DeFi Development Pitches ‘Speedboat’ Solana Strategy as Treasury Holdings Surge

Key Points

• DeFi Development is pitching itself as a leveraged way to gain Solana exposure, saying its treasury model can outperform simply holding SOL by growing tokens per share over time. The company says it now holds about $218 million in Solana and has more than doubled SOL per share over the past 12 months.
• Chief Strategy Officer Dan Kang argued that digital asset treasury companies can beat ETFs and spot crypto because they can issue equity or debt at a premium and capture Solana’s network yield. He compared owning the stock to a “speedboat” versus an ETF or spot crypto as a “life raft.”
• Kang’s bullish case for Solana centers on its speed, low fees and potential growth from tokenization, stablecoins and agentic AI. He also said DeFi Development’s self-staking and on-chain deployment produce higher yields than third-party staking, helping expand treasury value without constant new capital raises.

DeFi Development NASDAQ: DFDV Chief Strategy Officer Dan Kang said the company is positioning itself as an amplified way for investors to gain exposure to Solana, arguing that digital asset treasury companies can outperform the crypto assets they hold when they grow token holdings per share over time.

Speaking during a company presentation and subsequent audience Q&A, Kang framed DeFi Development as an experimental, crypto-native company focused on building around Solana. He said the company was the first Solana digital asset treasury company to launch a treasury strategy in the U.S. and the first non-Bitcoin treasury company to do so in the country.

Kang said DeFi Development currently holds about $218 million worth of Solana and has grown its SOL per share by more than 100% on a trailing 12-month basis “when you sit just at NAV today.” He also said the company was the first in the U.S. to tokenize its equity, run its own validator infrastructure and deploy its treasury on-chain.

Digital Asset Treasury Strategy

Kang compared DeFi Development’s strategy to the approach pioneered by Michael Saylor’s Strategy, formerly MicroStrategy, which put Bitcoin on its balance sheet in 2020. Kang said Strategy’s stock has outperformed Bitcoin since the company adopted its Bitcoin treasury strategy, and he argued that similar mechanics can apply to Solana-focused treasury companies.

He said digital asset treasury companies can provide “amplified exposure” by issuing equity when trading at a premium to net asset value, issuing convertible debt or potentially using preferred equity. Kang said preferred equity is not yet trading for DeFi Development, but called it “a top priority.”

Kang contrasted digital asset treasury companies with exchange-traded funds, saying ETFs provide price tracking but charge fees and do not capture the potential yield available on the Solana network. He described buying an ETF or spot crypto as being on a “life raft” carried by a river, while buying a digital asset treasury company is more like buying a “speedboat” that can navigate and accelerate.

Solana Thesis Centers on Speed, Cost and Scale

A large portion of the presentation focused on Kang’s view that Solana is “best-in-class financial infrastructure.” He described Solana as a global network of computers that processes transactions and apps quickly and at low cost, adding, “If Bitcoin stores value, Solana actually moves it.”

Kang said Solana can process 100,000 transactions per second, compared with 7 transactions per second for Bitcoin and 15 to 30 for Ethereum. He also said Solana processed $33 billion transactions in 2025 and generated $1.4 billion in fees, while the median transaction fee on the network is currently $0.0005.

He identified three major trends that he believes could drive demand for SOL over the next 12 to 24 months and beyond:

• Tokenization: Kang said moving assets on-chain could expand global access to stocks and other financial products, particularly for investors outside the U.S.
• Stablecoins: He said stablecoins could become a $10 trillion asset class by 2030 and argued that Solana is well positioned as infrastructure for stablecoin transactions.
• Agentic AI: Kang said AI agents may need permissionless crypto rails for payments and transactions, adding that early signs are promising for Solana.

Kang reiterated DeFi Development’s view that SOL could reach $10,000. He said one top-down methodology assumes Solana captures 8% of a $2.4 trillion global value transfer revenue market, based on McKinsey data, and applies a 30-times multiple. In response to an analyst question, Kang said that multiple is lower than historical blockchain multiples and reflects expected compression as the network matures.

Validators and On-Chain Deployment

Kang said DeFi Development’s validator operations are a key difference between the company and other digital asset treasury firms. He compared validators to Bitcoin miners “in very heavy quotation marks,” saying the economics are substantially better because incremental tokens staked to the company’s validators represent nearly 100% incremental free cash flow margin.

He said staking through a third party such as Coinbase might generate roughly 4% yield after service fees, while DeFi Development’s self-staking can generate 7% to 7.5%. Kang said the company has historically generated 8% to 11.4% annualized average organic yield when combining staking activities with on-chain deployment.

Kang also said more than 15% of DeFi Development’s treasury is deployed on-chain across various protocols, based on the company’s last disclosure. He described this as a way to support the Solana ecosystem while generating yield that can grow the company’s treasury without necessarily raising additional capital.

Q&A Covers Private Chains, Premiums and M&A

In response to an analyst question about traditional financial firms potentially launching private chains for tokenization, Kang said he does not think building such infrastructure is as easy as some expect. He said it will likely be a multi-chain world, with Solana and Ethereum among the networks capturing activity as more assets move on-chain.

Asked whether digital asset treasury companies could again trade at large premiums to net asset value, Kang said he believes those premiums can return if crypto prices improve and the number of players in the market “shakes out.” He said the premium reflects a company’s perceived ability to acquire more of the underlying crypto asset over time.

On potential consolidation in the digital asset treasury sector, Kang said combinations are likely but may be difficult in practice due to management incentives, legal and banker fees, and existing asset management agreements. Still, he said some companies may eventually decide it is better to combine than compete for the same capital pool.

Kang closed by saying DeFi Development expects to continue experimenting with strategies that other digital asset treasury companies have not yet attempted. He cited Apyx, a dividend-backed stablecoin protocol in which DeFi Development invested, saying it grew from zero to just under $400 million in total value locked over the last 10 to 11 weeks.

About DeFi Development NASDAQ: DFDV

We are a B2B fintech marketplace connecting commercial property borrowers and lenders with a human touch. We seek to revolutionize the commercial real estate lending market by making it hyper-efficient, transparent, and accessible to all rather than the few. Through our online platform, we provide technology that connects commercial mortgage borrowers looking for capital to refinance, build, or purchase commercial property, including, but not limited to, apartment buildings, to commercial property lenders.

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