Operational Excellence (OPEX) Daily Briefing – Wednesday, October 22, 2025: When Companies Speculate to Survive: OPEX Lessons from the Crypto Investment Wave Among Unprofitable Firms
Điểm Tin Operational Excellence (OPEX) Mỗi Ngày – Thứ Tư, Ngày 22/10/2025: Khi Doanh Nghiệp Đầu Cơ Để Sống Sót: Bài Học OPEX Từ Làn Sóng Đầu Tư Crypto Của Các Công Ty Thua Lỗ
Welcome to my unique weekday article for the paid subscriber-only edition.
Operational Excellence (OPEX) Daily Briefing – issued on weekdays (Monday to Friday).
Điểm tin Operational Excellence (OPEX) hằng ngày (phát hành các ngày thứ Hai đến thứ Sáu).
This is the bilingual post in English and Vietnamese. Vietnamese is below.
Đây là bài viết song ngữ Anh-Việt. Tiếng Việt ở bên dưới.
English
Part 1: Official Statement – When Unprofitable Companies Shift Toward Crypto
On October 22, 2025, according to Bloomberg, Reuters, and the Financial Times, a striking global trend is emerging: many loss-making companies are pivoting to cryptocurrency investments as a way to “financially reposition” themselves and capture investor attention. Some corporations have even publicly rebranded as “digital-asset treasury companies” — firms holding digital assets as part of their long-term financial strategy.
According to Reuters (2025), in the third quarter of this year, more than 14 publicly listed companies in the U.S. and Europe added Bitcoin or Ethereum to their balance sheets, totaling over USD 4.8 billion in value. Several of these firms are still reporting consistent net losses. Many CEOs claim this move is a “new path to asset diversification,” but industry experts warn that such a shift carries severe operational risks — as it signals the erosion of core value creation and a reliance on speculative asset fluctuations as a form of short-term relief.
The PwC Crypto Risk Insight Report (2025) reveals that only 18% of companies have a formal risk management framework for digital assets, while 72% admit they “lack any operational control process or OPEX framework for crypto.” This leads to a dangerous misclassification of financial risk as strategic opportunity, pushing many organizations into a speculative spiral and weakening their ability to optimize real operational performance.
OPEX experts point out that this is no longer a financial phenomenon but a symptom of operational governance failure. When a business model ceases to perform effectively, instead of restructuring workflows, improving productivity, or enhancing customer experience, some companies opt for the shortcut: rebranding as digital-asset investors to temporarily beautify their financial reports.
A Harvard Business Review analyst commented:
“When a company seeks profit from assets rather than operations, it is abandoning its core capability — the ability to create real value through products, processes, and people.”
From an Operational Excellence (OPEX) perspective, this trend represents a “red alert” for Operational Drift — the loss of alignment between strategy and execution. OPEX does not reject financial innovation, but it emphasizes that improvement only holds value when tied to genuine performance and operational sustainability.
The critical question for business leaders today is not:
“Should we invest in crypto?”
but rather: “Is your company still creating real value — or merely surviving on speculative expectations?”
That is the fine line between a sound financial strategy and a systemic operational risk — where every short-term decision could undermine the long-term resilience of the entire organization.