The Crypto CFO Playbook for Blockchain Treasury Management

Cash flows are forecasted, liabilities are denominated in stable currencies, and transparency is something produced quarterly, often through intermediaries.

But what about for the treasury teams and finance functions of cryptocurrency-native organizations? In the world of public blockchains, assumptions from traditional finance break down quickly. Volatility is structural, governance is collective, and transparency is not an output of the system but the system itself.

That reality has reshaped the role of the chief financial officer inside crypto-native organizations, none more so than at the Cardano Foundation. CFO Stephen Wood said the mandate is less about guarding the balance sheet in the conventional sense and more about engineering financial resilience into a public digital infrastructure that has no single owner.

“What is unique about Cardano is the nature of its decentralized, community-driven governance, where we have on-chain governance and even a constitution,” Wood told PYMNTS in an interview.

In practice, that means the treasury is not simply a pool of capital controlled by an executive team. It is a shared resource whose stewardship must balance long-term sustainability, short-term liquidity needs, and the economic incentives that keep a decentralized network functioning.

Real-time on-chain treasury management enables faster settlement, lower fees and automated reconciliations. It also provides “instant global visibility into how assets are managed and proof of holdings,” Wood said, which directly builds investor confidence.

The CFO’s role, then, becomes one of architect and facilitator rather than gatekeeper. Outside of the blockchain finance space, this is an emerging reality that many finance teams across industries are being faced with and embracing.

Liquidity Planning With Crypto as Your Asset Base

Liquidity management is one of the most persistent challenges for blockchain-based organizations. Treasury assets are often denominated in native tokens that can fluctuate in value, while liabilities from payroll to vendor contracts are typically denominated in fiat currencies. Traditional hedging strategies only partially apply.

Wood said his own response has been to layer conventional financial discipline onto blockchain-native tools.

“To achieve this, we utilize both multi-year and short-term treasury allocation plans,” he said, describing a structure that mirrors institutional asset-liability management while acknowledging crypto’s volatility. “Recognizing the inherent volatility of our crypto holdings, we also build our execution capability by adopting a hybrid risk management methodology.”

Instead of relying solely on periodic reports or third-party assurances, the Cardano Foundation can monitor treasury positions, exposures and liquidity conditions directly on the blockchain ledger. For institutional partners and ecosystem participants, that visibility helps change the nature of trust.

“For our partners and the wider ecosystem, on-chain analytics provides compliance teams and institutional investors with the transparent, real-time data they need to manage liquidity as risk fluctuates,” Wood said, adding that on-chain systems can surface stress signals as they develop, allowing organizations to act before vulnerabilities cascade.

“By moving financial data onto a transparent ledger, we eliminate the ‘information asymmetry’ that typically hides systemic vulnerabilities,” he added.

Through platforms like Reeve, the Cardano Foundation publishes financial data directly onto the blockchain, creating a verifiable, real-time record of assets and allocations.

Blockchain-Native Use Cases and Pain Points

Despite these innovations, some financial challenges remain analog. Working capital management, in particular, is complicated by the mismatch between crypto-denominated assets and fiat-denominated obligations.

The solution, at least for now, is prudence rather than financial engineering, Wood said.

It is a reminder that even the most advanced blockchain infrastructure must still contend with real-world financial constraints, and that discipline, not innovation alone, underpins sustainability.

While much of the crypto industry continues to search for durable real-world applications, Wood said he sees artificial intelligence as one of the most mature and promising intersections with public blockchain infrastructure.

At Cardano, AI is not treated as a speculative add-on but as an operational layer with direct implications for finance, compliance and governance.

Wood pointed to Cardano’s work with the Masumi network, developed by Serviceplan Group and NMKR, which supports more than 500 companies through a decentralized AI agent network. These agents are designed to interact autonomously while preserving data privacy and regulatory compliance.

“AI agents can identify each other, verify underlying data without exposing it, and maintain audit logs that meet European supervisory requirements,” Wood said. “These aren’t speculative applications. This is real-world infrastructure being used by major institutions.”

For finance leaders, the implication is that AI and blockchain together can create systems that are not only faster and more efficient, but also more governable.