The Treasury Company Borrowing Cheaper Than The US Government
Ryan Navi joins the show to explain how Forward Industries raised $1.65 billion in two weeks, deployed nearly all of it into Solana within days, and built a treasury holding more SOL than the next three or four public companies combined. Ryan spent his career at Citi and KKR in liquid and distressed credit before leading venture at ParaFi, and his argument is that the treasury model everyone copied from Michael Saylor has a structural flaw — and that a native staking yield plus a KKR-style playbook fixes it.
In this episode:
✅ Borrowing cheaper than the US government — the 2.6% average cost of debt, and how a liquid staking token posted as collateral gets Forward a rate the Treasury can't beat
✅ 7.8 million SOL and counting — why Forward is bigger than its next four competitors combined, and why scale decides who survives this cycle
✅ 36% annualized SOL-per-share growth — the number two quarters running, and the capital allocation discipline behind it
✅ The Berkshire Hathaway of Solana — the RWA basket thesis, the Henri reinsurance deal, and the spread math that makes the balance sheet cash flow in both directions
✅ Why Strategy must sell Bitcoin to buy Bitcoin — Ryan's outside-in read on the convert retirement, the STRC dislocation, and the negative feedback loop that forced Saylor's hand
✅ A scalpel, not a constant bazooka — how Ryan would run the preferred playbook differently, and why a native yield makes a Solana treasury better suited to prefs than a Bitcoin one
✅ Hope is not a strategy — the case that subscale treasury companies are value destructive, and the two catalysts that finally force consolidation
✅ An open invitation to merge — Ryan's on-air M&A pitch to struggling DATs, and how a stock-for-stock deal would actually get structured
✅ The BDC playbook for treasury companies — why DATs will eventually trade like business development corporations, and what separates the 1.2x names from the 0.3x names
✅ AI companies and the pref market — whether hyperscalers tap preferred equity when cheaper financing dries up, and the one constraint that caps how big it gets
TIMESTAMPS:
0:00 Intro
0:32 From Citi and KKR to a Solana treasury
2:08 Saylor pioneered the model
3:26 Why Solana and how Forward differs from Bitcoin DATs
8:06 Already the biggest: 7.8 million SOL
9:58 Borrowing at 2.6% and how it works
12:14 The case for blockchain over intermediaries
15:18 The regulatory unlock
17:45 The iPhone moment is still ahead
20:33 Tokenization goes mainstream and the Henri deal
26:58 Competing blockchains and regulatory risk
31:18 Balance sheet construction and SOL per share
35:00 Becoming the Berkshire Hathaway of Solana
40:10 The spicy stuff: what Saylor is doing with Strategy
46:13 MNAV and the BDC analogy
52:00 The consolidation pitch
57:47 How Ryan thinks about preferred equity
1:09:07 AI companies and the pref market
1:13:17 Where to follow Ryan
🎙️ Featured Guest: Ryan Navi — CIO of Forward Industries, previously at KKR and ParaFi Capital
More at forwardindustries.com | X: [confirm handle — "RyNavi" on tape]
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