Bitcoin's price appreciation may do wonders from an accounting perspective for a company's balance sheet and stock price. However, Bitcoin's value increases as it facilitates more exchange and as more people transact through the Bitcoin network. As Parker Lewis [notes](https://graduallythensuddenly.xyz/exchange-theory-of-value/) , *"Building tools that improve—and over time, perfect—bitcoin's utility as money is the input that allows bitcoin to increase in value—on a nominal unit basis and in aggregate." *This is the correct lens from which Bitcoin ought to be understood, a position that most suitcoiners seem not to understand. Being a medium of exchange is the most important function of money—in fact, it's the bedrock of all the other properties such as unit of account and store of value.

> "*Being a medium of exchange is the quintessential function that defines money—in other words, it is a good purchased not to be consumed (a consumption good), not to be employed in the production of other goods (an investment or capital good), but primarily for the sake of being exchanged for other goods." *—Saifedean Ammous, The Bitcoin Standard

Many suitcoiners justify their actions by stating that they are enabling institutional investors, particularly those bound by mandates, to gain indirect Bitcoin exposure by buying their stock. Modern portfolio mandates, especially for pension funds and insurance firms, are constrained by regulation. They are forced to hold "safe" assets: sovereign debt, blue-chip equities, and investment-grade credit. Meanwhile, U.S. Treasuries are yielding real returns below inflation, and the global fixed-income market has become a trap with $300+ trillion of capital earning next to nothing.

However, the institutional investors aren't adopting Bitcoin but they're merely participating in a fiat-denominated speculation vehicle that happens to hold Bitcoin. This "indirect exposure" is a derivative asset, a claim on Bitcoin, abstracted away through custodians, legal structures, and fiat incentives. Shareholders don't hold keys, and they are passive dependents in a centralized structure.

Furthermore, by repackaging Bitcoin in fiat terms, it becomes subject to the same risks it was designed to eliminate: **counterparty risk** (Can the company maintain solvency?) and** custodial risk** (Does the corporation actually hold the Bitcoin?). Once Bitcoin becomes just another yield-bearing security, it ceases to be a weapon of economic liberation and becomes another cog in the Cantillon machine. As with gold in the 20th century, gradual centralization always leads to full capture.

## **The Seizure Risk**

True adoption isn't about creating more investment vehicles that give indirect exposure to Bitcoin's price movements. It's about building an economy where Bitcoin functions as money, where it's used for transactions, savings, and as the foundation for new business models that couldn't exist in the fiat system.

Bitcoin treasury companies' centralized holdings make them vulnerable to state seizure, as often occurs in times of fiscal collapse and sovereign[ debt spirals](https://www.jameslavish.com/p/-whats-a-debt-spiral-and-is-the-us) . Governments facing insolvency and dwindling public trust often resort to coercive measures to preserve their power, just as they did in 1933 with[ Executive Order 6102](https://river.com/learn/terms/e/executive-order-6102/) . These firms, hailed today as pioneers of financial innovation, could become tomorrow's scapegoats, framed as threats to economic stability for opting out of fiat debasement.

Given the inevitability of debt spirals due to fiat's distortions, any Bitcoin improperly held (i.e., held by centralized custodians) is at risk, whether it belongs to an individual or a corporation. The government must always borrow more than it taxes, but once it can no longer borrow, it must steal. In this light, corporate Bitcoin holders become an involuntary backstop to a collapsing Ponzi.

## **The Intranet Moment**

When the internet began gaining traction in the mid-1990s, many corporations were intrigued but cautious. The openness of the web felt dangerous, unruly, and unpredictable. In response, they built intranets; private, closed networks that gave them the illusion of digital progress without the risks of the open internet. These companies believed they could extract the value of the internet while avoiding its radically open nature.

They were wrong. Intranets didn't transform the world. The open web did. Those who embraced the full stack of internet-native principles, permissionless innovation, global access, and decentralization, became today's digital giants. Those who clung to closed systems became footnotes in tech history.

Today, Bitcoin is facing its own "intranet moment." Bitcoin is not fiat in an orange costume. Just as the internet wasn't meant to be bottled into an intranet, Bitcoin isn't meant to be shrink-wrapped in fiat abstractions. Instead of adopting Bitcoin on its own terms—as an open, decentralized, non-custodial monetary protocol—many institutions are wrapping it in layers of fiat scaffolding. Bitcoin treasury companies are securitizing it, hedging it, and plugging it into the existing fiat system for yield and arbitrage.

You can't adopt a monetary revolution halfway. Either you're building the new economy or you're extracting rent from the old one. The intranet companies thought they were being prudent, Bitcoin treasury companies think they're being clever (and some probably are), but both missed the point entirely: revolutionary technologies demand revolutionary adoption. Everything else is just expensive cosplay. The question isn't whether Bitcoin treasury companies will profit in fiat terms—they already are—but whether they'll become the Blockbuster of the Bitcoin era, clinging to familiar business models while the real revolution happens around them.

History suggests they will.