Crypto-Asset Supply Chain
From base-layer chains, miners, and mining rigs to exchanges, stablecoins, treasuries, and ETFs: how the value of a single digital asset spreads along the chain, and who controls the master valves of seigniorage and hashrate
This chain runs a digital asset from the protocol layer all the way to Wall Street's on-ramp. Three of the hardest value-capture points: (1) stablecoins are digital-dollar infrastructure, where issuers take user deposits, buy Treasuries, and keep all the interest, the seigniorage of the digital age (the GENIUS Act is now law); (2) Bitcoin miners compete for power and location, and across 2025-2026 a wave of mining sites converted ready grid power into AI/HPC data centers, stitching this into our AI Supply Chain and Energy & Power themes; (3) treasury companies are the leveraged vehicle for coin prices, with shares trading at a premium to net coin holdings and amplifying coin-price swings. Further down the chain, exchanges collect tolls, ETF issuers collect management fees, and custodians hold the private keys, forming a complete pick-and-shovel structure that gets paid no matter who wins.
Base-Layer Blockchain Networks / Protocol-Level Assets
The value source of the entire chain. These mainnets are settlement layers and smart-contract platforms whose native tokens capture a monetary premium / settlement monopoly through network effects: the more they are used, the higher the security budget and the harder they are to displace, building a winner-take-all moat. They are not companies and have no equity, and they capture value in different ways: Bitcoin is a store of value and final settlement in the mold of digital gold; Ethereum/Solana/BNB are smart-contract platforms built on gas plus staking plus ecosystem lock-in; Tron is a stablecoin settlement pipe. Demand across the entire mining-rig and miner layer is driven by this Bitcoin layer.
Decentralized final settlement layer / digital gold, the value anchor and reserve asset of the crypto world.
The largest smart-contract / settlement platform, the base layer for DeFi, stablecoins, RWA tokenization, and L2s.
Native asset of the exchange chain (Binance ecosystem) plus a high-performance, low-fee L1 smart-contract platform.
High-performance monolithic L1 smart-contract platform built for high throughput, low latency, and low fees.
Stablecoin settlement chain: the dominant pipe for cross-border USDT payments and remittances in emerging markets.
Settlement asset for banking and cross-border payment clearing, positioned as a compliant payment corridor.
Mining Rigs / Mining Hardware Manufacturing
The layer that builds ASIC mining rigs to supply hashrate to Bitcoin's PoW network, the key link that converts advanced-process capacity into network security. Position comes from ASIC efficiency (J/TH) plus locked-in TSMC/Samsung advanced-process capacity. The industry is a tightly concentrated oligopoly: three Chinese makers together hold roughly 98% (per the Cambridge digital-mining report: Bitmain ~82% > MicroBT ~15% > Canaan ~2%); on process, Bitmain bets on TSMC 5nm and MicroBT on Samsung 3nm. Intel entered and exited within a year, Ebang fell behind, and Auradine is the only U.S. challenger at scale. Value capture is heavily constrained by Bitcoin's price cycle and wafer capacity/cost.
The dominant global ASIC rig maker, with the Antminer series plus its in-house Antpool mining pool.
The solid number-two ASIC rig maker, with the Whatsminer series.
Inventor of the world's first ASIC Bitcoin rig, with the Avalon series plus self-mining.
The only U.S. ASIC rig maker at scale, with the Teraflux series, supplying mainly North American miners.
An early ASIC rig maker (now fallen behind), pivoting to new energy / diversification to survive.
Bitcoin Miners (Hashrate Production: Competing for Power and Location)
This layer turns power into hashrate and hashrate into coins. Bitcoin mining is a capital-heavy, highly cyclical business with no control over price, and the real moat is not the rigs themselves (anyone can buy them) but three positions: (1) power cost (owned plants / long-term PPAs / low-electricity regions): after the halving cut the block reward in half, with coin prices outside the miner's control, whoever has cheap power survives the bear market; (2) hashrate scale and fleet efficiency (J/TH); (3) self-held Bitcoin on the balance sheet (HODL versus mine-and-sell), which decides whether a miner is a Bitcoin leverage play or a plain sell-the-hashrate contractor. Most names here have already shifted part of their power position toward AI; the heavy converters appear in the next layer.
One of the largest listed Bitcoin miners worldwide (formerly Marathon Digital, renamed in 2024 with the ticker unchanged), with hashrate and self-held BTC both near the top.
Vertically integrated miner combining self-mining, in-house ASIC rigs (SEALMINER series), and cloud hashrate.
The leading U.S. pure-play Bitcoin miner, known for low power costs, high utilization, and sustained HODL, with hashrate steadily among the global top four.
A large-scale, low-cost power miner in Texas whose power-first strategy pushes net electricity cost among the lowest in the industry, and which has already moved into AI/HPC.
A miner spanning Canada, Sweden, and Paraguay that multiplied its hashrate on Paraguayan hydropower and has moved into AI/HPC under the BUZZ brand.
A Bitcoin miner converted from a Chinese auto-finance platform in late 2024, scaling distributed global hashrate rapidly on Bitmain rigs plus collateralized financing.
Renamed from Bitfarms to Keel in 2026-04 and redomiciled to the U.S. (ticker changed from BITF to KEEL), exiting Latin American mining and turning into an infrastructure-first HPC/AI campus developer.
A small miner with its own natural-gas plant in New York, newly granted an emissions permit and planning a small AI/HPC build-out.
A veteran small miner with London roots, sharply downsized after selling off core assets and going through court-supervised restructuring.
Mining Sites Converting to AI/HPC Compute (Cross-Chain Positioning)
Bitcoin mining sites naturally hold the three scarcest things an AI data center needs: large-scale grid power already connected, substations already built, and civil/cooling shells that convert quickly. With AI compute demand exploding across 2025-2026 and power becoming the hard bottleneck, these miners are converting their existing power positions into GPU data centers, turning megawatts into contracted AI cash flow via 10-to-15-year take-or-pay leases and stepping up as a new generation of compute landlords. On the demand side, the tenants are neoclouds like CoreWeave (CRWV) and Fluidstack; Google provides a large credit backstop for Fluidstack's lease obligations, lifting miner receivable quality toward investment grade and acting as the hidden hinge that makes this layer work. This layer is the seam stitching the crypto supply chain into our AI Supply Chain / Nvidia AI Factory and Energy & Power themes, and the related names' market caps and research are also filed under the AI theme.
Converting roughly 840MW of existing mining-site power to HPC, with a 12-year lease to CoreWeave worth over $10 billion; AI contract backlog above $10 billion and a leasable-power pipeline of about 3GW.
Formerly Iris Energy, running its own AI Cloud (not pure land leasing): a roughly $9.7 billion AI Cloud deal with Microsoft and a five-year, roughly $3.4 billion hosted-GPU cloud deal with Nvidia, folded into a strategic partnership with Nvidia.
Formerly Applied Blockchain, building an AI Factory for CoreWeave at the Polaris Forge campus in North Dakota, with cumulative leases reaching 600MW and potential rent contracts of about $16 billion.
Leasing the full 300MW of its Barber Lake site in Texas to Fluidstack (a 10-year HPC colo); Google backstops Fluidstack's lease obligations and took roughly a 5.4% stake in Cipher, with contract backlog of about $9.3 billion.
A mining-plus-AI dual track: Bitcoin mining sits in the majority-owned subsidiary American Bitcoin and AI sits in Highrise; signed a 15-year, 352MW AI data center lease with base contract value around $9.8 billion and a contracted revenue base of about $16.8 billion, spanning two hyperscale campuses totaling 597MW.
The low-carbon Lake Mariner campus in New York: a combined 378MW lease with Fluidstack (Google providing credit support) and a 60MW ten-year lease with Core42; HPC revenue has already overtaken Bitcoin mining.
A crypto-finance conglomerate (proprietary trading / market-making / asset management / investment banking) that is converting the acquired Helios Bitcoin site in West Texas into an AI campus, with a 15-year lease to CoreWeave and ERCOT approval doubling capacity to over 1.6GW.
Crypto Exchanges and Liquidity (Tollbooths)
Centralized exchanges (CEXs) are the tollbooths for crypto matching, custody, and liquidity: regardless of which way prices move, they take a fee on volume whenever anyone trades, a textbook pick-and-shovel play, with the leaders' moats coming from compliance licenses, liquidity depth, and listing power. Global spot is highly concentrated: by global volume Binance has long led, followed by Bybit, MEXC, OKX, Gate.io, Bitget, and others (mostly offshore and private); in the U.S. market Coinbase leads decisively on compliance footing (its global spot volume ranks lower, but it wins on compliance and listed investability). This layer's core/key picks balance two logics: global liquidity scale (including private leaders) and compliant exchanges that are investable on U.S. equities, so each share figure's basis (global volume / U.S. volume / total volume) is labeled separately and cannot be compared directly. A wave of exchange IPOs ran across 2025-2026 (after Circle came Bullish and Gemini listings, with Kraken's filing in progress). On-chain DEXs (Uniswap for spot, Hyperliquid for perpetuals) divert some trading in protocol form, with no investable stock and only token exposure.
The largest crypto exchange globally, first in both spot and derivatives, the core hub of global crypto liquidity.
The leading U.S.-listed crypto exchange, first in U.S. spot share, expanding from exchange toward a full-stack crypto-finance platform.
A second-tier global leader with a strong edge in derivatives (perpetuals), tying itself closely to traditional financial infrastructure.
The second-largest exchange globally (by total volume), known for derivatives trading.
An offshore exchange ranking near the top in global spot volume, known for listing a vast range of altcoins and for high growth.
A veteran global all-round exchange, consistently near the top in spot volume.
A global exchange known for derivatives and copy trading, with spot volume near the top of the second tier.
An institution-focused crypto exchange (including its CoinDesk media arm), listed on the NYSE in 2025-08.
A compliant U.S. exchange and custodian founded by the Winklevoss brothers, listed on Nasdaq in 2025-09.
A veteran compliant U.S. exchange with an IPO in progress but paused on market conditions.
South Korea's largest exchange, near-monopoly at home, with parent Dunamu planning a U.S. listing.
A retail-focused global exchange plus crypto card / payment on-ramp, with marketing-driven customer acquisition.
The leading on-chain perpetuals DEX, dominating online perpetual-derivatives trading.
The largest on-chain spot DEX (AMM), the standard for decentralized spot matching.
Broker Payment On-Ramps · Regulated Derivatives · Market-Making Liquidity
This layer is the compliance gateway and price-formation layer for institutions and retail entering crypto. Broker/payment apps (Robinhood, Block) embed crypto trading into their existing user bases and take a spread on volume, though crypto is usually a secondary and highly volatile part of their revenue; CME and Cboe are how institutions get crypto exposure through regulated channels, with CME's Bitcoin/Ether futures and options the main venue for institutional hedging and position-building, now trading 24/7; market makers (Jane Street, Jump, Wintermute, Cumberland/DRW) provide two-sided quotes and depth behind the scenes as the real suppliers of liquidity, almost all of them private.
The largest regulated derivatives exchange globally, the main institutional on-ramp for Bitcoin/Ether futures and options.
A retail-broker crypto on-ramp, embedding crypto trading into its stock/options app.
A regulated derivatives/ETF venue with Bitcoin ETF options and FTSE Bitcoin/Ether index futures, the listing venue for most U.S. spot BTC/ETH ETFs.
A top quantitative market maker quoting across both traditional and crypto markets, a core authorized participant (AP) for spot Bitcoin ETFs.
An algorithmic market maker, a main liquidity supplier for CEX/DEX and retail-broker order flow.
A retail BTC channel via the Cash App buy/sell on-ramp plus Square merchant Bitcoin acceptance (ticker changed from SQ to XYZ).
Jump Trading's crypto arm, providing market-making and liquidity for chains like Solana and for DeFi.
DRW's crypto market maker, serving institutional OTC and liquidity supply.
Stablecoins / Digital-Dollar Infrastructure (Seigniorage)
Stablecoin issuers convert deposited dollars into 1:1-pegged tokens, then take that reserve to buy short-term Treasuries / reverse repos and keep almost all the interest: this is the seigniorage of the digital age, where bigger reserves and higher rates mean more free yield, with no interest owed to holders. Stablecoins are at the same time the settlement currency and payment rails of the entire crypto world. This is the segment with the most certain cash flow in the chain. On regulation, the U.S. GENIUS Act took effect in 2025-07, requiring payment stablecoins to be fully 1:1 backed by cash and short-term Treasuries, with periodic disclosure and federal/state licensing (full applicability around 2027-01), making compliance licenses plus reserve scale plus distribution network the issuers' moat; the reserve's asset manager (BlackRock manages the USDC reserve fund) and custodian (BNY Mellon) each hold a slice of value. This layer's core to key to related picks balance circulating scale and investability: USDT/USDC lead by scale, while PYUSD has slipped to 7th in circulation but is listed as key because PayPal is investable and brings a distribution network of hundreds of millions of users, with private/protocol issuers (USD1/USDe/Sky, etc.) listed as related.
The largest and most profitable stablecoin issuer by circulation, with USDT the de facto settlement currency for offshore crypto trading and emerging markets.
The leading U.S. compliant stablecoin, with USDC the compliant digital dollar favored by regulated institutions and Wall Street, positioned on compliance licenses plus Coinbase's distribution network.
A payments entrant, with PYUSD embedded in PayPal/Venmo and Solana rails, catching up from behind on a distribution network of hundreds of millions of users.
A regulated stablecoin issuer and white-label infrastructure provider, issuing tokens and custodying reserves for brands like PayPal (PYUSD).
A new fiat-reserve stablecoin with political ties and institutional minting channels, already deployed across multiple chains, with reserves custodied by BitGo.
Ripple's flagship compliant stablecoin, tied to XRPL / cross-border payments, already added to Mastercard's list of settlement stablecoins.
A synthetic-dollar protocol where USDe holds its peg not through bank reserves but through a delta-neutral spot-long / perpetual-short strategy.
The largest crypto over-collateralized stablecoin protocol, where USDS/DAI is minted by over-collateralizing on-chain crypto assets plus real-world assets (including Treasuries).
A stablecoin orchestration / issuance-as-a-service platform that lets any company issue its own stablecoin in a few lines of code, with reserves managed by top asset managers.
A payment-network giant opening settlement for compliant stablecoins like USDC/RLUSD/PYUSD, acquiring BVNK for about $1.8 billion to fill out its stablecoin infrastructure.
A payment-network giant extending card-scheme clearing and settlement on-chain, launching USDC settlement in the U.S.
The custodian and accounting provider for the USDC reserve fund, providing a regulated asset-custody foundation.
Bitcoin / Crypto Treasury Companies (Capital Vehicles · Leveraged Exposure)
Listed companies that raise capital in the markets (convertibles, ATM equity offerings, perpetual preferreds) to stockpile BTC/ETH/SOL on the balance sheet, turning a traditional brokerage account into a leveraged-exposure tool on coin prices. Their stock usually trades above net coin holdings per share (an mNAV premium), with the premium amplifying alongside coin price and sentiment and also able to collapse: in 2026, with spot ETFs competing directly, the leaders' mNAV premiums have compressed sharply, weakening the stock-beats-spot logic. This is the highest-risk, most volatile segment of the whole chain: it captures amplified upside when coins rise but absorbs the triple squeeze of falling coins plus premium collapse plus financing cost. This segment is explanatory of the mechanism only and does not forecast any name's stock price.
The largest corporate Bitcoin holder globally, the originator and industry template for treasury companies (holding roughly 840,000 BTC).
The largest Ethereum treasury company globally (holding ETH rather than BTC, roughly 5.4 million ETH, about 4.5% of ETH supply), the second-largest crypto treasury globally.
Japan's first listed Bitcoin treasury company, an Asian Strategy, among the top corporate BTC holders globally (roughly 40,000 BTC).
The second-largest Ethereum treasury company globally (behind only BitMine), chaired by Ethereum co-founder Joe Lubin (roughly 870,000 ETH).
The third-largest corporate Bitcoin holder globally, the Bitcoin-native company controlled by Tether/Bitfinex (over 43,000 BTC).
A Bitcoin treasury company that acquired Semler Scientific (formerly SMLR) in an all-stock deal in 2026 to integrate its BTC reserves.
A leading listed Solana treasury company, a listed leveraged exposure to SOL.
A listed Solana treasury company, a leveraged exposure to SOL.
Spot ETFs / Asset Management / Custody (On-Ramps · Pick-and-Shovel)
The compliant channel connecting traditional institutional and retail capital to crypto. Spot BTC/ETH ETF issuers charge management fees (price-independent pick-and-shovel fee income that grows steadier with scale) and have been the most important on-ramp since 2024; custodians hold the private keys at the base layer for the vast majority of ETFs. The key structural fact in this segment is heavy concentration: Coinbase Custody alone custodies roughly 84% of U.S. Bitcoin ETF assets, a single point of concentration risk (IBIT has added Anchorage as a backup custodian to diversify). This layer mixes ETF issuers (by AUM) with custodians (by AUC), which use different bases and cannot be compared directly. Note that BlackRock, Fidelity, VanEck, and others are themselves giant traditional asset managers, with crypto ETFs only the fastest-growing sliver of a vast footprint, so their valuations should not be equated with pure-crypto names.
The largest asset manager globally, whose IBIT is the largest spot Bitcoin ETF globally and the top crypto on-ramp; also leading RWA tokenization (BUIDL) and USDC reserve management.
The largest U.S. spot Bitcoin ETF custodian, holding the private keys for 9 of the 12 BTC ETFs (IBIT/ARKB and others).
An institutional-grade digital-asset custody and infrastructure provider, IPO in 2026-01 (the first pure-custody crypto company to list).
Issuer of the second-largest spot Bitcoin ETF globally (FBTC), with self-built custody (Fidelity Digital Assets).
The only crypto-native custodian holding a U.S. OCC federal banking charter, IBIT's backup custodian.
A veteran crypto asset manager whose GBTC was the early flagship Bitcoin product; parent is DCG, IPO already delayed.
Issuer of the BITB spot Bitcoin ETF, a crypto-native asset manager.
Co-issuer of the ARKB spot Bitcoin ETF.
On-Chain Applications / RWA Tokenization / Crypto Payments
The layer where crypto assets land in the real economy, connecting on-chain settlement with traditional finance and payments. Three main lines: (1) RWA tokenization: moving Treasuries, money-market funds, and stocks on-chain to earn yield, with the RWA market expanding fast in 2026 and tokenized Treasuries the largest category; (2) DeFi protocols: lending/trading/derivatives infrastructure, but the vast majority are protocols plus tokens with no tradable stock (included for ecosystem context only); (3) crypto payments/stablecoins: embedding crypto rails into mainstream payments (Circle, Block, and others already placed in upstream layers); the base layer also relies on tokenization infrastructure (oracle price feeds and cross-chain interoperability, such as Chainlink/CCIP). Investable names in this segment are relatively scarce and mostly private, and pure protocols have no equity and can be accessed only indirectly through their tokens, listed here to complete the supply chain.
Key infrastructure for RWA tokenization and cross-chain: oracle price feeds plus the CCIP cross-chain interoperability protocol.
The largest RWA tokenization protocol by TVL, tokenizing Treasuries / money-market funds / U.S. stocks.
The leading infrastructure provider for institutional RWA tokenization: the transfer agent and issuance platform for most large tokenized funds, including BlackRock's BUIDL.
On-chain lending/trading/derivatives infrastructure forming the DeFi backbone (ecosystem context only, none with stock).