Bitcoin treasury companies have collectively shed more than $80 billion in market value over the past 13 months as the once-celebrated corporate playbook of raising capital to accumulate cryptocurrency on the balance sheet has largely broken down.
A new study of the 50 largest publicly listed Bitcoin holders shows their combined market capitalization collapsed from about $150 billion in July 2025 to roughly $67 billion at present, marking one of the sharpest reversals for a corporate strategy that dominated capital markets during the previous year.
The trend also cuts deeper on a rolling annual basis, with the same cohort losing close to $57 billion in the last 12 months as sentiment around the model deteriorates alongside falling token prices.
According to an analysis published by the Financial Times this week, the aggregate market value of the top 50 firms tracked has fallen from $124 billion a year ago to today’s level near $67 billion.
Strategy, the Nasdaq-listed firm formerly known as MicroStrategy, is responsible for the largest single portion of that decline, with its market capitalization slipping roughly $79 billion from a peak reached in the prior year.
The Financial Times, which excluded cryptocurrency exchanges, miners and firms that hold Bitcoin as part of their normal operating activities, found that 43 of the 50 companies in the sample currently trade below the price at which their shares changed hands before they announced a Bitcoin treasury strategy. Thirty-five have fallen by at least half from those pre-announcement levels.
How the Corporate Bitcoin Playbook Was Built
The strategy was pioneered by Saylor in August 2020, when MicroStrategy converted a portion of its corporate cash reserves into Bitcoin and later expanded holdings through a mixture of equity issuance, convertible debt and preferred stock offerings. That template attracted a wave of imitators through late 2024 and into 2025, with hundreds of businesses ranging from coffee chains and clothing retailers to battery manufacturers and small technology firms announcing similar reserve policies.
These vehicles came to be described within the industry as digital asset treasury companies, or DATs, meaning publicly listed corporations whose primary purpose is to acquire and hold cryptocurrency on their balance sheets for shareholders to gain indirect exposure to the underlying asset.
The economics of the model rested on a persistent premium to net asset value, expressed within the sector as a multiple of net asset value, or mNAV, a ratio comparing a treasury company’s market value to the value of the crypto it holds.
When the ratio sits above one, the stock trades at a premium to the coins on its balance sheet, giving management the ability to issue new equity or debt above the price of the underlying token and use the proceeds to buy more Bitcoin, producing an accretive loop for existing shareholders. Once the ratio falls below one, that capital-markets engine stalls, and continued issuance dilutes existing holders rather than adding to their per-share Bitcoin exposure.
From Net Buyers to Net Sellers
Data cited in the report show that the 50 largest treasury holders shifted from net buyers to net sellers of Bitcoin in July, offloading approximately 2,500 more coins than they purchased during the month, a swing worth roughly $160 million at prevailing prices.
Strategy accounted for the bulk of the disposals. The company sold nearly 7,000 Bitcoin for around $430 million between late June and mid-August of this year to service cash needs tied to its interest-bearing securities. Filings show year-to-date sales of about 6,948 BTC used to fund preferred stock dividends, interest payments and buybacks of its variable-rate preferred stock, known as STRC, which carries a $100 stated value and a 12% annualized dividend.
Saylor, who had for years told supporters to never part with their Bitcoin, publicly clarified earlier this month that his long-standing “Never Sell Your Bitcoin” statement applied to his personal holdings and not to the treasury operations of the Nasdaq-listed company. He said Strategy has disclosed since 2020 that it may buy or sell Bitcoin as part of managing corporate capital and reiterated that the firm expects to remain a net buyer over the longer term.
The distinction had rarely been drawn so explicitly by Saylor in prior communications, and the shift represents a notable evolution in the messaging that helped cement the corporate accumulation model in the first place.
Smaller Copycats Retreat, Some Return to Core Businesses
Smaller copycats have taken more varied paths. Some have quietly liquidated tokens to pay down debt, others have used disposal proceeds to buy back their own shares, and a handful have abandoned the accumulation strategy altogether and returned to their original operating businesses.
The retreat has not been confined to Bitcoin. Several treasury vehicles built around Ether and other altcoins have followed the same pattern of premium erosion, share-price collapse and, in some cases, forced disposals.
Bitmine Immersion Technologies, the largest corporate holder of Ether, has seen its share price decline by roughly 85% from its July 2025 peak. The Las Vegas-based firm holds more than 5.8 million ETH and has continued to accumulate the token even as its balance sheet has come under sustained strain from mark-to-market losses.
Bitmine reported a $9.1 billion net loss for the nine months ended May 31, with revenue drawn almost entirely from Ether staking activity through its Made in America Validator Network.
Analysts Call the Model Structurally Weak
Industry analysts have taken an increasingly sceptical view. Adam Morgan McCarthy of research firm LO: TECH told the Financial Times that the model “was always doomed” and predicted that new treasury vehicles are unlikely to emerge in the near term. Eric Benoist of French investment bank Natixis characterised the current phase as a market “rationalisation” rather than an outright collapse of the sector.
Earlier in the year, analysts including Peter Schiff had warned that widening discounts between Strategy’s stock and its underlying Bitcoin holdings could eventually force additional disposals, a warning that has since aged in line with the company’s shift toward active capital management.
Bitcoin Slide and the Debasement Trade
Bitcoin itself has declined about 30% over the past 12 months and was recently trading close to $78,000, well below the record near $126,000 set in October 2025. Treasury company stocks have generally fallen further than the underlying asset because of the leverage embedded in their capital structures and because the premium that once supported their growth model has reversed into a persistent discount for many issuers.
Shares of leading treasury firms and Bitcoin itself have rebounded in the past week following a surprise move by the US Treasury to double the size of its long-dated bond buyback operations, from $2 billion to at least $4 billion per operation, beginning September 9.
That intervention, announced by Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, has revived what market participants call the debasement trade, a pattern in which capital rotates into perceived hard assets such as gold and cryptocurrencies as a hedge against rising sovereign debt and long-dated bond yields.
The 30-year Treasury yield had reached its highest level since 2007 in the days before the announcement, and US national debt crossed $40 trillion during the same period. Even after the bounce, the majority of Bitcoin treasury companies remain far below their earlier valuations.
What the Unwind Reveals
The current downturn marks the first sustained test of a corporate structure that had, until this cycle, been treated by many market participants as a repeatable formula. Under fair-value accounting rules now in effect, unrealised losses on Bitcoin holdings flow directly through the income statement, producing large negative earnings swings in quarterly filings and complicating the equity story for firms whose investment thesis had been built almost entirely around token accumulation.
For the more than 200 publicly listed firms that adopted the DAT approach across various jurisdictions, the loss of premium has effectively closed off the capital-markets engine that funded their growth, particularly for smaller issuers that lack a viable operating business to fall back on.
Saylor’s own framing suggests the model is evolving rather than ending. Strategy, which still holds more than 840,000 Bitcoin, has moved to what it calls a Digital Credit Capital Framework, permitting selective Bitcoin sales to fund preferred dividends, debt interest, and share buybacks while maintaining what management describes as long-term exposure to the asset.
Whether that shift is sufficient to preserve the broader treasury company category, or merely allows the largest issuers to survive as smaller peers exit the market, is likely to define the next phase of a business model that only 18 months ago appeared to be spreading unchecked across global equity markets.
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