Historically, the biggest names at Bitcoin Conference 2026 are the politicians and developers. This year, digital asset treasury (DAT) companies are stealing the spotlight, and for good reason.

After months of brutal drawdowns, nearly all of the firms that loaded their balance sheets with Bitcoin are still standing. Now they are heading to Las Vegas to explain what comes next.

Speaking on TheStreet Roundtable, BTC Inc. head of growth partnerships Sean Hagan said DATs are the storyline he is watching most closely heading into the event.

“I’m personally most interested for the treasury companies to hear kind of their thoughts, especially as we’ve seen such drawdowns in their equity valuations,” Hagan said. “Just to kind of hear their framing and what they’re preparing for, hopefully a market turnaround here.”

Related: Michael Saylor’s Strategy surges as Bitcoin breaks past $78K

Digital asset treasury companies are public firms that hold Bitcoin or another cryptocurrency as a core balance sheet asset, similar to how a traditional company might hold cash or bonds.

Michael Saylor‘s Strategy (formerly MicroStrategy) pioneered the model. MetaPlanet brought it to Japan. A wave of smaller firms followed.

The pitch to investors is straightforward. Buy the stock, get leveraged exposure to Bitcoin without holding the coin yourself.

The risk, at least in theory, is that a prolonged crash would force these companies to sell their Bitcoin to cover obligations, tanking the stock and the underlying asset at the same time.

That scenario never played out. Hagan argues that the reason is structural.

“They’re all well overcollateralized, at least from a traditional stance,” Hagan said. “There really is a lack of these forced liquidity events across the board with the way that they’ve been intentionally structured.”

Surviving the drawdown is the baseline. What separates the leaders is who kept raising capital through it.

Strategy sits at the top. Hagan traced the evolution of their funding playbook, from convertible notes, to convertible notes paired with an at-the-market (ATM) program, to their latest innovation: a perpetual preferred stock offering called STRC that has the market’s full attention.

STRC works like a hybrid between a bond and a stock. You get regular income from the dividend, plus exposure to Strategy’s Bitcoin-heavy balance sheet. The standard dividend is 11.5%, significantly higher than other dividend-paying stocks and has generated a lot of interest even from traditional finance investors