The Unwinding of Institutional Loyalty: Why the Corporate Treasury Model for Crypto Was Always Built on a House of Cards
The institutional bull case of the early 2020s was built on a beautifully seductive premise: corporate treasury adoption would build a permanent, unyielding floor for the digital asset market. Tech evangelists painted pictures of a forward-thinking corporate class that would look at inflation, debt expansion, and fiat currency degradation, and systematically replace their cash reserves with digital assets. These corporate buyers, we were told, possessed "diamond hands"—institutional loyalty backed by multi-year fiduciary mandates that would shield them from retail panic.