B. Riley Lowers Targets on Digital-Asset Treasuries as Traders Shift to LiquidChain Infrastructure
Investment bank B. Riley has reduced price targets for several publicly traded Digital Asset Treasury companies (Datcos), citing sector pressure, weaker accumulation trends and scrutiny of passive asset-holding models. Analysts say the market is shifting from valuing pure BTC/crypto balance-sheet exposure toward operational utility and capital efficiency amid a high cost-of-capital environment. The downgrades reflect concerns that equity proxies can lose premium when crypto prices stagnate. In response, institutional and smart-money flows are rotating toward infrastructure projects that unlock liquidity and interoperability. The article highlights LiquidChain (LIQUID) — a Layer-3 unified liquidity/execution layer that claims to fuse Bitcoin, Ethereum and Solana liquidity via a cross-chain virtual machine and ‘Deploy-Once’ architecture. LiquidChain markets features like liquidity staking and developer incentives, arguing it can convert dormant treasury BTC into active on-chain liquidity and reduce fragmentation across chains. The piece frames this shift as a broader market re-evaluation: traders and allocators increasingly prefer protocols that generate transaction velocity and utility over firms that merely hold crypto on balance sheets. The article includes standard risk disclaimers and does not provide financial advice.
Neutral
The news is neutral overall. B. Riley’s lowered price targets for Datcos signal analyst caution and could weigh on the stocks of treasury-heavy companies in the short term, which is bearish for those equity proxies. However, the story simultaneously highlights rising investor interest in interoperability and infrastructure projects like LiquidChain, which is a bullish indicator for tokens/projects that demonstrably increase on-chain utility and liquidity velocity. Historically, downgrades of treasury proxies (e.g., when Bitcoin consolidated in prior cycles) have led to short-term underperformance of such equities while boosting demand for infrastructure and DeFi-native tokens that offer yield or utility. For traders: expect increased volatility in Datco equities and any correlated tokenized equity products; watch volume and narrative flow toward interoperability projects, which may outperform during periods when BTC/Ethereum price momentum stalls. Short-term: potential pressure on Datco stocks and modest rotation into infrastructure tokens. Long-term: if infrastructure projects deliver measurable liquidity-unlocking and developer adoption, capital could permanently re-rate away from passive treasury models toward utility-driven protocols. Risk factors include execution risk for LiquidChain, regulatory scrutiny of new interoperability layers, and overall macro liquidity conditions that drove the original downgrades.