(MENAFN- The Rio Times) (Analysis) Quietly, a new balance-sheet model is moving from the United States to Brazil and Japan: companies are turning bitcoin into core collateral and issuing ordinary credit and equity on top.

If it scales, this“Bitcoin treasury” architecture could reset how savings earn yield and how credit is priced-rewiring the system from corporate balance sheets outward.
What a Bitcoin treasury is
A Bitcoin treasury is simple to describe and radical in effect. Step one: raise equity. Step two: buy a large, permanent reserve of bitcoin as the monetary base. Step three: issue familiar instruments-convertible bonds, preferred shares, or short-duration notes-secured by that reserve.

Managed with multi-year maturities and without margin loans, the structure converts“digital gold” into yield and creates“digital equity” (the company's stock) that can outperform the underlying asset over cycles.


Who the pure players are
Strategy Inc. (formerly MicroStrategy) popularized the playbook, repeatedly adding bitcoin and financing further purchases with long-dated converts and preferreds.

Its scale now makes the point tangible: roughly a $92 billion market cap today versus about $3.6 billion in 2020, and one of the largest corporate bitcoin treasuries in the world at roughly 640,000 BTC.

In Japan, MetaPlanet has emerged as a local champion in a chronically low-yield market: about a $4.0 billion market cap today versus roughly $30 million in 2020; the company has disclosed five-figure coin totals across 2025 updates.

In Brazil, Méliuz (CASH3) is a newcomer and has begun integrating bitcoin into treasury only in 2025, raising R$180 million ($34 million) in June to grow its reserve and building a position of about 600 BTC.
Why this is happening now
Two forces converge. First, bitcoin is increasingly treated as“digital energy”-value that moves at internet speed across borders, with transparent, programmable settlement.

Second, distribution is catching up: mainstream wrappers and bank-grade custody have made it easier for institutions and households to hold exposure, while on-chain finance is teaching markets to settle value like sending an email.


How it rewires finance
Treasury firms translate a global, portable reserve into mainstream savings products. That pressures legacy collateral-over-levered property, thinly secured corporate paper, and low-yield sovereign debt-by offering higher yields against transparent reserves priced in global markets.

In financially repressed or low-rate environments (Japan, Switzerland, parts of Europe), a domestic pure-play can pay a clear premium to bank deposits while anchoring on bitcoin's deep, round-the-clock liquidity.

The Saylor thesis in plain terms

• Adoption curve: from a handful of listed holders to well over a hundred, with a plausible path to thousands as accounting, custody, and software integrations mature.
  
• Defense layers: miners secure the network technically; exchanges deliver access; treasury companies supply balance-sheet demand and push for banking access, tax clarity, and OS-level support.
  
• Optionality: bitcoin expands the ability to trust-or withdraw trust-at will (self-custody versus custodians), a practical decentralization that gold never achieved at scale.
  
• Endgame: build toward very large bitcoin collateral bases and issue tens of billions in bitcoin-backed credit annually, creating an equity class explicitly tied to bitcoin reserves.
  

The firm types-and discipline
Not all adopters look alike. Pure plays make bitcoin their monetary base and issue bitcoin-backed credit. Strong BTC operators run other businesses but build sizable reserves and selective credit products.“Some BTC” firms simply hold coins in treasury-lower risk, lower upside.

Discipline is decisive: avoid short-term, high-cost leverage (the lesson from miners' drawdowns), match financing to a multi-year asset, and industrialize distribution so households can hold BTC-backed paper as easily as a money-market fund.


Brazil's angle
For Brazilian savers and funds-long familiar with inflation cycles-bitcoin-collateralized, real-denominated instruments offer liquid, auditable collateral with global price discovery.

Méliuz's move signals that local champions can form, compete for household deposits, and plug Brazilian balance sheets into a 24/7 monetary base.

What to watch next

• Corporate holder counts moving from hundreds to thousands.
  
• Native Bitcoin support in Apple, Google, or Microsoft platforms.
  
• Local-currency issuance (BRL, JPY, CHF, EUR) that channels household savings into bitcoin-backed instruments at a visible premium to deposits.
  

Bottom line
The contest isn't“crypto versus banks.” It's stronger, portable collateral on faster rails versus weaker, slower collateral. Banks won't vanish-but the institutions, old or new, that wire savings and lending to the best base layer will set the standard.

MENAFN01102025007421016031ID1110139295