Solana DATs Will Outpace Bitcoin, Says Multicoin | Crypto News
Multicoin Capital co-founder Kyle Samani believes Solana-native Digital Asset Treasuries (DATs) have a structural benefit over Bitcoin-focused autos—and that the mechanics underpinning those DATs might turn out to be a sturdy, price-positive flywheel for SOL. Speaking on Blockworks’ Empire podcast days after Forward Industries closed a $1.65 billion PIPE led by Galaxy, Jump, and Multicoin, Samani argued that Solana’s yield, composable DeFi, and on-chain company operations create money flows and optionality that Bitcoin merely can’t match.
Why Solana DATs Beat Bitcoin
“We’re building a new financial system from the ground up,” Samani said, framing Forward as both a proof-of-concept for “internet capital markets” and a scaled steadiness sheet that can systematically convert Solana’s technical and financial primitives into shareholder worth.
The quick differentiator in his view: yield. “Saylor is paying roughly 9% [on MicroStrategy’s perpetual preferreds], but his core business produces effectively no cash flow… our vehicle will produce cash flow via two mechanisms at a bare minimum. The first… is the native SOL staking yield… roughly 8%. And the second is by doing this credit spread arbitrage,” he said.
By borrowing {dollars} from conventional lenders at single-digit charges and deploying into on-chain venues yielding “12–20% depending on what you’re doing,” Forward intends to use that unfold, plus staking rewards, to service perpetual coupons—one thing a Bitcoin treasury can not replicate because BTC is non-yielding. “You can actually objectively show where the profits are coming from to pay the coupons,” he added, suggesting Solana DATs might even secure better phrases than Bitcoin autos over time.
Samani forged the $1.65 billion raise as a beginning gun for a broader re-architecture of company finance on Solana. Forward plans to “be the guinea pig” that runs core operations on-chain—“payroll, paying vendors… equity issuance, raising money, dividends, stock splits… shareholder votes”—with the first milestone being tokenizing a portion of the company’s equity.
Notably, he expects a “pretty good chunk” of PIPE contributors to “take delivery on-chain,” and said Forward will in the end lean into real-time transparency: “I am optimistic we will at some point publish all the company’s addresses… so dashboards [can] update in real time.”
Much of the thesis rests on scale and the power to convert that scale into accretive economics—both within Solana’s DeFi and across the rising DAT panorama. Galaxy Asset Management will operate staking and DeFi deployments; Jump contributes infrastructure and efficiency—“all of the nodes that we’re running are running Firedancer”—and proprietary transaction-ordering technology.
Samani was express that Forward is not going to buy locked or liquid SOL from Multicoin, Jump, or Galaxy steadiness sheets, and that sponsor economics are cut up one-third each among the three companies, with Multicoin’s share accruing to its hedge fund LPs, not to him personally.
On the DAT market itself, Samani expects consolidation and cross-chain roll-ups, with Solana primed to dominate: “The market’s not going to sustain 20 Solana DATs… I can see a world in which it sustains like three or four.” He called mNAV arbitrage “a very big opportunity,” arguing that autos trading at premiums can accretively purchase those at reductions, while Solana’s liquidity, service-provider depth, and credit acceptance put it forward of smaller ecosystems. “I’m very skeptical that [sub-scale] mNAVs will sustain at all,” he said, singling out non-SOL, non-ETH DATs as most susceptible.
Solana DATs Vs. ETFs
Samani also contends that pending US spot ETFs for SOL—particularly with staking enabled—would amplify the Solana DAT benefit relatively than dilute it. “I am very optimistic” staking seems in SOL ETFs “soon… sometime by the end of the year,” he said. In his telling, interchangeable wrappers—spot on exchanges, ETFs for brokerage rails, and corporate-wrapper DATs—develop the investor base while leaving Solana’s intrinsic yield engine intact. Forward, for its half, “expects the [vehicle] will be staking the substantial majority” of its SOL.
Underpinning the price angle is Samani’s view that Solana DATs manufacture persistent demand for SOL while routing money flows back to equity holders. Locked-token acquisitions at reductions, systematic staking, bank-line funded DeFi methods, and bespoke liquidity offers with main protocols together create what he describes as structural accretion.
The distinction with Bitcoin is stark in his framework. Without native money flows, BTC-based treasuries rely on exterior financing and price appreciation; Solana DATs, he argued, can fund themselves. “Bitcoin can’t compete” in this dimension because it lacks staking yield and composable on-chain markets to arbitrage credit at institutional scale. That hole broadens, he maintained, if banks more and more settle for staked SOL as collateral and if ETF buildings normalize staking.
Forward is already “talking with a bunch of counterparties” about routing through banks with access to the Fed window to secure the most cost effective doable greenback financing against SOL collateral, though he cautioned that none of this is assured.
For now, the scoreboard is concrete. The raise closed “in about two weeks,” with Samani estimating a roughly 40/60 crypto-native to TradFi cut up among contributors. He personally invested $25 million; Multicoin contributed “$114–115 million.” Galaxy’s distribution pulled in “a lot” of PIPE orders; Jump’s technical edge targets incremental yield. Forward plans to be an energetic consolidator of DATs “both SOL and non-SOL,” while building out a devoted govt staff to run the Solana treasury line alongside the company’s legacy business.
The implication for price, Samani insisted, is simple: Solana’s yield engine plus institutional credit and ETF rails create sustained, programmatic demand for SOL. “In retrospect it was inevitable,” he said of the consortium behind Forward. Whether that inevitability interprets into Samani’s headline declare—Solana DATs “beating” Bitcoin autos and setting SOL up to surge—will rely on execution, market liquidity, and the tempo at which banks, ETF issuers, and regulators bless staking-based buildings.
Notably, Forward Industries accomplished the huge buy of 6,822,000 SOL tokens price $1.58 billion at $232 average yesterday. The company has only $67 million left to buy extra SOL. At press time, SOL traded at $235.
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