I really like Bitmex Research. They put out a lot of well researched and thorough stuff.
In this piece, they look at the fees paid to strategic advisors at various treasury companies. Such advisors are not the same as the financial institution sponsoring the deal (setting it up). Rather they are the popular face of the treasury company: think Mallers, Pomp, or Adam Back.
Bitmex Research includes a table with details about the fees charged bybadviaors at a number of treasury companies (I was a little disappointed that the table didn't include more companies) and it is clear that many of the advisors stand to collect pretty impressive fee revenue.
In a way these fees are sometimes somewhat appropriate, as the key people involved in these deals need to be paid well and they are often linked to the mNAV premium, so incentives are aligned with shareholders. However, the fees are often significant enough to put to bed the argument that some have made, that treasury companies are better than crypto ETFs, because they have lower fees.
Bitmex Research seems to think that in most cases the treasury company play will only work for a littl e while:
In our view, the end game here is that many of these companies eventually trade at a significant discount to mNAV and become zombies once again, potentially still paying significant fees, just like $GBTC. However a select few may make it. By “make it” it likely means that the companies achieve significant scale such that passive funds such as Vanguard and State Street become the largest shareholders, before the premium to mNAV eventually potentially declines to near 1.0x or lower.Another more simple takea way from this report, is just to buy the ETFs.