Where your return comes from
Your dollar return decomposes into three independent moves: the premium you give back (or keep), the coin-per-share the company adds through accretion, and the coin's own price move. The first two are the structural bet; the third is just the coin.
| Driver | Effect on your return |
|---|
Premium scenarios — break-even coin move & edge vs holding coin
Same entry and accretion, different exit premiums. The break-even column is how far the coin must rise for you not to lose money; the edge column is how you do versus simply holding the coin — and that one is independent of where the coin goes.
| Exit mNAV | Break-even coin move | Edge vs holding coin |
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The premium is the whole trade
A digital-asset-treasury stock is a leveraged, premium-wrapped bet on a coin. The leverage is real — at 1.8x mNAV each dollar buys about 56 cents of coin, so the stock swings harder than the coin — but the premium is the part that quietly decides whether you win. If it holds and the company keeps accreting coin per share by issuing above NAV, you can beat the coin outright. If it compresses, you can watch the coin rip and still lose money, because the market repriced how many dollars it will pay for each dollar of treasury. The cruel case is a premium crush into a flat or falling coin: leverage and premium decay pull the same direction and the drawdown dwarfs the coin's. This calculator makes the premium assumption explicit instead of burying it inside a price target — decide what you think mNAV does, and the break-even and the edge fall out of it. For the company's own accretion math, see the issuer-side mNAV & accretion calculator; to compare against plain coin exposure, the ETF vs self-custody calculator.
The math, and why the coin's move cancels
Write your entry premium as mNAV₀, the exit premium you assume as mNAV₁, coin-per-share growth over the horizon as an accretion factor A = (1 + g)t, and the coin's own return as r. The stock's value tracks premium × coin-per-share × coin price, so your dollar return is (mNAV₁ ÷ mNAV₀) × A × (1 + r) − 1. Set that to zero for the dollar break-even and the required coin move is r* = mNAV₀ ÷ (mNAV₁ × A) − 1: buy at 1.8x, assume it fades to 1.0x with no accretion, and the coin must rise 80% for you to merely get your money back.
Now compare against just holding the coin, whose return is r. Your edge = (mNAV₁ ÷ mNAV₀) × A × (1 + r) ÷ (1 + r) − 1 = (mNAV₁ ÷ mNAV₀) × A − 1 — the (1 + r) terms cancel, so how you do relative to the coin does not depend on the coin at all. It depends only on whether accretion (A) outruns premium decay (mNAV₁ ÷ mNAV₀). That is the single most important and most counter-intuitive fact about owning a treasury stock instead of the coin: your relative outcome is locked in by the premium path and the accretion, and the coin's rally or crash only scales the absolute numbers. It also ignores dilution beyond what you fold into accretion, debt on the balance sheet, and any discount-to-NAV floor — a treasury stock can and has traded below 1.0x, which this lets you model as an exit mNAV under 1.
FAQ
What is mNAV and what does it mean to buy a treasury stock at a premium?
mNAV is the ratio of a digital-asset-treasury company's market value to the market value of the coins it holds. An mNAV of 1.8x means the market prices the stock at 1.80 dollars for every 1.00 dollar of Bitcoin (or other coin) on its balance sheet. Buying at that premium means every dollar you invest only buys about 0.56 dollars of actual coin exposure — you are paying up for the company's ability to keep issuing shares above NAV and accrete more coin per share, plus a dose of narrative. The risk is that the premium is not permanent.
How far does the coin have to rise for me to break even if the premium fades?
If you buy at mNAV0 and the premium later compresses to mNAV1, with the company growing coin-per-share by an accretion factor over your horizon, your stock is flat in dollar terms only when the coin has risen enough to offset the lost premium: the required coin return is mNAV0 divided by (mNAV1 times accretion), minus one. Buy at 1.8x, watch it fall to 1.0x with no accretion, and the coin has to climb 80 percent just to get you back to even. Accretion lowers that hurdle; a further premium collapse raises it.
Does the stock beat just holding the coin?
Relative to holding the coin, your structural edge is mNAV1 times accretion divided by mNAV0, minus one — and notice the coin's price move cancels out of that comparison entirely. If the premium holds and the company accretes coin per share, you beat the coin by the accretion. If the premium compresses faster than accretion can offset, you underperform the coin no matter what the coin does. That is the whole investor-side tension: you are betting the premium and accretion together outrun premium decay, not betting on the coin itself.
How is this different from an issuer-side mNAV or accretion calculator?
An issuer-side tool answers the company's question — does the next at-the-market raise add or destroy coin per share — which depends on whether shares are sold above NAV. This tool answers the shareholder's question: given the price you actually paid in mNAV terms, and a scenario for where the premium and coin-per-share go, do you make money and do you beat simply owning the coin. Same mNAV concept, opposite side of the trade. For the issuer view, use the Bitcoin Treasury mNAV and accretion calculator.