Public companies holding crypto used to sound like a simple bitcoin proxy trade. Not anymore.
Some firms now borrow against tokens to buy back their own stock, some build their entire public‑market story around a treasury coin, and others use crypto reserves as a growth and branding layer on top of a normal operating business.
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Forward Industries, Evernorth, and Ryde show that “crypto treasury strategy” has become several very different corporate playbooks, each with its own shareholder risks and internal logic.
Forward Industries: leveraged treasury
Forward Industries is the most aggressive of the three.
The Nasdaq‑listed company, already the largest publicly traded SOL treasury holder, with 7.01 million Solana tokens on its books, has secured a $40 million crypto‑collateralized loan from Galaxy Digital at 3.4% interest.
They will use their staked SOL as collateral, and are deploying the proceeds to repurchase 6.16 million shares of common stock for roughly $27.4 million.
This is more than “holding crypto on the balance sheet.”
In reality, this is balance‑sheet engineering: using a volatile token reserve to secure financing, then using that financing to buy back equity, all while continuing to earn staking rewards on the collateral.
For shareholders, the upside is amplified exposure if SOL appreciates, while the downside is that a sharp move against SOL can simultaneously compress the token’s value, trigger margin‑call‑style provisions on the loan, and pressure the stock. Three hits at once from one directional bet.
Forward’s shares have already fallen about 87% from their September 2025 high despite the SOL accumulation strategy.
Evernorth: treasury as identity
Evernorth is taking a different path. Backed by Ripple, Arrington Capital, SBI Holdings, Pantera Capital, and Kraken, the company has raised over $1 billion in gross proceeds and filed a Form S‑4 with the SEC for a Nasdaq listing via a merger with SPAC Armada Acquisition Corp. II, planning to trade under the ticker XRPN.
At launch, it expects to hold more than 473 million XRP worth roughly $685 million, with the goal of becoming the largest publicly traded XRP treasury company.
Evernorth is not just a company that happens to hold XRP. Its treasury asset is the company’s main public‑market story, and it plans to actively generate yield on that treasury through lending, DeFi participation, and liquidity provisioning rather than simply sitting on it.
That makes the stock case depend heavily on whether public investors want that specific kind of wrapper, and on whether XRP itself remains attractive to the institutional and retail buyers who might buy XRPN shares.
Ryde: operating business plus crypto reserves
Ryde, a Singapore‑based ride‑hailing company listed on NYSE American, represents a third model.
The firm plans to allocate a portion of its corporate reserves to bitcoin, Ether, and Solana, with exact amounts and timing determined by an internal governance team, assets held with a third‑party custodian, and oversight split between a dedicated investment committee and a separate risk management committee.
Ryde is not trying to become a pure crypto proxy. The business still depends on ride‑hailing and carpooling economics, and crypto simply becomes a treasury and branding layer that management frames as flexibility in a shifting macroeconomic environment.
The market’s initial reaction was skeptical, shares fell more than 13% in the session following the announcement, suggesting investors are not automatically rewarding operating companies for adding digital assets to a balance sheet that already has a core business to justify.
Why this matters for investors
These three stories show why investors need a better question than “does this company own crypto?”
The more useful question is: what kind of crypto treasury model is this? Leveraged play, treasury‑identity vehicle, or operating‑company hybrid?
That distinction is pretty important because the stock risk is not just about the coin’s price.
It is also about leverage ratios, loan covenants, governance depth, custody arrangements, and how much of the company’s valuation depends on crypto narrative rather than underlying business cash flow.
The old MicroStrategy template made corporate crypto look like one simple trade. This new wave looks much messier, but considerably more interesting.
Crypto market researcher and external contributor at Kriptoworld
Wheel. Steam engine. Bitcoin.
📅 Published: March 21, 2026 • 🕓 Last updated: March 21, 2026
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Disclosure:This article does not contain investment advice or recommendations. Every investment and trading move involves risk, and readers should conduct their own research when making a decision.
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