A wave of publicly traded companies built to hold Bitcoin for investors is unraveling fast, wiping out tens of billions in market value as the crypto downturn grinds on.
When Bitcoin was soaring, the pitch was simple: buy shares in a company that stockpiles Bitcoin, and watch your investment grow — without ever touching a crypto wallet. For a while, it worked brilliantly. Then the tide turned.
The combined market value of fully diluted Bitcoin treasury company stocks has fallen to about $72 billion from nearly $134 billion at its most recent peak in early October, according to Artemis data — erasing approximately $62 billion and underscoring how a once-hot crypto trade continues to unravel. What was marketed to investors as a straightforward accumulation strategy has, in many cases, devolved into a scramble for survival.
What Are Bitcoin Treasury Companies?
Digital-asset treasury companies, or DATs, were built on a simple premise: public markets would assign a premium to firms willing to stockpile cryptocurrencies, allowing them to issue stock, buy more tokens, and repeat the process. The model worked spectacularly as prices climbed — but proved far less durable as crypto prices retreated and investors became more selective.
The original blueprint was drawn up by Michael Saylor’s Strategy Inc. (formerly MicroStrategy), which began aggressively buying Bitcoin in 2020 and watched its stock price soar in tandem. Dozens of companies attempted to replicate the model — from Japanese investment firm Metaplanet to upstarts like Nakamoto and Twenty One Capital — turning corporate Bitcoin accumulation into something of a global financial trend.
The Rout Deepens
Bitcoin has dropped about 14% this week to trade near four-month lows. The latest retreat was fueled in part by Strategy Inc. reporting its first sale of Bitcoin since 2022 — a move that rattled confidence in the “permanent hold” narrative that had underpinned investor enthusiasm.
Critically, the stocks of these treasury companies have fallen far harder than Bitcoin itself. Investors have pulled billions of dollars from spot Bitcoin exchange-traded funds, geopolitical tensions have pushed money toward traditional safe havens, and many of the DATs that emerged during the boom have declined far more than Bitcoin itself.
For smaller companies that copied Strategy’s approach without its scale, balance sheet strength, or access to capital markets, the consequences have been severe. David Bailey-led Bitcoin treasury firm Nakamoto announced a 1-for-40 reverse stock split after its shares slumped nearly 100% in the past year. Nasdaq had warned the company in December that its shares faced delisting after trading below $1 for at least 30 consecutive days. Nakamoto reported a net loss of $238.8 million for Q1 2026, with a $102.5 million unrealized loss tied to Bitcoin prices as the largest contributor. The company sold 284 BTC during the quarter to cover working capital needs.
Japan’s Metaplanet has faced its own reckoning. The Tokyo-based firm posted a net loss of 95 billion yen ($619 million) for fiscal 2025, driven primarily by a 102.2 billion yen decline in the value of its Bitcoin holdings. As of late April, Metaplanet’s Bitcoin reserves carried a paper loss of approximately $490 million, and its stock has pulled back more than 83% from its all-time high.
Twenty One Capital, the Bitcoin treasury company backed by Cantor Fitzgerald and led by CEO Jack Mallers, has also seen its investor base shift dramatically. Tether acquired SoftBank Group’s roughly 26% stake in Twenty One Capital, deepening the stablecoin issuer’s control over the company’s strategy and governance. Shares closed at $7.83 in late May, down sharply from a 52-week high of $53.00.
Leading Bitcoin Digital Asset Treasury Stock Plunge
A Stark Choice: Default or Sell
Industry observers say the crisis has exposed a fundamental flaw in the DAT model — one that was always present, but easy to ignore during a bull market.
“With prices now unwinding, digital-asset treasuries are faced with a stark choice: default on their debt or sell assets,” said Hayden Hughes, managing partner at Tokenize Capital. “The forced selling has shattered the perception that they would monotonically act as permanent ‘buy and hold’ investors.”
The pain has been felt most acutely by retail investors. On balance, the trade allowed early backers and sponsors to capitalize on investor enthusiasm at the peak of the digital-asset treasury cycle, while retail investors absorbed much of the pain when valuations began to unravel.
“Digital-asset treasuries and other corporate BTC holdings collectively exceed 5% of supply, which accelerated adoption among Wall Street in a sense — but at the cost of heightened volatility for retail participants chasing the ‘easy’ wrapper,” said Akshat Vaidya, co-founder and managing partner of Maelstrom, Arthur Hayes’s family office.
Digital Asset Treasuries Lose Their Shine
A Crowded Trade Comes Undone
For firms like Strategy and Metaplanet, falling Bitcoin prices not only reduced the market value of treasury assets — they also weakened investor confidence in equity structures built around continuous accumulation. Share prices began to reflect concerns about leverage, dilution, and long-term sustainability rather than the underlying Bitcoin thesis alone.
One market observer noted: “By the time a growing number of companies were attempting to replicate the MSTR playbook, much of the scarcity value had arguably already been captured.”
A CryptoQuant report highlighted that Bitcoin treasury companies which raised capital via private investment in public equity deals have experienced significant stock drawdowns, with share prices often gravitating toward their issuance levels. The analysts concluded that a sustained Bitcoin rally is the only likely catalyst to prevent further declines — without it, many are poised to continue trending toward or below their original issuance prices. Like many financial manias before it, the DAT boom looked most convincing near its peak. Now, months after the excitement faded, the unwind continues — and for many of the companies caught up in it, the road back is anything but clear.
