Michael Saylor is blue (Dominic Gwinn/Getty Images)

Bitcoin is down in Q4 but not as bad as its largest corporate treasury firms

Strategy’s market capitalization relative to its bitcoin holdings has also dipped below 1 for the first time since January 2024.

Sage D. Young

11/13/25 11:59AM

Bitcoin treasury firms are having a harder time than their underlying asset in Q4, as the once magic dust of “pivoting to bitcoin” wears thin.

The price of bitcoin has dropped from the $118,500 level at the beginning of October to below $101,300 as of Thursday morning, a 14.5% decrease.

In comparison, Strategy, Metaplanet, and Twenty One Capital — three of the top four bitcoin digital asset treasuries (DATs), holding a cumulative 716,029 tokens worth $73.3 billion — have seen each of their shares drop about 30% and 35% in the period, data from blockchain analytics firm Artemis shows.

Meanwhile, Nakamoto-merged KindlyMD has slumped 43%, while Strive Inc. has slid 50% in the same time frame.

The price decline comes as Strategy, the first public company to stockpile bitcoin in 2020, and other treasury firms have seen their basic mNAV dip below 1. This means the market price of a company’s shares is less than the total value of its bitcoin holdings. The last time Strategy’s mNAV was under 1 occurred in January 2024, per Blockworks Research.

When the wind turns

The sentiment surrounding bitcoin treasury firms “is just horrible,” according to Kevin Li, former DAT lead at Artemis. “Markets are volatile, and bitcoin hasn’t been going up.”

Omer Goldberg, the founder and CEO of risk management firm Chaos Labs, said, “Every flywheel can become a death spiral when the wind turns the other way.”

“Some bitcoin/crypto treasury firms are mobilizing their underlying to peg the stocks at 1 mNAV: this will set their path for their shrinking to zero capitalization; at the same time with no certainty on 1 mNAV enforcement, there is no reason why the stocks should stop here,” Goldberg told Sherwood News.

Le Shi, managing director at crypto trading firm Auros, outlined different scenarios that will likely play out over the coming months, with several bitcoin DATs now trading at a 1 or lower mNAV.

If bitcoin’s price strengthens, the mNAVs of treasury firms will rebound as doubts about their ability to service debt obligations dissipate. If the price of bitcoin weakens, some DATs with stronger balance sheets may initiate stock buybacks to boost confidence, while other DATs trading at discounts may become targets for mergers or acquisitions.

If the markets stay stagnant, consolidation among DATs is “likely to become a recurring theme for the sector, with some even being forced to divest their assets to repay debts and subsequently, become targets for acquisition,” Shi said.

Bitcoin is the safest, but still limited

Jaewon Kim at blockchain research firm Four Pillars added that bitcoin DATs are structurally limited by what the asset can do: even though BTC is the safest and most in-demand asset for institutions, it’s not programmable money from a treasury operator perspective.

“For a DAT, that matters because a major path to push mNAV > 1 is to generate incremental return on assets,” Kim said. Premiums are justified when tokens enable treasuries to use their holdings to earn on-chain income through staking, liquidity provisioning, and earning protocol fees, Kim told Sherwood.

“Bitcoin treasuries have limited flexibility… Unless the company has a very strong brand, a unique narrative (like [Strategy cofounder Michael] Saylor), or a business vision built around BTC, I think it’s only natural the structure naturally gravitates toward NAV,” Kim argued.

Despite the current climate, Li, who began investing in Strategy last year and holds about 30% of his portfolio in the firm, recently bought more shares at $240 each.

Strategy having an mNAV under 1 doesn’t impact Li’s investment thesis, which relies on Strategy being able to increase bitcoin per share by issuing preferred equity to “capture the spread between BTC CAGR [compound annual growth rate] and its cost of capital.”

Sage D. Young12h

Payward, parent company of crypto exchange Kraken, puts plans for IPO on hold

Payward, crypto exchange Kraken’s parent company, has paused its plans for an initial public offering until market conditions improve, according to a report from CoinDesk that cited two people with knowledge of the matter.

Since the firm announced in November its preparation for an IPO of its common stock, the total market capitalization of the crypto industry has shed around $652.2 billion, from $3.2 trillion to $2.5 trillion as of Wednesday, data from CoinGecko shows.

The news comes two weeks after Kraken received approval for a master account from the Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City, allowing the crypto exchange to connect to the Fed’s payment infrastructure used by traditional banks and credit unions.

Last year, Kraken raised $800 million at a $20 billion valuation from institutional investors such as Jane Street and Citadel Securities.

Payward, parent of crypto exchange Kraken, has put its IPO plans on hold

Last year, Kraken raised $800 million at a $20 billion valuation from institutional investors such as Jane Street and Citadel Securities.

Sage D. Young13h

SEC and CFTC issue new guidance on how securities laws apply to crypto assets

On Tuesday, the US Securities and Exchange Commission, together with the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, issued an interpretation clarifying how federal securities law applies to crypto assets, a first step toward developing a clearer regulatory framework.

The interpretive guidance introduces a token taxonomy for different types of cryptocurrencies, with SEC Chairman Paul S. Atkins adding that “most crypto assets are not themselves securities.”

Examples of a digital commodity, “a crypto asset that is intrinsically linked to and derives its value from the programmatic operation of a crypto system that is ‘functional,’” include:

Aptos, avalanche, bitcoin, bitcoin cash, cardano, chainlink, dogecoin, ethereum, hedera, litecoin, polkadot, shiba inu, solana, stellar, tezos, and XRP.

The guidance also includes definitions of digital collectibles (such as NFTs), stablecoins, digital tools, and digital securities (such as tokenized real-world assets and stocks).

This is a monumental step in the mainstream adoption of the industry and clears a hurdle in how crypto can operate going forward, according to David Pakman, head of venture investments at CoinFund. “This will allow new token designs with the confidence that their existence does not require registration with the SEC, etc.,” Pakman told Sherwood News.

Despite the clarification efforts from the two organizations, the market capitalization of the crypto industry has dropped about 2% in the last 24 hours as each of the tokens mentioned in the guidance are trading lower in the period, data from CoinGecko shows.

The joint agency action also complements congressional efforts to turn a crypto market structure framework into law. With the goal of providing regulations on the offer and sale of digital commodities, the CLARITY Act passed the House of Representatives last year and is now sitting in the Senate.

Yaël Bizouati-Kennedy

14h

Citi analysts cut 12-month bitcoin projection to $112,000 from $143,000

The analysts’ bear-case scenario is $57,537, based on “recessionary macro-factors, especially weak equity markets,” which could cause ETF flows to stall.

Sage D. Young3/17/26

Bitcoin sees 8 consecutive days of gains, a streak not seen in 4 years

Bitcoin is on a winning streak. The cryptocurrency has generated eight straight days of positive returns, a rare phenomenon that has occurred only 15 times since Satoshi Nakamoto created it, according to a CoinDesk report.

In the 30 days after posting an eight-day streak, bitcoin traded higher nine times and lower six times. The median return in the period is roughly 19%. Despite the historical gains that followed, the last time bitcoin had such a rally, four years ago, it dropped roughly 30%.

Most recently, bitcoin climbed from below $66,000 on March 8 to over $75,000 yesterday before settling around $73,800 on Tuesday morning.

Traders remain modestly bullish on the likelihood of further gains, though the sentiment is fading: prediction market-implied odds of bitcoin trading above $77,500 in the month stand at 54%, a decrease from 73% on Monday.

(Event contracts are offered through Robinhood Derivatives, LLC — probabilities referenced or sourced from KalshiEx LLC or ForecastEx LLC.)

Bitcoin hits rare 8-day winning streak – but 2022 bear market saw one too

Most recently, bitcoin climbed from below $66,000 on March 8 to over $75,000 yesterday before settling around $73,800 on Tuesday morning.

(Event contracts are offered through Robinhood Derivatives, LLC — probabilities referenced or sourced from KalshiEx LLC or ForecastEx LLC.)

Yaël Bizouati-Kennedy3/17/26

Another miner sells its bitcoin

Despite bitcoin being on the rebound, another bitcoin miner sold a chunk of its holdings to further its pivot to AI. In February, Cango, a former automotive service, said it sold 4,451 bitcoin in favor of AI, just a year after becoming a miner. The company said it used the proceeds of the sale to pay down long-term debt and “reduce the overall finance leverage and strengthen the balance sheet,” according to its fourth-quarter and full-year earnings release.

Shares were up 4.5% in premarket trading.

Cango recorded a net loss from continuing operations of $452.8 million in 2025, “primarily due to non-recurring transformation costs and market-driven fair-value adjustments,” it said.

Its “adjusted bitcoin treasury policy” will “provide the financial flexibility needed to navigate volatility and invest in high-potential areas like AI infrastructure,” Cango said.

Bitcoin’s earlier downward trajectory has pressured several miners, which are choosing to pivot to AI and sell their assets or exit the business entirely.

Cango’s move follows Core Scientific, which sold over 1,900 bitcoin for $175 million in January as it shifts even more of its focus to the AI data center boom.

As bitcoin mining economics “have gone from bad to worse,” companies pivot and sell to survive