From "Holding" to "Operating": How Far Will Japanese Corporate DeFi Treasury Go?

The Case: A 300-Year-Old Firm Hits 14.6% in DeFi—but Calls It a Letdown

In December 2025, Asahi Eito announced an "all-in DeFi" treasury strategy that explicitly does not buy Bitcoin, raising about JPY 3 billion. Six months later, its test operation delivered an annualized 14.6% from liquidity-provision (LP) fee income. Extraordinary by traditional-finance standards, yet the company's assessment was measured. The cause was clear: the EVM-compatible chain it chose had extremely low trading volume, and LP fees—tied directly to volume—failed to grow. The sense remained that the theoretical yield is much higher.

Why It Chose "Stable Operations"—the Accounting Wall for Listed Companies

The company forgoed high-volatility strategies, concentrating on stable pairs like BTC-linked assets and USDC within the Ethereum ecosystem. The reason is the quarterly reporting unique to listed firms. Crypto holdings are marked to market each period-end, and the valuation gains or losses feed directly into management evaluation. Hence its insistence on covering price-volatility risk with volume-linked fee income. Even the temporary asset erosion characteristic of LP—impermanent loss, closer to an opportunity cost—is, the company asserts, outweighed by fee income. Logically decomposing unknown risks and explaining them to auditors and executives to reach an institutional decision is the decisive difference from an individual investor.

Reshaping the Risk: Turning Balance-Sheet Price Swings into P&L Flow Income

Here lies the essence. Rather than merely holding assets (on the balance sheet), the company actively converts them into fee income on the P&L. In other words, it reshaped directional risk ("will the price rise or fall") into flow risk ("how much trading occurs"). In the next phase it will deploy JPY 300 million across 20-plus portfolios combining multiple major EVM chains, currency pairs, and price-range settings. Narrow ranges yield higher fees but greater opportunity loss; wide ranges are safer but thinner. By searching for the optimum and accumulating know-how, it aims to exceed its original 20% annual target at a scale of up to JPY 2.6 billion.

How Far, Part 1: The 2028 Tax Reform as an Inflection Point

What sets the ceiling on risk tolerance is not the market but the rules. Currently, a corporation holding crypto with an active market is taxed on unrealized period-end gains even without selling. Moreover, crypto-to-crypto swaps are taxable, so DeFi range adjustments and rebalancing can each trigger tax—a brake on operating scale. But the Financial Services Agency plans to submit a Financial Instruments and Exchange Act amendment to the 2026 ordinary Diet session, with enforcement widely expected in January 2028. If realized, a flat 20.315% separate tax, a three-year loss carryforward, and deferral of tax on crypto-to-crypto swaps would substantially lower DeFi friction. 2026–2027 is a "know-how accumulation period before the rules are ready"; 2028 becomes the starting point for full-scale expansion.

How Far, Part 2: "All-In DAT" Is Punished; the "Operating Model" Survives

The market has already signaled the direction. Led by Metaplanet, roughly 30 companies declared Bitcoin holdings (DAT), but 19 of them reportedly carry notes in their securities filings suggesting financial distress, and Metaplanet's market cap shrank from a peak of about JPY 1 trillion to roughly JPY 600 billion. The Japan Exchange Group has set a policy of not newly adding companies whose crypto exceeds 50% of total assets to indices such as TOPIX. "Holding that bets entirely on price" is starting to be punished, and even Metaplanet is pivoting toward income models like put-option selling and staking. The Asahi Eito-style "operation that engineers flow income" is the model that survives the governance net.

The Future Picture: Institutionalizing On-Chain Operations in Yield-Starved Japan

Japan is a "yield-starved" market with decades of low rates and about JPY 1,190 trillion in household assets. This demand pulls capital toward on-chain yield. On the supply side, institutionalization is beginning: SBI joined DeFi-lending platform Morpho's roughly JPY 28 billion raise, and corporate pensions are reported to be planning crypto investment within FY2026. The future picture is bifurcation. Passive DAT firms betting on price face accelerating attrition through index exclusion and distress notes, while active "operating" firms that decompose and design risk become the protagonists. For now it remains tens-of-billions-of-yen experiments by pioneers, but through the 2028 regulatory shift and the inflow of institutional money, it will likely take root as one method of surplus-fund management for listed companies. Still, tail risks—impermanent loss, smart-contract failure, depegging—and JPX's discipline will keep imposing a clear ceiling on allocation ratios.

[Business Development Insights]

1. You can raise an organization's tolerance ceiling by reshaping the type of risk, not just its quantity. Asahi Eito cleared the governance wall of a listed company by converting balance-sheet price volatility (directional risk) into volume-linked fee income (flow risk). In new businesses, redesigning "which type of risk you take"—even at the same expected return—can change whether an internal decision passes. Treating the nature of risk, not only its total amount, as a design variable often determines whether entry into an unknown domain is approved.
2. Back-calculate from regulatory (tax/accounting) inflection points and design a two-stage timing for advance investment. Today's frictions—period-end mark-to-market and crypto-to-crypto swap taxation—are expected to ease substantially with the 2028 reform. A two-stage approach is effective: accumulate know-how at small scale before the rules are ready, then scale the moment they are. First movers accept the unsettled period as a learning cost, gaining the advantage of having finished their preparations to scale exactly when the easing arrives.
3. What supports tens-of-billions-of-yen decisions is not the power to eliminate risk but "explainability." Risks an individual can take on instinct require an organization to explain them fully to auditors and executives before it can move. The driving force of a new business lies in first building the internal controls that logically decompose unknown risks, share them internally, and convert them into institutional decisions. Creating a state where the person in charge can primarily understand the domain and explain it themselves—even with AI as an aid—determines the decision-making speed of the entire organization.

[Sources]

• NADA NEWS, "How a Long-Established Toilet Maker Produced a DeFi 'Annualized 14.6%' [Interview]" https://www.nadanews.com/355706/
• NADA NEWS, "[Exclusive] 'We Won't Buy Bitcoin'—Inside a Long-Established Toilet Maker's JPY 3 Billion All-In DeFi Treasury Strategy" https://www.nadanews.com/327949/
• PwC Japan, "Revisions to Crypto-Asset Valuation Methods and Notifications" https://www.pwc.com/jp/ja/knowledge/news/tax-jtu/20240710.html
• Kaoria Accounting, "Corporate Crypto Tax Guide: Period-End Mark-to-Market and the Four Classifications" https://kaoria-tax.com/knowledge/corporate-crypto-tax/
• Nomura Research Institute, "Digital Asset Treasury (DAT) Companies and Delisting Standards" https://www.nri.com/jp/media/column/osaki/20260203.html
• NADA NEWS, "SBI Joins Morpho's Roughly JPY 28 Billion Raise, 'One of the Largest in DeFi History'" https://www.nadanews.com/354985/
• NADA NEWS, "Japanese Corporate Pensions to Invest in Crypto—Planned Within FY2026 = Nikkei" https://www.nadanews.com/356310/