Zhitong Finance APP learned that Michael Novogratz, the "cryptocurrency super bull" who shouted that Bitcoin will reach $1 million, recently said that the unprecedented cryptocurrency "treasury company craze" of companies that imitated the Strategy company model to create large-scale companies holding cryptocurrencies on their balance sheets may have reached its peak, and the RWA wave that bets on migrating traditional assets such as stocks to the blockchain will be the next major trend in digital assets.
“We may have already seen peak treasury company issuance,” Novogratz, founder and CEO of Galaxy Digital (GLXY.US), a cryptocurrency-focused financial services company, said on the company’s second-quarter earnings call on Tuesday. “The question now is which of these existing companies will grow into true giants.”
The so-called "cryptocurrency treasuries" mentioned by Novogratz are entities that raise funds in the public markets and invest their cash in tokens like Bitcoin and Ethereum. MicroStrategy (renamed "Strategy" in 2025) is the most typical and actual largest crypto treasury company.
The emergence of such companies has surged in recent months due to a more welcoming regulatory environment in the United States. Early adopters largely followed the treasury model of Strategy (MSTR.US), founded and led by Michael Saylor, which primarily holds Bitcoin. More recently, new entrants have added Ethereum, Solana, and other less popular and niche digital tokens to their balance sheets.
Ethereum, the world's second-largest cryptocurrency by market capitalization after Bitcoin, already has two significant treasury-type holders: BitMine, led by Tom Lee, and SharpLink, led by Joe Lubin. Novogratz expects both companies to continue to grow in size, but he warns that it will be "harder for new players to get oxygen."
Novogratz said Galaxy Digital has partnered with more than 20 crypto treasury investment firms to collect management fees for their cryptocurrency asset custody. These partners have brought about $2 billion in assets to Galaxy's cryptocurrency custody platform, forming what Novogratz called "a recurring revenue category that will continue to grow."
Galaxy Digital, known as the "Goldman Sachs of cryptocurrency financial services," reported a net profit of approximately $30.7 million in the second quarter of 2025, compared to a loss of $177 million in the same period last year. Due to a decrease in spot trading activity across the crypto market during the second quarter, the company's diluted earnings per share for the quarter were $0.08, slightly below the average analyst estimate. Galaxy Digital's stock price fell approximately 4% by the close of trading on Tuesday.
On-chain finance and the RWA wave
Novogratz believes that crypto vault companies and cryptocurrency exchange-traded funds (ETFs) provide important cryptocurrency exposure channels for hedge funds that are concerned about directly holding tokens. Over time, he predicts that traditional financial institutions like Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley will also move towards blockchain-based financial market structures, and he predicts that the RWA wave will be the next major wave of digital assets that traditional financial giants will focus on.
In recent years, large Wall Street financial institutions including Bank of America, JPMorgan Chase, and Goldman Sachs have listed "shifting from stablecoins to RWAs" as a new business layout trend in their performance reports.
However, the challenge of tokenizing traditional assets like stocks on the blockchain remains unsolved. Novogratz mentioned Project Crypto, a new initiative by Paul Atkins, chairman of the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, which aims to explore how the U.S. trading market can migrate to blockchain technology on a large scale.
"The roadmap is still unwritten," Novogratz said. "If you move Apple stock to the blockchain and do RWAs, which are tokenizing real-world assets, then the question is: where is the massive liquidity going to be? There's no good answer to that yet. But we're focusing on that."
Novogratz sees crypto vaults/ETFs as a transitional exposure to funds for traditional financial institutions, and the true end point of digitalization is to allow these institutions to issue and trade "tokenized stocks, bonds and various funds" directly on the chain - this is exactly the typical vision of RWA.
According to forecast data from Ripple and Boston Consulting Group, the scale of tokenized real-world assets (centered on RWA) is expected to exceed US$18 trillion in 2033, with a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 53% since 2025.
The so-called "tokenization" is centered around RWAs (Real-World Assets on-chain), which include traditional financial/physical assets with measurable value, such as government bonds, loans, fund shares, real estate, accounts receivable, and carbon credits. This refers to any measurable value originally existing in the traditional financial system or the real economy being mapped into programmable, transferable digital asset tokens on-chain. Since the beginning of this year, stablecoins have successfully validated on-chain payment pathways and the logic of "on-chain finance." A Citigroup research report indicates that monthly stablecoin settlement volume has reached $650-700 billion. Even traditional banking giants are planning to issue their own stablecoins.
Most studies describe the RWA concept as "representing ownership of tangible or off-chain assets on a blockchain through tokens issued by smart contracts." The World Economic Forum notes that tokenization allows these assets to have a unified shared ledger, real-time settlement, and programmable properties, thereby reducing delivery risk and improving efficiency. For traditional banking giants, the broader RWA tokenization trend, following the example of stablecoins, can significantly expand revenue sources while further exploring the efficiency benefits of blockchain within a regulatory framework.
For traditional large banks on Wall Street, compared with "pure crypto" assets, RWAs are backed by physical or legal rights and are easier to incorporate into the current financial regulatory framework. In addition, underlying assets such as bonds and loans have their own cash flow, which can provide a stable source of investment income for on-chain financial products, which is in line with the banking business model.