The co-founder and CEO of Everest Venture Group (EVG) says many companies rushing to blockchain and tokenized real-world assets (RWA) are driven not by innovation but by anxiety.
“Truth be told, I think in the last six months or so, a lot of these groups are interested because it’s formal,” Ng said. TheStreet round table Alp Gasimov. “Because they saw that everyone else was doing it and they felt like, you know what, I shouldn’t be left behind.”
Digital Asset Treasuries (DATs) are publicly traded companies that raise capital specifically to purchase and hold cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin, Ethereum or Solana as core balance sheet assets. They operate similarly to corporate treasuries, but with a focus on digital assets, turning crypto holdings into investment vehicles.
As of October 17, more than 110 public companies held $129 billion in digital assets; Bitcoin accounts for 83.9% ($108.2 billion), with an overall 30-day volume of $887.3 billion. MicroStrategy leads with 640,031 BTC ($67.8 billion net asset value); miners (Riot, CleanSpark) and exchanges (Coinbase, Bullish) are among the largest holders. Notable: Tesla 11,509 BTC ($1.22 billion) and Trump Media 15,000 BTC ($1.59 billion), reinforcing BTC’s dominance on company balance sheets.
Ng said the sudden surge of interest from banks, payments companies and asset managers reveals how institutions actually make decisions, emotionally and politically, just like the people who run them.
“We often think of institutions as perfectly organized, rational organizations that know everything about the future,” he said. “But what we often miss is that these companies are also just humans. They are run by humans, and they are not perfectly rational either. There are a lot of emotions at play. They do different things for different goals – it could be political, commercial or just to appear innovative.”
Ng said that for incubators like EVG, the focus is not on chasing trends but on creating real value – what he calls “keeping a cool hat”.
“You want to make sure that whatever they’re doing, they’re poised to generate revenue or save money,” he said. “That means it’s going to have a tangible impact on the P&L – not just a good press release.”
As tokenization and digital treasuries dominate the conversation, Ng believes the real winners will be those who quietly build systems that last, not those who grab headlines.
