto.
The Regulatory Environment Has Changed
For years, the excuse for avoiding digital assets was regulatory uncertainty. Nobody wanted to be first through a door that might close behind them.
That excuse expired.
The GENIUS Act passed in 2025 and spelled out exactly how banks and qualified custodians can handle stablecoins and digital assets. The FASB updated accounting standards. The Treasury’s Financial Stability Oversight Council removed crypto from its list of systemic risks.
The rules exist now. The path is clear. What’s missing for most companies is someone who actually knows how to walk it.
What Digital Ascension Group Does Differently
Digital Ascension Group doesn’t sell trading platforms or push companies toward particular assets.
The team works with corporations to build actual governance frameworks. Investment policy statements that define what can be held, how much, and under what circumstances. Custody architecture that balances security against operational needs. Integrations with existing treasury management systems so companies aren’t running parallel operations.
Their model includes access to institutional custody through Digital Wealth Partners, which means companies get the security infrastructure that hedge funds and family offices use without having to build it themselves. The custody partner, Anchorage, is a federally chartered bank. Accounts are segregated. Multi-signature controls require approvals from both the client and the advisor before transactions execute.
This isn’t about selling a product. It’s about building the operational foundation that makes a crypto treasury strategy sustainable.
What Happens If Companies Wait
Corporate adoption of digital assets is accelerating. Analyst projections from Bernstein suggest public companies could allocate as much as $330 billion to Bitcoin alone over the next five years, up from roughly $80 billion today.
When competitors start moving faster because they’re settling international payments in hours instead of days, or earning yield on cash that used to sit idle, companies that waited will wish they’d started earlier.
The firms that figure out digital treasury now will have a structural advantage. The ones that wait will be playing catch-up with less experienced teams and more crowded vendor relationships.
Why This Conversation Matters Now
If any of this resonates, reach out to Digital Ascension Group. Not for a sales pitch. For a conversation about what digital assets might mean for your specific treasury operations. Understanding what the risk and opportunity are and determining what it would actually take to implement something responsibly. The team will tell you if it makes sense for your situation. And if it doesn’t, they’ll tell you that too. Reach out today to start the conversation.
