Publicly listed Bitcoin BTC/USD treasury companies are no longer just passive holders of BTC.

A new financial model, leveraging traditional capital markets tools like share issuance and fixed-income debt, is enabling these firms to outperform Bitcoin itself in BTC terms.

At the core of this model is a focus on growing the Bitcoin-per-share (BPS) ratio.

Rather than simply tracking Bitcoin's price, these companies aim to accumulate more BTC per outstanding share over time.

The result is a growing “BTC yield,” a return denominated not in fiat but in Bitcoin units.

Strategy MSTR, the most prominent example, has perfected this playbook.

The company regularly conducts at-the-market (ATM) equity offerings, issuing new shares when its stock is trading at a premium to its net asset value (NAV).

The capital raised is immediately used to purchase more BTC.

Despite diluting shareholders in nominal terms, these actions are accretive to the BPS ratio, meaning that each share is backed by more BTC than before.

This mechanism only works when the company's market cap trades above the value of its Bitcoin holdings.

In this scenario, equity issuance allows the company to extract a premium from short-term buyers, reinvesting it into BTC to benefit long-term holders.

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The higher the market premium, the greater the accretive yield.

This dynamic has allowed Strategy to achieve what some call BTC-native outperformance.

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In 2024 alone, Strategy delivered a 75% BTC yield for its shareholders.

That is, if a share was backed by 0.001 BTC at the beginning of the year, it was backed by 0.00175 BTC by year-end without BTC needing to rise in price.

The second leg of this model is leverage.

Treasury companies can issue debt at interest rates lower than their expected Bitcoin CAGR (compound annual growth rate), using the proceeds to acquire more BTC.

For example, if BTC is expected to grow 20% annually and the firm can borrow at 8%, the 12% spread is effectively captured as additional BPS growth.

When used conservatively, over long durations and with manageable liquidation thresholds, this leverage enhances BTC returns without exposing the company to short-term volatility risk.

Taken together, these two tools, ATM equity issuance and strategic debt financing, turn treasury companies into what analysts are calling "full-stack Bitcoin yield engines."

Critics often label these stocks as overpriced, citing high market cap-to-NAV (mNAV) ratios.

But within this framework, a premium mNAV can be rational: if the BTC yield from BPS growth equals or exceeds the premium paid, long-term holders still win.

In fact, a high mNAV enables more effective equity issuance, further reinforcing the flywheel of BTC accumulation.

This model stands in stark contrast to altcoin treasury companies, which typically rely only on equity issuance and face higher risk due to the less predictable performance of their underlying assets.

Ethereum ETH/USD treasury companies, for instance, have yet to meaningfully deploy debt-based strategies to scale BPS, though Standard Chartered recently projected they could eventually hold 10% of all ETH if they follow a similar model.

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