What Makes a CAP Valuable: The Five Levers of Value Creation
As institutional investors wake up to the rise of Crypto Asset Product companies (CAPs), one question dominates: What drives their value?
On the surface, CAPs may resemble traditional “crypto treasury” companies — public firms that hold large amounts of BTC, ETH, SOL, or other crypto asset on their balance sheets. But if you’re only looking at how much crypto a CAP holds, you’re missing the point.
The real value of a CAP lies not only in what it holds — but in how it engineers capital around those holdings.
Just as software companies are valued not by the lines of code they store but by the velocity and utility of the software they ship, CAPs are valued not by their crypto inventory alone, but by their ability to monetize that inventory through financial product innovation.
This article breaks down the five key levers of CAP value creation—the mechanisms that drive premium valuations, asymmetric upside, and long-term capital compounding.
1. Capital Structure Engineering
CAPs are not passive holders. They are financial architects. Their first lever of value is how well they design, issue, and optimize capital instruments such as:
Zero-coupon convertible debt
Preferred shares with embedded yield mechanisms
ATM (At-the-Market) equity programs
Moving-strike warrants
Done well, these tools allow a CAP to raise capital above NAV — buying more crypto per share than they dilute. The result? NAV-per-share accretion that compounds with every raise.
MicroStrategy (MSTR) is the gold standard here. The company raised over $7 billion in convertible debt and equity programs, most recently issuing a preferred equity tranche offering a 9.9% dividend yield backed by BTC. Each capital raise has helped grow its BTC holdings to over 580,000 coins, all while maintaining a premium to NAV.
The takeaway: A well-engineered capital structure doesn’t just fund crypto accumulation; it amplifies it.
2. Product Velocity
In traditional tech, product velocity is the heartbeat of innovation. For CAPs, financial product velocity plays the same role.
The ability to quickly design, test, and deploy new capital instruments — each tailored to evolving market conditions — is a critical driver of long-term value.
Examples of high-velocity financial product innovation in CAPs:
Metaplanet (TSE: 3350) pioneered moving-strike warrants in Japan, enabling dynamic capital raises that protect existing shareholders from dilution.
DFDV (NASDAQ: DFDV) structured prepaid forward share agreements with validator-based staking rewards — abstracting Solana validator income into public-market equity structures.
Why it matters: Product velocity increases optionality, deepens investor confidence, and allows companies to respond to market sentiment faster than their peers. It’s a competitive moat.
3. Asset and Token Strategy
Most early CAPs started with BTC. But the next generation expands across a broader crypto capital base:
ETH: Unlocks staking yield and DeFi-native integrations.
SOL: Offers validator revenue and LST strategies.
LSTs, stablecoins, even NFTs: Can be packaged into hybrid asset-backed securities.
CAPs that design their treasury not just around storage, but around yield-generating, protocol-native, or market-narrative-aligned assets, gain exposure to more upside and unlock differentiated capital strategies.
Sharplink Gaming (SBET), for instance, positioned itself as the premier ETH-native CAP, leveraging Ethereum-based ecosystem relationships (including Joseph Lubin as Chairman) to structure next-generation staking-linked capital products.
The lesson: Value isn’t just about how much crypto is held. What kind, and how it’s integrated into product strategy, is just as important.
4. Capital Formation Efficiency
Valuation premiums depend on more than just NAV multiples; they hinge on how efficiently capital is raised and recycled.
A CAP with high capital formation efficiency can:
Raise at tighter spreads to market price (low dilution)
Close faster
Structure instruments with longer-term investor alignment
Layer raises sequentially to ride price momentum (e.g., stacking successive convertible rounds)
In Q2 2025, Metaplanet raised ¥770 billion (~$5.4B) across several tranches with minimal dilution and a sustained 7× mNAV premium. That capital formation speed and scale was itself a value driver, helping attract even more institutional interest.
At its core, this lever is about leverage — but without debt. It’s about raising smart, raising often, and doing so with structures that add to the business rather than dilute it.
5. Narrative Credibility and Market Fit
Finally, no CAP can achieve or maintain high valuation multiples without narrative trust. The market needs to believe that:
The company can sustain its premium
Its capital raises are value-accretive, not desperation
It will continue to deliver financial product innovation
Its team understands both traditional and crypto-native mechanics
This is often where new entrants fail. They launch with big announcements and treasuries but no clear plan for how to engineer capital around them. Without the right story — and the execution to back it up — NAV premiums evaporate, and the company reverts to being just another crypto holding firm.
Great CAPs, on the other hand, build trust in their architecture. MicroStrategy did it. Metaplanet did it. DFDV did it. It’s a mix of track record, clarity, transparency, and a sharp understanding of what investors are really buying: capital product innovation.
Conclusion: Five Levers, One Flywheel
Together, these five levers form a CAP flywheel:
Capital Engineering → Product Velocity → Asset Strategy → Efficient Capital Raises → Narrative Credibility → Premium Valuation → Repeat
The best CAPs don’t pull just one or two of these — they pull all five, continuously. That’s why they trade at 2–8× mNAV when others struggle to hold parity. That’s why they can raise billions in weeks. That’s why they are building the financial infrastructure of crypto’s public market phase.
In this emerging category, value isn’t just about what you hold. It’s about how you engineer capital around it. That’s what separates a treasury company from a true Crypto Asset Product company.