gain exposure toby John Gray
These stocks offer indirect exposure to DeFi’s growth, giving retail investors a chance to buy into its potential.
Investing in crypto is easy. You can buy it directly. You can buy an ETF that tracks it. Or you can buy shares in a company that has positioned itself as a ‘digital asset treasury’ (DAT). DeFi is less straightforward. As the name suggests, stablecoins do not accrue value, and you can only earn yield on them if you deploy them into financial activity, such as lending or DeFi protocols. This is a complex exercise — more complex, at least, than simply holding bitcoin [BTC] until the next price spike — and consequently most such activity is carried out by specialised firms.
In light of this, the question becomes: as a canny investor convinced that DeFi is the next big thing, how do you make money out of it? Counterintuitive as it may seem, the answer is: by buying equities. As the DeFi sector grows, the share prices of companies that facilitate on-chain financial activity should increase, helping investors realise some TradFi upside from the DeFi revolution. That, at least, is the idea. It can be useful to think of the DeFi ecosystem in terms of a four-layer stack. We’ll look at each in layer turn, as well as a company that offers exposure to it.
Layer 1: Settlement and money
This layer underpins the entire crypto financial system. It consists of assets used primarily for transferring value, storing liquidity and acting as collateral across networks, rather than for speculative appreciation. Stablecoins function as digital cash equivalents, while reserve assets such as BTC are part of the broader monetary base that supports on-chain activity.
The most prominent company in this layer is Circle [CRCL], which went public in a high-profile IPO in June 2025. It is best known for issuing USDC, a leading dollar–backed stablecoin, and building the core infrastructure for digital dollar payments and on-chain settlement.
The firm reported its Q1 results on 11 May.
USDC circulation stood at around $77bn, up 28% year-on-year and broadly flat quarter-on-quarter, despite a 45% decline in broader digital asset markets since October 2025. Within that, $13.7bn is held on Circle’s own platform infrastructure. On-chain transaction volumes surged to $21.5trn, a 263% increase year-on-year, with some third-party estimates placing total activity closer to $30trn when including Solana-linked [SOL] flows.
In terms of market position, according to Visa USDC now accounts for around 63% of stablecoin transaction volume, and roughly 80% of on-chain dollar-denominated digital currency transactions. These figures position Circle at the heart of this layer of the DeFi stack. On the call, CEO Jeremy Allaire spoke interestingly on the convergence of AI and DeFi, which he said would be “the largest platform shift in the history of the Internet”.
Layer 2: Access and distribution
Layer 2 acts as the gateway between traditional capital markets and on-chain financial systems. It includes platforms that onboard users, route liquidity, and provide entry points into crypto and DeFi. Rather than generating DeFi economics directly, these firms monetise flow, capturing fees as capital moves into and out of decentralised markets. Within this layer, Coinbase [COIN] stands out.
One of the dominant crypto exchanges in the US, it operates as a regulated on-ramp into digital assets, offering trading, custody, staking, and institutional infrastructure across both retail and professional markets. Over time, it has evolved from a pure exchange into a broader crypto financial platform, increasingly embedded in the distribution layer of on-chain markets and DeFi activity.
Coinbase reported Q1 earnings on May 7.
On the surface, the numbers weren’t great. The firm logged a net loss of $394.1m while revenue of $1.41bn was down 31% year-over-year. Both transaction revenue and subscription and services revenue missed analyst expectations, the latter falling 14% to $584m — an uncomfortable sign for a business that has spent years arguing its non-trading revenues would provide a buffer against crypto’s notorious cyclicality.
Underneath that, however, something more interesting was happening. Coinbase's global crypto trading market share hit a record 8.6% in the quarter — up from 2.7% just two years ago — even as total industry volumes fell sharply during the recent crypto downturn. The derivatives business grew 169% year-over-year. The exchange is winning market share precisely when the market is most brutal, which is indicative of either competitive strength or weaker rivals exiting the field (or, most likely, both).
Layer 3: Market structure
The closest thing crypto has to Wall Street, layer 3 provides liquidity, trading, financing and institutional intermediation across crypto and on-chain financial markets. It lies between end-user access platforms and underlying protocols. Rather than building or distributing DeFi directly, firms in this layer monetise volatility and flows across the entire digital asset ecosystem. A major player in this layer is Galaxy Digital [GLXY]. It positions itself as a diversified digital-asset financial services firm, operating across trading, asset management, investment banking, and principal investing. This gives it broad exposure to liquidity provision and institutional capital flows across the crypto ecosystem.
It logged a net loss of $216m, yet more fallout of the crypto winter, though analysts expected it to be worse. Again, despite the loss, Galaxy’s operating segments held up better than the headline figure suggests, while digital asset trading volumes remained flat quarter over quarter. Several other developments were worth noting. Following quarter-end, Galaxy Digital was selected by BlackRock as an approved validator to support staking for the iShares Staked Ethereum Trust ETF, which is BlackRock’s first crypto ETP designed to generate rewards.
Analysts also flagged Galaxy Digital’s pivot into data centre infrastructure as an exciting strategic shift from pure crypto markets. In the quarter, Galaxy delivered the first data hall at its Helios data centre campus to AI/cloud company CoreWeave [CRWV], marking the transition from construction into revenue-generating operations. The company is targeting delivery of most of the 133MW of critical IT capacity by the end of Q2 2026.
Layer 4: Programmable reserve strategies
Layer 4 consists of companies building large treasury positions in programmable digital assets such as ETH and SOL. On the surface, these firms could appear to be a subset of DATs. However, assets like ETH and SOL are not simply held passively; they can be actively deployed to perform core DeFi functions.
DeFi Development Corp [DFDV] is a good example of this. It concentrates its treasury in SOL and deploys it into staking, validator operations and on-chain yield strategies. This links shareholder value not just to SOL price movements, but also to network activity and DeFi-linked income streams within the SOL ecosystem.
DeFi Development Corp reported Q1 earnings on May 13.
In his letter accompanying the earnings report, CEO Joseph Onorati was careful to differentiate DFDV’s approach from that of Strategy [MSTR], the godfather of DATs, highlighting that “Solana’s ecosystem offers tools unavailable to a Bitcoin treasury company”, and that the company essentially comprised a portfolio of SOL-centred asymmetric bets. In terms of the numbers, the firm reported revenue of $4.49m, ahead of analyst expectations of $3.5m. However, it posted a significantly wider-than-expected GAAP loss, related to the fact SOL fell more than 30% during the quarter.
Despite the volatility, the company continued increasing its core treasury metric — SOL per share (SPS) — which rose 108% year-on-year. Total SOL holdings reached roughly 2.3 million tokens, placing DFDV among the largest publicly traded Solana treasury companies. DFDV reaffirmed its target of 0.075 SPS by June 2026, implying roughly 12% growth from current levels, while maintaining its longer-term goal of reaching 1.0 SPS by the end of 2028. Management also forecast improving quarterly performance, guiding to a near-break-even Q2 2026 result and targeting profitability by Q4 2026.
Bottom line?
DeFi exposure in public markets is indirect and fragmented, expressed through stablecoin infrastructure, exchange-based distribution, market intermediaries and programmable asset treasuries. Investors are effectively buying into the financial plumbing of on-chain systems.
This is, of course, an indirect substitute for true DeFi participation. With significant exposure to broader crypto cycles and execution risk, outcomes will depend as much on market structure and competition as on DeFi adoption itself.
Still, ‘true’ participation in DeFi’s economic activity remains the preserve of specialised companies. For most retail investors, buying shares in such companies is the best way to gain exposure to the sector’s expansion.
