Columbia Professor: Digital Asset Treasuries Turned Into “Mass Exit Event”
Columbia Business School professor Omid Malekan declared that digital asset treasuries have remodeled right into a “mass extraction and exit occasion” driving crypto costs down, contradicting earlier bullish predictions that company Bitcoin adoption would gas sustained market progress.
His stark evaluation comes as Bitcoin slipped below $100,000 for the first time since June and entered bear market territory with a 20% decline from its October report high, wiping over $1 trillion from complete crypto market capitalization.
Malekan criticized the wave of treasury launches as thinly veiled schemes designed to counterpoint insiders somewhat than create sustainable worth.
“If you met the individuals launching these, it was pretty apparent that they noticed their DAT as a get wealthy fast scheme,” he wrote, pointing to jittery investor shows glossing over essential particulars and extreme use of empty buzzwords that telegraphed their true intentions.
Any evaluation of why crypto costs proceed to fall wants to incorporate DATs, as a result of in mixture they turned out to be a mass extraction and exit occasion – a purpose for costs to go down.
There are a couple of exceptions, initiatives that really tried to execute the playbook my buddy and…
— Omid Malekan
(@malekanoms) November 4, 2025
Tokens Dumped, Investors Abandoned
The professor outlined how launching prices working into tens of millions needed to come from someplace, with corporations dumping supposedly locked tokens to cowl SPAC charges, banking bills, and undisclosed advisory agreements.
He mentioned BitMEX Research uncovered many of those shady offers that had been seldom disclosed in advertising and marketing supplies.
They are revealing conflicts of curiosity the place treasury corporations appointed founders or enterprise capitalists to boards, then channeled shareholder cash to their very own startups and portfolio corporations.
Beyond direct extraction, treasuries offered surprising liquidity for tokens that markets believed had been securely locked.
“Many alts had far larger circulating provide than we thought,” Malekan noticed, noting that markets rapidly discounted this surprising provide enhance whereas concurrently adjusting expectations about what else these initiatives would possibly do with supposedly restricted tokens or vaguely outlined ecosystem funds.
The injury prolonged past fast promoting stress, eroding belief throughout your complete token market as buyers questioned whether or not ecosystem funds can be misused as private slush funds or to artificially prop up person metrics.
Malekan’s conclusion challenges the notion that treasuries represented pure upside, calling supporters who promoted them as such “idiots who shouldn’t be taken significantly ever once more.”
He emphasised that elevating extreme capital and minting too many tokens, even when locked or designated for ecosystem progress, represents a persistent illness that kills mission viability over time.
He drew parallels to 2017’s bull cycle, besides this time wealth transferred from crypto buyers broadly to a small group of insiders.
Market Divergence Shows Liquidity Misdirection
Adding gas to the present market sentiment, Wintermute’s analysis revealed that crypto was underperforming dramatically regardless of supportive macroeconomic situations, together with rate cuts and the top of quantitative tightening.
The GMCI-30 index plunged 12% final week, with gaming down 21%, Layer 2s falling 19%, and memes dropping 18%, regardless of world equities pushing close to report highs.
The sharp downturn was primarily pushed by unprecedented leverage ranges, significantly the $20 billion liquidation event on October 10, which left 300,000 merchants liquidated every day on common.
Global liquidity continues to broaden as central banks lower charges to stimulate progress, however incremental capital isn’t reaching crypto markets.
Stablecoin provide has climbed 50% year-to-date, including $100 billion, but Bitcoin ETF inflows have stalled, with belongings hovering round $150 billion for the reason that summer time, whereas digital asset treasury secondary volumes on exchanges like Nasdaq have collapsed fully.
“Of the three influx engines that drove the primary half of the yr, just one remains to be working: stablecoins,” famous Wintermute strategist Jjay_dm, explaining how retail drifted towards equities, AI, and prediction markets as ETF novelty wore off.
Currently, Bitcoin has misplaced key assist on the eighty fifth percentile price foundation, close to $109,000, and now trades round $103,500, with the subsequent essential degree on the seventy fifth percentile, round $99,000.
CryptoQuant reported that short-term holders intensified loss-selling stress, with roughly 30,300 Bitcoin being deposited whereas underwater.
Despite Coinbase’s warnings that treasuries have “largely ghosted” the market since October 10, some corporations continued to keep up aggressive buying.
Just two days in the past, Strategy also announced it purchased 397 BTC between October 27 and November 2 for a complete of $45.6 million in money.
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