Regarding the recent 10.11 black swan event, I believe everyone is already familiar with it. SuperEx also reported and analyzed it at the first moment — please click “Review of the 10/11 Crypto Flash Crash: The Truth Behind $20 Billion in Liquidations” for full details.
To briefly recap: in the early hours of 10.11, Bitcoin plunged from the $117,000 range to below $102,000, a single‑day drop of over 12%. Network‑wide liquidations topped $19 billion, with more than 1.65 million users liquidated. However, the impact was not confined to the crypto market alone — public companies that use digital assets as core treasuries — DAT (Digital Asset Treasury) companies — also faced a major stress test.
A few random examples:
- •Forward Industries fell 15.32%;
- •BTCS Inc. fell 12.70%;
- •Helius Medical Tech fell 12.91%.
In this article, I’ll break down: the impact of the 10.11 black swan on DAT companies and whether the risks and roadmaps of the DAT model itself are being reassessed at this moment.
The Exposure of DAT Companies and Their Main Responses
1. About DAT Companies
Before discussing specific companies, let’s clarify what a DAT company is. DAT companies (digital asset treasury firms) are publicly listed companies that treat the accumulation of digital assets as their core business and asset‑allocation strategy. Compared with firms that merely hold crypto occasionally on their balance sheets, DAT companies adopt “hoarding coins” as a primary strategy.
Their logic is:
- •Provide “stock + coin” exposure for institutions or capital that cannot hold coins directly;
- •Finance via treasury premia, forming a “financial flywheel” driven by equity + bonds + crypto assets;
- •If digital assets rise further in the future, the stock price may amplify the upside.
MicroStrategy (now commonly referred to as “Strategy / MSTR”) was the pioneer and most representative case of this approach. Starting in 2020, it incorporated Bitcoin into its treasury and kept adding. Since 2020, its share price has seen over 3,000% gains as Bitcoin rose.
The rapid replication of the DAT model was driven by the market’s consensus on Bitcoin’s rise and a strong demand for a so‑called “compliant coin‑holding pathway.” In short, the DAT model (DATCOs) enables traditional capital to participate in digital assets via the equity route.
Back to the core issue: the initial appeal of DAT companies lay in their unique “coin–equity fusion” strategy. By holding digital assets, companies could not only increase treasury value, but also provide investors with compliant exposure to crypto. In a bull market, this model can create notable premia and narratives. However, under extreme conditions, the same model reveals intrinsic fragility.
In calm markets, the advantages of DAT lie in flexible capital operations and compelling investment stories; in volatile markets, the drawbacks concentrate into dual risks: direct exposure to crypto price swings and the indirect impact of equity‑market liquidity tightening. DAT companies are like high‑speed twin‑engine sports cars — when extreme conditions arrive without a safety net, risks scale up rapidly.
A core lesson of 10.11 is the importance of liquidity management. In panic, investors prefer to withdraw via stocks rather than crypto, making the share price of DAT companies the liquidity buffer channel. Especially for small‑ and mid‑cap companies, sell orders hit prices hard, leading to drops far exceeding the underlying asset’s moves. This shows that the interaction between market confidence and liquidity can, under extreme conditions, form a self‑reinforcing negative feedback loop.
This also reveals a deeper logic: what truly causes a company’s valuation to crash is often not a single asset’s price swing, but the combination of collective psychology and system design. In extreme markets, a DAT company’s share price becomes an instant verdict on the market’s trust in its treasury model.
2. In This Downturn, DAT Companies Became a Hard‑Hit Sector. Main Manifestations:
1）Direct Balance‑Sheet Compression
For companies dominated by digital assets, a price drop translates into book losses. Even if unrealized, these must be reflected on financial statements as unrealized losses.
2）Confidence Collapse and Premium Compression
In bull markets, DAT companies often trade at a premium over NAV (mNAV premium). In sharp sell‑offs, this premium compresses rapidly.
3）Stocks as a Withdrawal Channel
When the crypto market becomes hard to sell, investors turn to the equity market to dump stocks offering “coin + stock” exposure. Thin‑liquidity, small DATs are particularly vulnerable, suffering outsized drops.
4）Amplified Debt and Financing Risks
Some DAT companies used leverage or issued convertibles to buy coins or expand. The 10.11 decline crystallized their leverage risks: if prices fall further, they may be forced to sell coins or even trigger financial defaults.
5）Liquidity Dispersion Becomes Obvious
Large DATs such as MicroStrategy enjoy relatively better equity‑market liquidity buffers, making declines somewhat more contained; small DATs, with thin trading, can see a single sell order crack support and drive much steeper losses.
6）Valuation Re‑examination and an S&P Exclusion Signal
Notably, in 2025 the S&P 500 declined to include Strategy (formerly MicroStrategy) in the index. S&P’s index committee may be reluctant to admit companies that are “essentially Bitcoin funds” into core indices — symbolically, a setback in market recognition.
Lessons for the Industry from 10.11 and the DAT Turmoil
Industry Lesson 1: The Advent of Structural Risk
10.11 reminds participants that the crypto market has entered a structural‑risk phase. Black swans are no longer merely occasional — they are natural outcomes of internal resonance and high leverage. Traditional hedging can fail in crypto because the market lacks a centralized supervisory core and sufficient liquidity buffers. DAT risk management must account for structural imbalances, not just rely on simple asset diversification.
Industry Lesson 2: Liquidity Governance as a Line Between Life and Death
Whether DATs can withstand future black swans hinges on liquidity governance. The market is shifting from a “token‑issuance & market‑making” model to a “governance & liquidity‑management” model. Those who keep funds stable under extremes will win the next growth cycle. This concerns not only internal risk control, but also market design, investor behavior, and capital‑structure coordination.
Industry Lesson 3: Trust Rebuilding and the Compliance Era
Black swans also accelerate the convergence of regulation and industry self‑discipline. In the future, trust in crypto markets will rely not only on immutability of code, but also on transparency, compliance, and co‑governance. To endure, DATs must make compliance a strategic core, bring digital‑treasury management into formal governance frameworks, and diversify to reduce single‑asset exposure.
The Future of the DAT Track: From Passive Hoarding to Active Value Creation
After the turmoil, the DAT track will likely evolve from passive holding to active appreciation. Going forward, DATs will participate more in on‑chain economic activities — including staking, liquidity provision, and on‑chain governance — transforming treasuries from static asset containers into engines of recurring cash flow. Meanwhile, the tokenization wave of Real‑World Assets (RWA) is rising; DATs can become bridges between traditional and digital economies, achieving both diversification and value accretion.
Conclusion: Sector Recalibration After the Black Swan
Although the 10.11 black swan impacted DAT companies, it also offered the track a chance for collective recalibration. Survivors will possess stronger resilience and market toughness. The evolution of the DAT track is not a simple coin‑hoarding logic; it is a comprehensive upgrade — from financial innovation to ecosystem building, liquidity governance, and compliant operations. For investors, understanding the track’s inner logic, strategic differences among companies, and market signals will determine long‑term returns in digital assets.
The life‑and‑death observation of DAT companies tells us: in the crypto world, those who truly win the future are not the ones with the strongest technology, but those with the most self‑healing and the keenest adaptability to system volatility. After the 10.11 black swan, the entire industry is moving toward a more mature and more institutionalized new era.
