What is mNAV? How to calculate and trade it? Your DefiLlama guide to the metric for digital asset treasuries

Digital asset treasuries have become crypto’s hottest trade, with over 200 companies now holding billions in tokens on their balance sheets.

But investors are calculating the same metric called mNAV in such different ways that this has created a hall of mirrors where the same stock can look like a 90% discount or a 500% premium.

The problem isn’t trivial since investors are making million-dollar-bets based on data that’s off by multiples.

The article below written by pseudonymous DefiLlama analyst Meta explains how to make sense of this complex metric and trade it accurately.

What is mNAV?

mNAV is short for market-cap-to-net-asset-value multiple. It tells you how much equity value you’re paying for every $1 of crypto the company holds.

mNAV = Fully Diluted MarketCap ÷ Treasury Value (USD)

• 0.5x means you’re paying 50 cents for every $1 of tokens. That’s a discount.
• 1.0x means the company’s marketcap equals its treasury holdings. That’s equal value.
• 3.0x means you’re paying $3 for every $1 of tokens. That’s a premium.

We run it three ways:

Realized: shares that exist today

Realistic: realized plus in-the-money dilution (options, warrants, convertibles, RSUs)

Maximum: everything that could possibly printAll three are often incorrectly used interchangeably by people when discussing “fully diluted” sharecounts, marketcaps, and mNAVs.

In practice, doing so inevitably leads to miscommunication, disagreement, and, most consequentially, trades executed without full knowledge of what the true values actually are.

The lens you pick to perceive through will change the picture in potentially radical ways. Realized can look like a discount. Maximum often will show the extreme or “worst-case” scenario of a premium.

The HYPE DAT Ecosystem: A Clean Case Study for mNAV

The HYPE DAT ecosystem is one of the clearest examples of why mNAV matters and how it gets misread, miscalculated, and, even, misreported.

The three main HYPE treasury plays right now are: HYPD (Hyperion DeFi), SONN (soon to merge into Hyperliquid Strategies, HSI), and LGHL (Lion Group). Galaxy Digital (GLXY) also holds HYPE however because of its broader business mix, it’s been left out deliberately as it is not a pure DAT-focused trade.

Depending on which share count you use to calculate for marketcaps, these stocks can look like deep discounts or expensive premiums.

One investor will say SONN is 0.06x. Another will say it’s 5.27x. Both are technically right. They’re just using different denominators.That contrast is exactly why the HYPE DATs make for a clean case study.

We’ll break down each company, walk through the math, and show where people can get tripped up.

Common pitfalls

• ADS math: LGHL trades as American Depositary Shares. One ADS = 2,500 ordinary shares. Mix that up and the marketcap booms 2,500x!
• Pre-merge vs post-merge: SONN has about 6.75M shares today, but post-merge with HSI it’ll be ~562.86M. Use today’s count and it looks like a total steal. Use the right base and it’s 5x.
• Resale registrations: A filing that registers 30M shares for resale isn’t today’s count. That belongs in maximum, not realized.
• Opacity: LGHL is messy. Filings are dense, structures shift, ADS math confuses everyone. It’s one of the trickiest DATs to pin down.
• Finance portals: Yahoo shows LGHL float at 904.93M, shares outstanding at 3.95M, and implied shares at 476k. Three completely different answers. That’s how you get mNAVs ranging from 0.06x to 119x without touching a filing. And Yahoo Finance lags filings, so even the “shares outstanding” line might be stale!

$HYPD

Treasury: 1,535,772 HYPE × $48 = $73,717,056

Price: $10.34

Takeaway: On realized shares HYPD trades at 0.79x. That’s a discount. Once you layer in dilution it jumps to 5–8x, which is firmly premium.

$SONN → HSI

Treasury: 12,600,000 HYPE × $48 = $604,800,000

Price: $5.66

Takeaway: On today’s count SONN screens at 0.06x. That’s a massive discount. On the real post-merge base it’s a 5.27x premium. Same stock, two different answers.

$LGHL

Treasury:

- 194,726 HYPE × $48 = $9,346,848- 6,707 SOL × $220 = $1,475,540- Total = $10,822,388Price: $1.43

Takeaway: On realized and realistic shares LGHL trades under 0.1x. That’s a steep discount. On maximum it jumps to 4x premium. The swing is all about which share count you pick.

Informed decision making becomes paramount when you consider such discrepancies.

The Yahoo Finance trap on LGHL

Yahoo currently shows:

• Float: 904.93M- Shares outstanding: 3.95M- Implied shares outstanding: 476.76kAt $1.43 per share and a $10.82M treasury, those imply:

Three different answers from the same site.

Now convert the float to ADS instead of ordinary:- 904,930,000 ÷ 2,500 = 361,972 ADS- Marketcap = $517,622- mNAV = 0.0478x

Still wrong, but at least consistent.

The correct counts from filings are 737,193 ADS (realized), 742,993 ADS (realistic), and 30,406,496 ADS (maximum). Those give 0.0974x, 0.0982x, and 4.0177x.

Lesson: Yahoo Finance mixes units and lags filings. Always go back to the SEC.

Cross-ticker snapshot

Key:

<1x = Discount- 1x = Equal- >1x = Premium

How to calculate mNAV yourself

1. Get the value of the total holdings of the token treasury: list tokens from filings, multiply by price, add them.
2. Anchor the share count: use the latest filing that states “As of [date], there were X shares outstanding.”
3. Pick your lens: realized, realistic, or maximum.
4. Match units: if the company trades as ADS, convert ordinary to ADS. If a stock split or reverse split occurred, adjust all prior filings to the new ratio, but leave later filings as reported. If a merger changes shares, use the post-merge base.
5. Run the math: Marketcap = pricexshares. mNAV = marketcap÷treasury.6. Optional: add debt and subtract cash to the marketcap to calculate Enterprise Value is what MSTR uses to calculate for the EV mNAV. Enterprise value = Market cap + debt - cash. EV mNAV = (Market Cap + Debt - Cash) ÷ Treasury Value.

Why this matters

mNAV is the backbone of the DAT trade.

It won’t replace judgment, but it grounds it. With clean numbers you know when you’re buying tokens at a discount, equal value, or paying a premium. That’s the difference between trading narratives and trading based on numbers.

Prices move fast, narratives move faster, but underneath all the noise each ticker is just a wrapper around a pile of tokens.

If you’re sloppy with the numbers, you’ll fool yourself. Everyone wants the shortcut. Use today’s SONN share count instead of the post-merge count and it’ll look like a steal at 0.06x. In reality, it’s a 5.27x premium.

Take LGHL’s ordinary shares and multiply them by the ADS price and, suddenly, you end up with mNAVs in the hundreds or thousands of x.

Rely on Yahoo’s “float” line and you may as well be pulling numbers out of thin air.

The fix is simple. Stick with filings, pick your lens, and stay consistent or simply use DeFiLlama.

This way you’ll actually know if you’re buying tokens at a discount, equal value, or paying a premium.

mNAV won’t tell you everything. Sentiment, liquidity, and timing all still very much matter and should be factored in for. mNAV alone won’t replace judgment, but it grounds it. With clean numbers, you know when you’re buying tokens at a discount, equal value, or paying a premium.

That’s how you avoid chasing what can look like free money and then getting steamrolled when the market reprices overnight.

The edge in DATs is about doing the math right using the most-up-to-date data while others cut corners.

Sources

• Sonnet Bio press release on HSI merger
• LGHL F-3 resale registration
• LGHL HYPE swap press release
• HYPD press release on HYPE purchase

Short glossary

• DAT (Digital Asset Treasury): a public company that buys and holds crypto tokens directly on its balance sheet.
• mNAV (market-cap-to-net-asset-value multiple): marketcap divided by the value of the tokens held. Shows if the stock trades at a discount, equal value, or premium.
• ADS (American Depositary Share): a U.S.-traded security that represents a set number of a company’s ordinary shares. For LGHL, 1 ADS = 2,500 ordinary shares.
• Realized shares: shares that exist today.- Realistic shares: realized plus in-the-money dilution such as warrants, convertibles, and RSUs.
• Maximum shares: everything that could possibly print, even if out of the money or contingent.
• Enterprise Value mNAV: the version MSTR uses. It adjusts the denominator by adding cash and subtracting debt from the token holdings. DeFiLlama’s method of calculating mNAV does not use cash or debt.

All the mNAVs on DeFiLlama’s website are standardized to using tokens only, which is simpler to calculate but not the same as Enterprise Value as such you may find discrepancies when comparing mNAV values from MSTR’s website for example.

Always check to see if there is an express mention of what variables are being utilized to calculate a reported mNAV when dealing with different sources.