Cryptocurrency on the Balance Sheet: Opportunity or Gamble?

For years, cryptocurrency sat on the fringes of corporate finance, often viewed as too volatile, unregulated, and untested for the balance sheet. That perception is changing.

As reported by Deloitte in its second quarter 2025 North American CFO Signals survey, chief financial officers (CFOs) say nearly 25% of finance functions are expected to use digital currency within two years, rising to almost 40% among companies with $10 billion or more in revenue. In fact, Tesla, Strategy (formerly MicroStrategy), and Block (formerly Square), among many others, have all added bitcoin to their treasuries, positioning the cryptocurrency as both a hedge against inflation and a strategic asset.

Still, about 43% of CFOs cite the price volatility of non-stablecoin cryptocurrencies as a top concern and 42% point to accounting and controls complexity. With public companies raising an estimated $86 billion this year to acquire cryptocurrency (more than they’ve raised through initial public offerings in the United States), many corporate finance leaders on the sidelines are weighing whether they should add cryptocurrencies to their balance sheets.

Uncle Sam Leads the Charge

Two recent policy moves have helped pull cryptocurrency into the financial mainstream. The first is the Governing and Enabling Nationwide Infrastructure for Unified Stablecoins (GENIUS) Act, which sets clear rules for stablecoins pegged to the U.S. dollar. It limits issuance to approved financial institutions, requires every coin to be backed one-for-one with safe assets, and enforces regular audits and transparency. The goal of the act is to make stablecoins as safe and regulated as traditional currencies and bank deposits.

The second policy move is the creation of the U.S. Strategic Bitcoin Reserve, established by an executive order in March 2025. Modeled after the nation’s petroleum reserve, it signals federal confidence in bitcoin as a store of value and potential hedge against risk.

Ron Levy, co-founder and CEO of The Crypto Company, says the GENIUS Act and Strategic Bitcoin Reserve have helped establish the structure and oversight needed for broader cryptocurrency adoption. “Both of those measures give more confidence to our industry and to the masses,” he says. “They’re very different steps, but together they show that digital assets are becoming part of the financial system.”

He says companies now have safer options for managing digital holdings than they did just a few years ago. “You can now hold it with a third-party custodian that’s a legitimate, federally chartered company,” Levy says, who points to Anchorage Digital Bank (which manages more than $100 billion in assets) as an example of the infrastructure now supporting corporate participation.

Federal agencies are currently seeding the Strategic Bitcoin Reserve with bitcoin confiscated from criminal cases. Levy sees this as a practical starting point and one that could help normalize bitcoin’s role over time: “They’re kind of doing what Michael Saylor, co-founder of Strategy and a longtime bitcoin advocate, did—taking a long-term view of rising value.”

Why Bitcoin? Lessons From Early Adopters

Strategy, the world’s first and largest bitcoin treasury company, has been investing in bitcoin since 2020, regularly raising funds by selling shares and issuing convertible debt to support its ongoing purchases. The company now holds more than 640,800 bitcoins, over 3% of the total supply of 21 million, according to the company’s quarterly earnings report for the three-month period ended Sept. 30, 2025.

Notably, investing in bitcoin has proven lucrative for the company, which now ranks as one of the 100 largest nonfinancial companies listed on the Nasdaq stock exchange.

Block, the American technology company and financial services provider behind Square and Cash App, is another early adopter of bitcoin. In October 2025, they began allowing eligible Square businesses to automatically convert a percentage of card sales into bitcoin, and in November 2025, eligible Square businesses were able to begin accepting bitcoin payments directly through the company’s point-of-sale system.

“We’re doing this because bitcoin gives entrepreneurs a new lever: a way to spend and invest outside of traditional rails—with faster settlement, lower fees, and long-term potential. Until now, these tools have been out of reach for most small businesses,” says Miles Suter, bitcoin product lead at Block, in an October 2025 blog post.

Strategies for Implementation

Jonathan Rose, CEO of BlockTrustIRA, says early adopters, like Strategy and Block, have demonstrated the importance of developing a clear, articulated strategy before implementation. For example, Strategy has shown how effectively communicating a treasury diversification approach can create shareholder value beyond direct asset appreciation.

“These pioneers have also established effective models for governance, including specialized committee structures and expertise development,” Rose says, who adds that most successful implementations feature phased approaches with dedicated resources for managing digital assets (rather than adding responsibilities to existing treasury functions).

“They’ve also demonstrated how to navigate volatility through disciplined buying strategies,” he points out, “utilizing market dips for accumulation rather than attempting to time market peaks.”

For optimal results, Rose says finance leaders should focus on three areas before implementing cryptocurrency into their business ecosystems:

1. Knowledge development: Ensure teams understand both the technological fundamentals and evolving accounting standards with cryptocurrency.
2. Infrastructure implementation: Establish relationships with institutional-grade custodians and develop appropriate control systems.
3. Policy creation: Develop comprehensive frameworks before implementation (rather than reacting to emerging opportunities).

Levy says another good approach is to treat bitcoin as a long-term strategic investment. “You’d be a little silly not to at least entertain it,” he says. “This is happening quickly, and organizations can start small to get comfortable with it.” He adds that newer cryptocurrencies are designed to support what he calls “real-world assets,” or physical goods and infrastructure represented on blockchain networks.

Levy sees emerging sectors like decentralized infrastructure and digital asset tokenization as two areas with growth potential right now. The World Economic Forum, for instance, has highlighted the rise of decentralized physical infrastructure networks, which aim to link real-world systems to blockchain technology. “Even a small investment of time to learn this space can pay off,” Levy stresses. “Knowledge is king in this arena.”

Testing the Waters

Some finance leaders are taking a measured approach as they test the digital asset waters. Rose says most start small and stay grounded in traditional treasury discipline.

“In my conversations with CFOs across industries, I’ve noticed most organizations approach cryptocurrency allocation through a graduated framework,” Rose says. “They typically begin with a conservative 1%-3% of their treasury, using established treasury management principles to determine appropriate exposure.”

This approach helps companies understand how cryptocurrency holdings behave before allocating larger sums of their reserves to these assets, since managing risk and reporting accuracy top their list of priorities.

That strategy could also prove useful as companies rethink where and how they hold cash in a less predictable financial system. “After the 2009 banking crisis and COVID-19 pandemic, many finance leaders realized that keeping all of their companies’ reserves in the bank carries risk,” he says.

Of course, digital assets carry risks themselves. For instance, market swings can affect valuations when assets are marked to market, and volatility remains an ongoing factor. Even so, Levy believes bitcoin’s long-term performance compares well to traditional options: “The growth ahead of us is bigger than that behind us. Bitcoin is something that should be considered, but it isn’t without short-term risk or risk in general.”

Putting the Accounting Infrastructure in Place

Behind the scenes, accounting standards are beginning to reflect the growing role of digital assets in corporate finance. For example, companies used to record digital assets as intangibles, recognizing losses when values dropped but not gains when they recovered. New accounting guidance now allows mark-to-market treatment, which gives CFOs a more accurate picture of value and performance.

Shehan Chandrasekera, CPA, head of tax strategy at CoinTracker, says these changes and clearer regulations are helping move cryptocurrency adoption from a speculative to a standard practice.

“It’s like how no one has to specify that they’re using the internet or the cloud anymore—stablecoins are headed in the same direction,” Chandrasekera predicts. “They’re becoming a normal part of financial operations rather than a special line item in the books.”

“It’s still early but not too early,” Levy says. “Start learning, and see where digital assets fit on your balance sheet. The more finance leaders understand the space now the better prepared they’ll be as adoption spreads.”

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• How to Navigate Treasury Management in 2025: Market volatility and the propensity to sit on extra cash “just in case” are creating some significant opportunities and challenges in the current marketplace.