Everyone’s trying to beat Bitcoin. But maybe the smartest move… is not trying at all. I’ve been thinking a lot about the different ways companies hold Bitcoin and other crypto assets – and I’m starting to develop a new thesis. At first glance, the landscape seems straightforward: some companies hold Bitcoin, some diversify into a broader crypto treasury, and others try to engineer returns through leverage, yield strategies, or structured products. But when you zoom out, the strategic and philosophical differences become a lot more important than they appear. The cleanest approach – and the one I’m advocating – is the simplest: just hold Bitcoin. No lending, no yield chasing, no leverage – just Bitcoin, sitting on the balance sheet as a digital reserve asset. It’s boring. But it’s beautiful. There’s something fundamentally honest about this strategy. Bitcoin is hard money. It doesn’t need to be optimized. It doesn’t need to be “put to work.” It works because it’s scarce, decentralized, liquid, and proven. When companies start using Bitcoin like digital cash – essentially treating it as superior USD – they're making a long-term bet on its role as sound money. That’s a message of confidence, clarity, and low time preference. That’s why I see a key difference between three categories: companies holding Bitcoin as a reserve (what I’d call balance sheet companies), companies building a “Bitcoin treasury” with a more active strategy (think MicroStrategy with leverage), and companies managing broad crypto treasuries with altcoins. Each of these has different risks and goals – but only one of them is truly aligned with the original ethos of Bitcoin. The irony is that the more complex strategies – those involving debt, structured products, rehypothecation – are often trying to do something incredibly difficult: beat Bitcoin with Bitcoin. They take on additional risk and complexity to generate marginal outperformance against an asset that already outperforms everything over a full cycle. And usually, that fragility shows up at the worst times – drawdowns, deleveraging events, or systemic shocks. Now here’s where the thesis gets more nuanced. Altcoins, for all their flaws, might actually be better suited to financial engineering. They’re more volatile. They have more narrative-driven price action. They’re often easier to trade or to generate yield from in DeFi. So if a company is trying to actively manage a treasury and beat a benchmark, maybe it actually makes more sense to do that with altcoins. Bitcoin is too hard to beat. But Solana or AVAX (for example)? The right strategy might outperform them. That said – those same assets are poor candidates for a conservative balance sheet. They’re not scarce. They’re not neutral. They’re inflationary, illiquid, and often dependent on short-term hype cycles. Holding them passively as treasury reserves exposes a company to massive drawdowns, illiquidity risk, and governance drama. They might have a role in operations – staking, incentives, etc. – but they shouldn’t be confused with reserves that a company intends to hold for decades. So maybe this is the clearest way to draw the line: if you’re engineering, altcoins might offer the juice. But if you’re storing value, Bitcoin is the only asset that fits the bill. One approach is about trying to win. The other is about not losing. The more I think about it, the more I believe that most companies should resist the temptation to optimize. Simplicity is underrated. In a world that loves complexity and leverage, just holding Bitcoin might be the boldest and most antifragile move you can make.