Hi, it’s Marc. ✌️

“Solana is just faster, cheaper, and more accessible.

It maps perfectly to the same consumer demand cycle that made Amazon unbeatable.”

— Cosmo Jiang, General Partner at Pantera Capital

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🎧 Jump to the best parts

(10:56) → Why “NAV per share” is the new “free cash flow per share: Cosmo explains how digital asset treasuries work just like banks or Amazon in its prime: execution and capital allocation matter more than hype. Investors should look at NAV-per-share growth, not token price, just as Amazon’s stock rewarded reinvestment before profits.
(22:03) → Inside Solana Company (NASDAQ: HSDT): We break down how Pantera structured Solana Company to systematically acquire and stake Solana, combining a $500M PIPE, $750M in stapled warrants, and differentiated staking economics. Actionable takeaway: public vehicles can outperform ETFs when they compound yield and use capital markets tools (buybacks, convertibles) to increase tokens per share.
(29:43) → Solana vs. Ethereum & Why Tokens Are Infrastructure Equity: Cosmo makes the case that Solana isn’t just “cheaper”, it’s a cash‑flow‑producing platform growing faster than ETH on incremental users, developers, and fees. He reframes tokens as ownership units in productive networks, not commodities. For investors, that means valuing Solana the way you’d value a high‑growth infra company, not a currency.

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We sat down with Cosmo Jiang, General Partner at Pantera Capital and Board Observer at Solana Company, to unpack the rise of digital asset treasury companies (DATs) and why Solana is at the centre of the next wave.

This isn’t just a copy of MicroStrategy. It’s a redesigned flywheel, engineered for speed, yield, and public markets scale.

Why it’s important: Digital asset treasury companies (DATCOs) have raised $20B in 2025 so far. July alone accounted for nearly $10B, making DATs (digital asset treasuries) the single largest category of crypto fundraising this year. While Bitcoin still dominates, increasing flows are moving to Ethereum, Solana, TON, and other altcoin-focused DATs.

Pantera: It is one of the original and largest institutional investors in digital assets. Its portfolio spans eight tokens, including Bitcoin, Ethereum, Solana, and BNB across U.S., U.K., and Israeli companies. These include BitMine Immersion, Twenty One Capital, DeFi Development Corp, and Mill City Ventures III.

Where to find Cosmo Jiang:

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/cosmojiang

X: https://x.com/cosmo_jiang

Pantera: https://panteracapital.com/team/

🎙️ In our conversation, we discuss:

Origin of digital asset treasuries (DAT)
Why Solana beats Bitcoin and Ethereum on raw product-market fit
What Pantera saw that made them launch a $1.25B SOL-native public vehicle
Why public equities are the ultimate crypto onboarding funnel for institutions
How Solana Company is engineered to maximize SOL per share
Why most investors underestimate how active Solana already is
Understanding MNAV and navigating market cycles
Why Solana is becoming the default blockchain for payments, AI, and RWAs
Debunking core crypto misconceptions for institutional investors
The case for treating tokens like infrastructure equity, not software
The rise of corporate chains and the multi-chain future

Watch or listen now:
YouTube • Spotify • Apple Podcasts

Recommended podcasts:

My biggest takeaways from this conversation:

Wall Street still doesn’t get DATs (yet)

MicroStrategy’s playbook looked simple: buy Bitcoin, issue stock at premium, repeat. Every VC firm nodded along. Few understood why it worked.

Cosmo was instrumental in some of the first “MicroStrategy copycats” like Bitmine and Upexy, but he quickly saw a way to build a better model. He frames it with striking clarity: a digital asset treasury is not just about buying and holding an asset. It’s a balance sheet business, much like a bank or an insurance company.

“The business model is trying to maximize your tokens per share. That’s how you maximize shareholder value.”

That asset? Solana. The vehicle? Solana Company, backed by a $500M PIPE and Pantera’s entire playbook from the past six months.

DATs Are Banks, Not Bitcoin Funds

Most investors think digital asset treasuries are passive holders with sexy balance sheets. Wrong.

DATs are balance-sheet-heavy financial institutions. Just like JPMorgan trades at 2x book value while regional banks trade below 1x, execution determines everything. Pantera asked: “What if we applied banking fundamentals to the fastest-growing L1 that Wall Street hasn’t priced correctly yet?”

The primary engine for this is what he calls the “capital markets flywheel”:

Engine 1: Financial Engineering (85-95% of value creation)

Issue equity/convertibles at premium to NAV
Monetize volatility through warrants and converts
Scale the capital markets flywheel

Engine 2: Base Yield Generation (5-15% of value creation)

Staking rewards
DeFi participation
Real fee capture from on-chain activity

This is where Solana has a distinct advantage over Bitcoin.

“Solana is a productive asset... By capturing fees, it generates value for its token holders. This ability to then go use your Solana, generate this high single-digit staking yield or DeFi yield to really augment that core financial engineering engine can be very powerful.”

Solana vs Ethereum

Cosmo’s argument for choosing Solana over Ethereum is two-fold: market opportunity and fundamental value. While the Ethereum treasury space is now dominated by giants like Bitmine and Sharplink, Solana still lacks a billion-dollar-plus treasury player. Solana Company aims to be that player.

But the core of the thesis is about the fundamentals. Cosmo argues that traditional finance investors fundamentally misunderstand Solana. They see a token, not a high-growth tech business.

His positioning framework, translated for a TradFi audience:

A High-Growth Tech Stock: “Solana generates $3 billion of annualized free cash flow... It only trades at $120 billion valuation. And so 40 times run-rate earnings for something that’s growing 3x every year is very cheap relative to its growth for any tech investor.” At a $120 billion valuation, that’s 40x earnings for something growing 3x year-over-year. Any tech investor would recognize that as cheap. Yet Solana trades at 5% of Bitcoin’s market cap and 20% of Ethereum’s.
The Amazon of Blockchains: He compares Solana to Amazon’s “holy trinity” of consumer demands. “Consumers will always want cheaper, they’ll always want faster, and they’ll always want more convenience. And that’s exactly what Solana is.”
Dominating Incremental Growth: Across new developers, users, transactions, and fees, Solana is “crushing it in terms of market share growth.”

He believes the story of Solana as a cash-flowing, rapidly growing software platform has not yet been told to traditional markets. Solana Company is designed to be the vehicle that tells it.

The Inflation Argument Is Stock Comp, Not a Bug

Traditional investors immediately flag Solana’s inflation rate. Bitcoin has basically none. Ethereum’s is minimal or negative. Solana’s looks high by comparison.

Cosmo reframes it entirely:

“When people talk about token inflation, really they’re talking about what is the equivalent of stock-based compensation in our equity-based compensation in traditional equities.”

Every fast-growing tech company rewards employees with stock options. Solana rewards validators and builders with tokens. Same concept, different label.

“The biggest, best tech companies that are growing fast, they want to reward people that are adding value to their business, which in this case is employees. They want to reward them with stock,” he says.

The Premium question: What happens in a bear market?

Many worry about what happens when the market turns and the premium to Net Asset Value (MNAV) collapses. Cosmo’s view is pragmatic and rooted in disciplined capital allocation.

“Nothing is number go up forever... The vast majority of everyone else will likely not be able to drive a return above their cost of capital and therefore trade at one times or maybe even slightly below one times MNAV. And I think that’s very natural, very normal.”

He argues that a skilled management team can create value in any market environment:

Above 1x MNAV: You issue stock at a premium to accretively grow your NAV per share.
Below 1x MNAV: You buy back your stock at a discount to accretively grow your NAV per share.

“We think the best capital allocators will be most focused on maximizing shareholder value... Whether our MNAV is above one or below one, we’ll always have an opportunity to grow our MNAV per share.”

Key takeaways

Here are some key takeaways Cosmo shared for navigating the new landscape of digital assets:

DATs are active financial businesses: The best DATs will function like well-run financial institutions, using capital markets to maximise tokens per share. Success is about execution, not just buying an asset. The goal isn’t to track NAV, but to grow it.
1. Pro signal: Financial institutions are planning to offer ETFs of DATs. [More]
Solana is structurally undervalued: Institutional investors should analyze Solana like a high-growth tech company with massive free cash flow, not a speculative currency. The narrative is shifting from “digital commodity” to “digital enterprise.”
Regulation is a tailwind: Upcoming market structure legislation and potential DeFi safe harbors in the U.S. will be a “huge unleashing of innovation,” opening the floodgates for institutional capital and making the underlying assets more accessible and valuable.
1. Pro signals: Two major regulatory shifts are happening in the digital asset space. [Read more]
Market will consolidate: Upcoming market structure legislation and potential DeFi safe harbors in the U.S. will be a “huge unleashing of innovation,” opening the floodgates for institutional capital and making the underlying assets more accessible and valuable.

Cosmo’s bottom line: Solana Company wants to be the Solana treasury vehicle that tells the story Wall Street hasn’t heard yet, and captures the value that comes with it.

Take care,

Marc

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