From Trading to Treasury
The loudest crypto treasury story is companies buying Bitcoin. The most important one is everything else.
I spent three years on the portfolio finance desk at Citadel, managing funding across more than $50 billion in assets and working with over 50 bank counterparties. Every morning started the same way: checking overnight funding rates, reconciling collateral movements, making sure the plumbing worked. Treasury is not glamorous. It is the operational backbone of every financial institution, and when it breaks, nothing else matters.
When I moved to run treasury at a crypto company, I expected a different world. In some ways it was. Settlement is measured in seconds, not days. Custody means private keys, not DTCC accounts. Collateral can be programmed to move automatically based on conditions, rather than requiring a phone call and a wire. But the core function was identical: manage liquidity, protect the balance sheet, and make capital work efficiently. The instruments changed. The job did not.
That experience gave me a front-row seat to something most market commentary misses. The dominant narrative around crypto and corporate finance is about companies buying Bitcoin for their balance sheets. That story is real, but it is the first chapter of a much longer book. What has happened over the past twelve months is a quiet but structural evolution: crypto is graduating from a balance-sheet line item into an operational toolkit for treasury management, payments, and financial infrastructure.
The views expressed are solely my own and do not represent the views of Ava Labs, the Avalanche Foundation, or any affiliate of either organization.
This newsletter is for informational purposes only and does not constitute financial, investment, legal, or tax advice.
Nothing herein should be construed as an offer or solicitation to buy, sell, or hold any digital asset or financial instrument.
Stage 1: Buy It and Hold It
The first wave of corporate crypto adoption was simple: put Bitcoin on the balance sheet. Strategy, formerly MicroStrategy, is the purest expression of this thesis. As of March 2, 2026, the company holds 720,737 BTC at an average cost of roughly $76,000 per coin, funded through a combination of convertible bonds, at-the-market share sales, and preferred stock issuances. With Bitcoin trading near $69,000, the position is several billion dollars underwater. Strategy is also the most shorted stock globally among companies with a market cap above $25 billion. The conviction is unmistakable.
In total, 164 institutions now hold Bitcoin on their balance sheets, representing roughly 1.76 million BTC worth approximately $122 billion. The playbook has been replicated from Texas to Tokyo. But buying Bitcoin and holding it is a treasury allocation decision, not a treasury transformation. The more consequential evolution is what happened next.
Stage 2: Programmable Cash Management
BlackRock launched BUIDL, its USD Institutional Digital Liquidity Fund, in March 2024 as a tokenized money market fund on Ethereum. Each token represents $1 backed by short-term U.S. Treasuries. For TradFi readers: this is not a cryptocurrency. It is a money market fund on a different rail. Instead of subscribing through a traditional fund administrator on a T+2 settlement cycle, qualified investors can access, trade, and redeploy cash-equivalent holdings on-chain, around the clock, without waiting for wires, cutoffs, or business-day constraints.
The fund grew to approximately $2.85 billion, and then BlackRock took a step nobody expected. On February 11, 2026, BUIDL was listed on Uniswap, the largest decentralized exchange, tradeable 24/7 via approved market makers through UniswapX. BlackRock also purchased UNI governance tokens. The world's largest asset manager took its first direct step into decentralized finance.
BUIDL is not alone. Franklin Templeton's BENJI fund (FOBXX) holds over $800 million across seven blockchain networks. Ondo Finance manages roughly $2.5 billion in tokenized Treasury products. Superstate's USTB fund grew from $10 million at launch to nearly $589 million in two years. The combined tokenized U.S. Treasury market reached approximately $9.2 billion by late 2025, nearly tripling from earlier that year.
But the most important shift is how these instruments are being used. BUIDL is now accepted as trading collateral on Binance. Franklin Templeton has modified its money market funds to meet stablecoin reserve standards. Sky Protocol, the entity behind DAI, has allocated over $1 billion into tokenized Treasuries through BUIDL, Superstate, and Centrifuge.
In my view, this is where the narrative shifts from "tokenize assets" to "use tokenized assets." A corporate treasurer does not care that a Treasury bill is on a blockchain. They care that idle cash can serve as collateral, settle instantly, and be redeployed 24/7 without waiting for a wire to clear. Tokenized funds are not a novelty. They are a better version of the cash management stack that every treasury team already uses.
Stage 3: Crypto as Operational Infrastructure
If tokenized funds are about making cash management more efficient, stablecoins are about rethinking how money moves.
Stablecoin adjusted transaction volume reached $9 trillion in the twelve months ending September 2025, up 87% year-over-year, according to a16z's State of Crypto report. That headline figure includes DeFi settlement and trading flows. McKinsey's more conservative estimate of actual payment volume is approximately $390 billion per year, growing at triple-digit rates, with B2B transfers accounting for roughly 60% of payment volume.
The companies processing these payments are not crypto startups. They are the largest payment processors in the world:
- Stripe acquired stablecoin infrastructure company Bridge for $1.1 billion and now supports USDC payments in 101 countries at a flat 1.5% fee. Bridge received a conditional OCC national trust bank charter on February 17, 2026. Stripe's valuation surged 74% to $159 billion, driven in significant part by stablecoin growth.
- Visa launched USDC settlement in the United States on December 16, 2025, settling over Solana seven days a week at an annualized run rate of $3.5 billion.
- PayPal's PYUSD stablecoin grew from $1.28 billion to $3.8 billion in market cap in under 90 days. Meta is planning a stablecoin reentry in the second half of 2026 using Stripe's rails, potentially bringing three billion users onto crypto payment infrastructure.
A Fireblocks survey from March 2025 found that 49% of 295 financial institutions were already using stablecoins, with another 41% in pilot or planning stages.
For anyone who has managed a corporate treasury, the appeal is mechanical, not ideological. A cross-border wire takes three to five business days, involves intermediary banks, and carries fees that compound with each hop. A stablecoin transfer settles in minutes, at a fraction of the cost, and operates outside banking hours. The GENIUS Act, signed into law on July 18, 2025, provides the regulatory framework: one-to-one reserve backing, federal oversight, priority claims for holders in insolvency, and full anti-money-laundering compliance. For the first time, corporate treasurers have a legal framework to justify using stablecoins as a payment rail.
Stage 4: The Suits Arrive
If the stablecoin story is about payments, the bank story is about plumbing.
The buildout is happening simultaneously across Wall Street's largest institutions:
- Morgan Stanley applied to the OCC on February 18, 2026 for a national trust bank charter for digital asset custody. The proposed entity, Morgan Stanley Digital Trust, would offer custody, trading, and staking services across the bank's $8 to $9 trillion client base. The bank is also planning direct crypto trading on E*Trade in the first half of 2026. This is not an experiment, Morgan Stanley is building wallet technology in-house. As Amy Golenberg, the bank's head of digital assets, put it: "We need to build this internally. We can't just rent the technology."
- JPMorgan's Kinexys platform has processed over $3 trillion in cumulative volume, averaging $5 billion daily. JPM Coin is being issued on the Canton Network with a phased rollout through 2026, and the bank plans to accept Bitcoin and Ethereum as loan collateral.
- Citigroup is targeting a crypto custody launch later in 2026, building a single master safekeeping account that combines crypto, securities, and cash with cross-margining. Citi Token Services, a 24/7 blockchain-based network for internal cross-border money movement, is already live.
- Barclays invested in Ubyx, a stablecoin clearing startup, in January 2026 and is building a blockchain payment platform with supplier selection expected by April.
Eighteen months ago, these same institutions were operating under what a November 2025 House Financial Services Committee report documented as systematic regulatory discouragement. The FDIC had sent letters to 25 banks advising them to "pause" crypto activities. The SEC's SAB 121 required custodians to record crypto assets as balance-sheet liabilities, making custody uneconomical. The reversal has been swift: SAB 121 was rescinded in January 2025, the OCC granted conditional trust charters to five crypto firms in December 2025, and SEC Chair Paul Atkins launched a joint "Project Crypto" initiative with the CFTC.
In my view, when Morgan Stanley, JPMorgan, Citi, and Barclays are all building crypto infrastructure simultaneously, they are not chasing a trend. They are positioning for a market they believe will be permanent.
What Doesn't Change
Better rails do not eliminate risk. They change its shape. A tokenized Treasury fund settles faster than its traditional equivalent, but the smart contract executing that settlement introduces a category of risk that does not exist in legacy infrastructure. A stablecoin payment clears in minutes, but if the issuer's reserves are opaque or the redemption mechanism fails under stress, speed becomes a liability.
The stablecoin yield debate illustrates the deepest structural tension. The OCC's proposed GENIUS Act rules explicitly prohibit stablecoin issuers from paying interest or yield to holders. Over 40 banking associations lobbied for this provision, arguing that yield-bearing stablecoins could drain deposits. The CLARITY Act has stalled specifically over this question. If stablecoins cannot pay yield, they are a payment rail. If they can, they are a bank competitor. The outcome will determine the ceiling for crypto treasury adoption.
And the accounting, tax, and compliance infrastructure remains immature. Companies deploying capital into DeFi protocols face unclear tax treatment, evolving regulatory perimeters, and smart contract risk that no audit fully eliminates. The tools are improving, but the risk frameworks are still catching up.
The Plumbing Is the Point
At Citadel, I never thought about the settlement layer. DTCC cleared equities. Fedwire moved cash. SWIFT routed messages. The plumbing was invisible because it worked, and because nobody had a reason to replace it. The reason I left Wall Street for crypto was the conviction that this plumbing could be better, not different for the sake of different, but faster, cheaper, and more transparent in ways that compound over time.
That conviction gets tested in every drawdown. Bitcoin is down nearly 50% from its October 2025 high. The price action screams caution. But the infrastructure story tells a different narrative. In the same twelve months that Bitcoin fell from $125,000 to $69,000, BlackRock put a $2.85 billion fund on a decentralized exchange. Visa started settling in USDC. Stripe built a $159 billion business partly on stablecoin rails. Morgan Stanley applied to custody crypto alongside stocks and bonds. JPMorgan processed $3 trillion through tokenized deposits. And in my last piece, S&P rated a Bitcoin-backed securitization using the same framework it applies to auto loans.
The corporate crypto story started with companies buying Bitcoin. It has evolved, in four stages, into something much broader: programmable cash management, operational payment rails, and full-scale institutional infrastructure. When I check overnight rates and reconcile collateral movements today, the job is the same one I did at Citadel. The instruments are different. The settlement layer is different. But the function is identical. Crypto did not reinvent treasury. It gave treasury better tools. And the largest financial institutions in the world have noticed.
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