DFDV Doubles Down on Development Strategy During Worst Crypto Crash Since FTX
February 5, 2026 · by Fintool Agent
Defi Development Corp.+23.54% management hosted their monthly X Spaces Business Recap and AMA on Thursday afternoon—directly into the teeth of Bitcoin's worst single-day decline since the FTX collapse in November 2022.
With Bitcoin plunging below $67,000 and DFDV shares down 26% to $2.97 at the close, CIO and COO Parker White dismissed fears that leveraged Digital Asset Treasury companies are "ticking time bombs" and outlined the company's strategic pivot from passive treasury holder to active DeFi developer.
"If we close at double digits down for the day, this will actually be the largest single-day candle for Bitcoin since the FTX blowup," White said at the opening. "So it's getting pretty wild out there."
The Carnage Across Crypto
Thursday's sell-off wiped out nearly half of Bitcoin's value since its October 2025 peak above $126,000, with the cryptocurrency hitting levels not seen since before President Trump's election. The crypto market has shed $2 trillion in total value since the October peak.
Strategy Inc.+26.11%, the Bitcoin treasury pioneer formerly known as MicroStrategy, tumbled 17% to $107—its lowest since May 2024—as unrealized losses on its 713,502 BTC holdings swelled to $6.5 billion.
| Metric | February 5, 2026 |
|---|---|
| Bitcoin | $67,000 (-10%) |
| Solana | $105 (-12%) |
| DFDV Stock | $2.97 (-26%) |
| MSTR Stock | $107 (-17%) |
Ask Fintool AI Agent"Only Monkeys Pick Bottoms"
Despite the market chaos, White struck a defiant tone, quoting DFDV's CFO: "Only monkeys pick bottoms."
He acknowledged signs of capitulation across the industry, noting that "prominent figures" are leaving the space and Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin has criticized the last five years of crypto development as "garbage."
"We're having all the signs of a bear market, and this has certainly been one of the fastest—it seems like the fastest—bear market on record," White said. "Hopefully that means the rebound doesn't take as long."
But he pushed back forcefully on the internal narrative: "The conversations internally amongst the DFDV team is, like, everyone's just like: 'Oh, yeah, you know, like, this is kind of expected.' There's not an ounce of, I think, anyone on the team even, like, considering throwing in the towel."
Why DATs Won't Blow Up
The X Spaces event directly addressed growing FUD that leveraged treasury companies are systemic risks waiting to detonate.
"Most DATs aren't levered," White explained. "For levered DATs, basically all the leverage is unsecured debt. What that means is, there's no margin call. There's not a price that the asset can drop to that forces an entity to sell."
He pointed to DFDV's $123 million convertible bond issued in July at 5.5% interest with a five-year maturity: "As long as we can pay our 5.5% a year on the $122 million, we can't get margin called. SOL could go to $1, and if we'd set aside the cash to pay the interest payments, there's no margin call, and we technically don't have to sell any SOL."
On preferred stock, White noted that even in a worst-case scenario, companies like Strategy could pause dividends rather than liquidate: "There's basically no scenario where MicroStrategy is forced to sell a bunch of Bitcoin into the market."
The real pressure is elsewhere. Strategy's mNAV (multiple to net asset value) has fallen below 1.0, which CEO Phong Le previously said could potentially force the company to sell holdings.
Ask Fintool AI AgentFrom DAT to DeFi Development Corporation
The more significant strategic signal from the call was DFDV's articulated pivot from passive treasury accumulation to active ecosystem building.
"I put out a tweet—2026 will be the year that we go from being a DAT to being an actual DeFi Development Corporation," White said.
The company's January launch of DisclaimerCoin (DONTS), a meme token, was framed as an experiment in on-chain development: "It's certainly not something that we're abandoning, but it's just a small example of what we plan to do on the DeFi development side."
White outlined a broader vision: "Long term, our vision for the company is not about just a passive ride the wave, or even a pseudo-passive ride the wave with leverage like a MicroStrategy does. We actually wanna help create the wave."
That includes:
- Deploying capital into early-stage projects
- Sponsoring hackathons and hacker houses
- Direct development and building, potentially hiring dev teams from Kraken and other established projects
- Expanding the utility of dfdvSOL, the company's liquid staking token, which was listed as collateral on Jupiter Lend earlier Thursday
The Jupiter Lend integration allows dfdvSOL holders to borrow against their position with loan-to-value ratios up to 92% and access leveraged strategies up to 12.49x—while continuing to earn staking yield.
January Recap: Holdings and Governance
Despite the market turmoil, management highlighted January progress:
| Metric | January 2026 |
|---|---|
| SOL Balance Sheet | 2.2 million SOL |
| SOL Per Share (SPS) | 0.0743 |
| DFDVX Supply | >512,000 |
| DFDVX Trading Volume | $30 million |
The company added Hadley Stern—former Chief Commercial Officer at Marinade Finance and longtime Fidelity executive—to both the DFDV and DFDV UK boards.
"Hadley's been in the space for quite a while, and he was at Fidelity for a long time, so really brings a wealth of experience, connections, and perspective, especially on the institutional adoption front," White said.
DFDV UK continues navigating regulatory hurdles for a London Stock Exchange listing. White noted the FCA's "check with us and get approval approach" makes the process slower than U.S. listings, but emphasized the opportunity: "The U.K. is a market where access to crypto is more difficult than in the U.S. There's certainly fewer DATs and fewer ETFs."
Capital Allocation in a Bear Market
With DFDV trading at a discount to NAV on most metrics, the company's ATM equity program is effectively paused. Preferred stock issuance faces headwinds, with Strategy's STRC preferred trading 5% below peg and ASST's SATA down 15%.
"If we do a preferred, the yield that we're paying, the interest rate that we're paying, is gonna be a lot higher than those guys," White acknowledged. "It starts to get to a situation where the question is asked: Should we raise the preferred if we're paying 25% or 30% interest?"
Instead, DFDV is focusing on buybacks: "We think this is a great way to grow SOL per share in a down market. We have done some buybacks—you can go look in the filings—and we'll likely continue to utilize it in the future."
Management emphasized full alignment on SPS growth, which drives both executive compensation and the value of insider holdings.
Ask Fintool AI AgentThe Bull Case for Bear Markets
White framed the current environment as opportunistic for builders, noting that major crypto companies—Solana, Kamino, Jupiter—were all founded during bear markets.
"My favorite part of the full cycle is the trough of disillusionment, if you will, where the scammers kind of step away, the fast money kind of steps away, the price stops moving so much, which is nice," he said. "And we can really get back to first principles, get back to building, get back to why we're here in crypto."
For investors watching DAT operators coast through the downturn, White offered a warning: "There can be a tendency for some of these DAT operators to sit back and be like: 'All right, we've got a bear market, can't raise capital, so we're just gonna hang out, go on vacation, and get back engaged when the market turns around.' We don't think that's the right approach."
The timing of the AMA—hours after the Jupiter Lend integration and during Bitcoin's worst day in years—was either spectacularly unlucky or deliberately defiant. Either way, DFDV management used the moment to articulate a thesis: that survival in this bear market requires building, not just holding.
"We wanna build as many rocket boosters as we can to attach to the rocket when it's time for launch," White said. "We don't wanna just sit back on the one or two boosters that we have."
Related Companies: