In the evolving landscape of corporate finance, digital assets are emerging as powerful treasury reserves. Michael Saylor‘s Strategy, Inc. popularized the Digital Asset Treasury (DAT) model, leveraging Bitcoin (BTC) to enhance shareholder value through a convertible and perpetual preferred stock structure.
This financing mechanism allows companies to raise capital while tying investor returns to the underlying asset’s performance.
However, as Multicoin Capital‘s Managing Partner Kyle Samani argues in a recent analysis, this structure shines brighter when applied to Solana (SOL) rather than BTC.
In a September 11, 2025, blog post titled “Creating the World’s Leading Solana Treasury Company,” Samani outlines why SOL’s native properties make it a superior choice for DATs, particularly in servicing financial obligations.
Forward Industries, Inc., the focus of Samani’s piece, recently raised $1.65 billion in a private investment in public equity (PIPE) led by Multicoin Capital, Jump Crypto, and Galaxy.
The company aims to build the world’s premier SOL treasury, actively managing its holdings to maximize “SOL per share” for investors.
This mirrors Saylor’s BTC-centric approach but adapts it to Solana’s unique ecosystem.
Samani emphasizes that while Strategy’s model has been groundbreaking, SOL DATs—Digital Asset Treasuries built around Solana—offer inherent advantages that BTC DATs simply cannot match.
At the core of Samani’s insights is the convertible and perpetual preferred structure, a hybrid security that combines debt-like features with equity upside.
Convertible preferred stock can be exchanged for common shares at a predetermined rate, while perpetual preferred offers ongoing dividends without a maturity date.
Strategy popularized this for BTC treasuries, allowing the company to issue shares backed by Bitcoin’s scarcity and appreciation potential.
Yet, Samani contends:
“We believe that the convertible and perpetual preferred structure that Strategy popularized works far better for a SOL DAT than a BTC DAT given the native properties of SOL.”
The key differentiator? Yield generation.
Bitcoin, for all its strengths as a store of value, produces no intrinsic yield.
Holders must rely on external factors like lending or derivatives markets, which introduce counterparty risks and often yield minimal returns.
Samani starkly contrasts this:
“Bitcoin has zero real yield.”
Without native income streams, BTC DATs seemingly struggle to service obligations under the preferred structure.
Dividends or conversions become burdensome, potentially diluting shareholder value if the company must sell assets during downturns.
This limitation hampers scalability and sustainability in a volatile crypto market.
Solana, however, aims to flip the script.
As a so-called high-performance blockchain, SOL enables staking, where validators secure the network and earn rewards.
This isn’t mere inflation; it’s real economic output.
Samani explains:
“SOL can natively produce real yield via staking. SOL’s ‘yield’ is derived from organic economic activity and MEV.”
MEV, or Maximal Extractable Value, captures profits from transaction ordering, further boosting returns.
As of September 2025, SOL stakers averaged 8.05% annual yield—6.19% from inflation and a robust 1.86% from genuine activity and MEV—distributed every approximately 2.5 days.
This steady income stream allows a SOL DAT company like Forward Industries to service preferred dividends and conversion obligations without liquidating principal holdings.
Imagine a treasury company issuing perpetual preferred shares promising, say, 7% dividends.
With BTC, payments would require selling coins, eroding the reserve over time.
But with SOL, staking yields cover these costs organically, preserving and even growing the treasury.
Samani notes:
“The company can use these sources of yield to service obligations in a way that BTC-DATS simply cannot.”
This creates a self-sustaining model, where yield reinvestment compounds SOL per share, aligning incentives for long-term holders.
Moreover, Solana’s ecosystem aims to amplify these benefits.
Its DeFi protocols offer competitive lending rates and liquidity incentives, reportedly surpassing Bitcoin’s offerings.
Forward Industries plans to deploy its treasury across staking, DeFi, and ecosystem grants, generating “differentiated yields” that enhance the convertible structure’s appeal.
Investors get exposure to SOL’s growth—fueled by low fees, high throughput, and a thriving developer community—without the yield vacuum of BTC.
Samani’s vision positions SOL DATs as the next evolution in corporate crypto adoption.
By harnessing Solana‘s productive assets, companies can build resilient treasuries that reward shareholders through both appreciation and income.
As Forward Industries executes this strategy, it could set a new standard, proving that in the DAT arena, yield could potentially become a game-changer.
Bitcoin may be digital gold, but Solana could be considered something siilar to digital farmland—fertile, productive, and ready to harvest. However, Solana is still too early in its journey towards becoming incorporated into the corporate treasuries of a relatively significant number of companies.
Moreover, Solana does not have a fixed monetary policy nor does it benefit from the decentralization of Bitcoin or Ethereum (which cannot happen overnight if at all).
In addition to these shortcomings, first-mover advantage in the crypto space has proven to be enormous as we have seen in the resurgence of Ethereum during this current bull market.
Even though we are in the month of September, which has historically been bad for crypto prices, ETH and BTC are showing no signs of slowing down. To be fair though, neither is Solana (SOL) and it could potentially become worthy of being part of corporate digital assets treasuries in the foreseeable future.