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Unchained

DAT Stocks Are on Sale. Are They a Buy? Plus, Why Crypto Is Dead - Ep.985

Unchained

Laura Shin

News, Tech News, Business News

4.61.3K Ratings

🗓️ 20 December 2025

⏱️ 54 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

In this combined episode of Unchained, Steven Ehrlich first breaks down why crypto treasury stocks (DATs) have swung from massive premiums to deep discounts, why comparisons to GBTC can be misleading, and why buying these stocks isn’t a clean arbitrage trade but a long-term, high-conviction bet. You can read Steve’s full report here and you can subscribe for 95% OFF before the end of year! 😱 Then, Figment Capital’s Dougie DeLuca zooms out to the broader shift underway. As fintechs and institutions embrace blockchain infrastructure, he argues that “crypto as we know it” may be fading—and that crypto natives risk being left behind unless they adapt to real users, sustainable products, and mainstream distribution. Need liquidity without selling your crypto? Take out a Figure Crypto-Backed Loan, allowing you to borrow against your BTC, ETH, or SOL with 12-month terms and no prepayment penalties. They have the lowest rates in the industry at 8.91%, allowing you to access instant cash or buy more Bitcoin without triggering a tax event.  Thank you to our sponsor, Figure! Unlock your crypto’s potential today at Figure!  Guests: Dougie DeLuca, Investor and Researcher at Figment Capital Steven Ehrlich, Executive Editor at Unchained Links: Unchained: Coinbase Launches Stock Trading and Prediction Markets Inside Robinhood’s Big Super App Plan: ‘There’s Still a Lot of Work to Be Done’ Dougie's “Crypto is Dead” article Timestamps: 👏 0:00 Intro 📘 1:16 What a DAT actually is and why mNAV matters more than most people think 📉 5:16 How deep the discounts really are and why some of them are optical illusions ⚖️ 7:12 Whether mNAVs should trade back to 1 and when that assumption breaks 🔁 8:59 How this compares to the GBTC discount and why the analogy can be dangerous 🧱 13:44 Why many DATs are stuck below mNAV and what’s structurally holding them down 🔍 16:34 How to pressure test different DATs to see which ones are opportunity and which are traps 19:34 Introduction 21:03 Why Dougie thinks crypto natives could be left behind as the market evolves 24:33 Why Dougie sees the current incentive-heavy crypto strategy fading away 27:13 Is crypto’s high risk market “saturated?” 28:32 Why Dougie sees Robinhood as a shining example of where crypto is going 29:46 How companies are shifting their strategies for this new moment in crypto 31:41 Why Dougie says the crypto label would be baggage in the future 33:13 Which companies are best positioned for the next phase of crypto adoption? 35:42 Which companies would have to evolve to survive? 42:11 Will the DeFi Mullet strategy prove successful? 42:17 Which parts of crypto culture should survive? 43:14 Why Dougie says Coinbase's content coins are still in their early innings 47:34 How crypto becomes mainstream 51:03 Is the four-year Bitcoin cycle over? Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0

I spoke with a number of people for the story and they all kind of said that once everything shakes out and it's not entirely clear when that's going to happen, the MNAVs for these companies should be somewhere around one.

0:13.4

Welcome back, everyone. Crypto prices are down. Bitcoin is off about 30% from its recent highs and Ether has dropped even more, but some

0:22.6

digital asset treasury stocks or DATs are trading at even deeper discounts, in some cases

0:28.2

valued at half of their crypto holdings.

0:31.3

These are companies that stockpile Bitcoin and Eath on their balance sheet and during the

0:35.2

bull run, many traded at massive premiums,

0:38.1

but now with sentiment fading, they flipped.

0:41.4

Some investors think that means it's time to buy.

0:44.6

Others are saying not so fast.

0:46.6

To help us in Pack at all, we're joined by Unchained Executive Editor Steve Erlich,

0:50.6

who dug into this in a new article that we just published.

0:55.9

If you're watching this on X, we should be posting this link in the first comment. If you're on YouTube, it is in the show

1:01.9

notes. Welcome, Steve. Hey, Laura. So you just came out with an article about how many digital

1:08.0

asset treasuries or debts are trading at a massive discount. And you

1:12.5

looked into whether or not they might be a good buy. But before we dive into all that particulars,

1:18.0

why don't we just make sure listeners have, you know, some of these basic definitions and

1:21.6

understandings down. So explain what a dad is and, you know, this concept of NAV and MNAV.

1:27.8

Yeah. thanks.

1:28.9

So Adat stands for digital asset treasury.

1:33.4

Even if you're not familiar with the term, I would imagine most people watching this are aware of strategy, formerly micro-strategy that has amassed tens of billions of dollars of Bitcoin since it started

1:46.2

accumulating the asset back in August of 2020. Essentially, these companies now, it took about

1:52.1

five years or so, but a lot of these companies are copycats, very explicitly following the

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