Morning minute: The DAT meltdown has begun

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

GM!

Today’s most important news:

• Crypto majors are cutting into the weekend; BTC briefly loses $94k before recovering
• Crypto Fear & Greed remains deep in Extreme Fear
• Tom Lee’s BMNR appoints new CEO amid 46% stock plunge
• Harvard Adds ~$350M in Bitcoin via IBIT in Q3, Up 257% QoQ
• Monad’s public sale goes live today for $2.5 billion FDV on Coinbase Token Sales

📉The DAT meltdown is underway

Crypto majors may be in bad shape right now.

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

📌What happened

The last stage inside Bitcoin And Ethereum has spilled over to the publicly traded companies (digital asset treasury companies, or DATs) that have created their entire business model around purchasing them.

Saylor’s Strategy has made headlines and is now down over 50% from a year-long high of $455 (now $200).

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

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

Put it together and you have a brutal image:

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

And some have already returned to sales.

• ETHZilla (ETH-focused DAT) sold about $40 million worth of ETH, about 10% of its treasury, to fund a stock buyback
• Sequans (BTC-focused DAT) sold about 970 BTC, about 30% of its Bitcoin stack, to pay off convertible debt

That sale has raised major concerns that other major players will be forced to join.

🗣️ What do they say

“When DAT shares trade below the value of their crypto holdings, it means the market is no longer rewarding them for excessive accumulation in the same way it used to. This doesn’t mean they are 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 completed. Bitcoin-focused government bonds with cleaner balance sheets are holding up better than multi-asset DATs, many of which are chasing higher-risk tokens.” – Fakhul Miah, Managing Director of Gomining Institutional

🧠Why it matters

Here is the entire DAT trade can be summed up in a single statement: mNAV has fully compressed to well below 1 for all crypto majors, and is now trading closer to 80% for most crypto majors.

That means the value of the DAT is trading lower than the combined value of the digital assets they own.

Many predicted that this would be the end result of the DATs, which would be a below-spot trade (because why would anyone pay a premium for a holding company rather than just the underlying asset). But few thought it would end so quickly.

The question now is: what happens from here?

More of the smaller and more exotic (i.e. riskier tokens) DATs will likely continue to sell. Some will calm down. Some can 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 balances yet.

And Saylor has been doing this for so long that he’s basically Lindy and has a hard time seeing his path to implosion.

That said, it could certainly mean a lot more pain in the short term for even the best DATs if the bearish price action continues.

Potential buyers will likely need even more convincing to buy after this downturn, so DAT leaders might as well fine-tune their pitches during this downturn…

🌎 Macrocrypto and memes

A few Crypto and Web3 headlines that caught my attention:

In corporate bonds/ETFs

In Memes / Onchain movers

💰 Token, airdrop and protocol tracker

Here’s an overview of the top token, protocol and airdrop news of the day:

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

🚚 What’s happening in NFTs?

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

• NFT Leaders were mostly red and continued 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 the top performers
• The CryptoPunk floor briefly fell below $100,000 this weekend, down more than 50% in the past five weeks