Have corporate bitcoin treasuries reached a tipping point?

One of the most salient crypto phenomena of 2025 is the mind-blowing rise in corporate bitcoin treasuries. Once considered fringe, undergoing a bitcoin pivot has become almost mainstream, whether companies have any affiliation with crypto or not. Coffee chains, gold miners, and a Norwegian deep-sea mining company are some of the seemingly random businesses jumping on the treasury bandwagon.

As of writing, there are 148 public companies with corporate bitcoin treasuries, collectively holding 859,870 bitcoin, worth more than $100 billion, according to Bitcoin Treasuries. A year ago, public companies held just over 416,000 bitcoin.

Phong Le, the CEO of Strategy recently said he expects this figure to jump to 700 companies next year. Strategy pioneered what has become a significant trend back in 2020 with the purchase of 21,454 bitcoin. It’s now the largest corporate bitcoin holder, with 607,770 bitcoin (as of July 22), worth more than $71 billion, which is 3% of the total bitcoin in circulation. The company has never sold any of its bitcoin. 

Recently, new entrants have come in with a bang. For instance, Twenty One, the new bitcoin-native company established by Strike CEO Jack Mallers, Tether, and SoftBank via a merger with Cantor Equity Partners, has quickly become the third-largest corporate bitcoin holder. 

On July 17, after days of rumors, the Adam Back-led Bitcoin Standard Treasury Company announced it had entered into a definitive agreement for a business combination with CEP via a SPAC in a $1.5 billion PIPE financing. When it launches, the new company will trade under the ticker BSTR with 30,021 bitcoin, making it the fourth-largest public bitcoin treasury, dethroning Riot Platforms. 

Another splashy entrant is Nakamoto Holdings, the new bitcoin-native venture founded by President Trump’s crypto adviser, David Bailey. It merged with healthcare company KindlyMD and raised $510 million via a PIPE deal and $200 million in convertible notes to fuel its bitcoin treasury ambitions. 

Meanwhile, entrepreneur Anthony Pompliano’s newly established ProCap BTC, a bitcoin-native financial services company, holds 4,932 bitcoin and said it aims to hold up to $1 billion in bitcoin on its balance sheet. Pompliano recently posted on X that ProCap has surpassed GameStop on the bitcoin treasury leaderboard. 

But here’s the thing: not everyone can be Strategy, and there’s no surefire formula that says a quick rebranding or merger + adding bitcoin = success. A few of the new entrants who hoped it would help their stock pop include Semler Scientific, a medical technology company, Solarbank, a solar power company, and ECD Automotive Design, a company that restores luxury vehicles. None have seen a real bounce since announcing their new love of bitcoin:

Alexandre Laizet, deputy CEO and director of bitcoin strategy at The Blockchain Group, told Sherwood News that the company introduced its bitcoin treasury strategy when it “was not trendy.” 

The Paris-based company, listed on Euronext Growth Paris, holds 1,933 bitcoin and aims to be “the Strategy of Europe.” On July 14, it announced a capital raise of approximately 6 million euros ($6.9 million) to advance its bitcoin corporate strategy, including 5 million euros ($5.7 million) from Adam Back.

“The increased competition shows a difference between ‘opportunists’ companies and purists,” Laizet said, adding that the top goal is to buy more bitcoin for shareholders. In turn, if you’re doing something different, like bitcoin lending, you waste time and value for shareholders.

“There could be blood in the streets for people who lack long-term focus,” Laizet warned.

Because Strategy was early to the game, it was able to accumulate bitcoin at a much lower price. Its average bitcoin cost is $71,756, while the average price of newcomer ProCap BTC’s latest purchase was $105,977. Metaplanet has an average cost per bitcoin of $99,502, Bitcoin Treasuries data shows. 

In terms of BTC per share, a metric that’s growing in mentions and popularity to gauge the performance of digital asset companies, newcomers are also, generally speaking, faring poorly compared to OGs like Strategy. BTC per share is a company’s bitcoin holdings divided by the number of implied shares outstanding.

Strategy has 0.00214106 BTC/share, while GameStop has 0.00001053 BTC/share, per Bitcoin Treasuries. 

Another factor in Strategy’s favor is that it has also raised money for bitcoin purchases on favorable terms, with a lot of institutional demand for its 0% convertible notes and reputational advantages from the credibility it has built up in the market, Nic Puckrin, founder of Coin Bureau, told Sherwood.

On July 14, TD Cowen analyst Lance Vitanza raised Strategy’s price target to $680 from $580, saying, “While emulation or DIY is possible, no one will likely be able to match let alone beat Strategy’s cost of capital advantage.” The stock is also up 135% in the past year.

In comparison, newer bitcoin treasury companies are trying to find a shortcut that isn’t there. As a result, they’re buying at higher prices, Puckrin said. “Most will retreat once they realize that simply purchasing bitcoin is not a panacea for all their troubles. This is certainly concerning, because if these companies then panic sell into a falling market, they won’t be doing themselves or the market any favors,” he added.

Warning signs

One company that has (so far) not done itself any favors by opting for a bitcoin pivot is GameStop. In May, the company announced in a one-sentence press release that it had purchased 4,710 bitcoin, which made the stock briefly jump as much as 7% before going down double digits shortly after. The stock remains down more than 13% over the past three months. 

What happened? Alexander Blume, CEO of Two Prime, said that there’s a segment of desperate companies turning to a BTC treasury pivot because they have nothing else to lose, but the market is sniffing these out quickly. 

GME also harmed itself by only participating in a lukewarm way, he added.

“By not going bigger with their bitcoin investment, they signaled an unclear strategy to the market and a less ‘pure’ vehicle for bitcoin exposure compared to competitors like Strategy,” Blume said.

In May, Trump Media & Technology Group announced it was raising $2.5 billion to establish a bitcoin treasury. While the stock bounced on the news, it’s now down 42% year to date.  

Another pitfall for companies is that some “speak bitcoin” but still think in fiat, Jad Comair, CEO of Melanion Capital, said. In other words, they announce pivots while funding long-term BTC buys with short-term, dilutive fiat instruments, as seen with GameStop.

Meanwhile, others also lack a reflexive capital engine, failing to build the “raise, buy, boost” flywheel that drives sustained accumulation or giving weak governance and transparency, which ultimately erode investor trust, he said.

What makes a “good” BTC treasury

The companies with the best chance of success go all in and have conviction, transparency, and access to capital markets. Metaplanet, “the Strategy of Asia,” for instance, now holds 16,352 bitcoin and has a plan to accumulate 100,000 bitcoin by 2026 and 210,000 bitcoin by 2027. The stock is “the best performing stock in Japan by 10x since it launched its bitcoin acquisition strategy in April 2024, with a total return of ~7,900%,” Benchmark analyst Mark Palmer wrote in a July 11 note.

But there’s another differentiator, too: successful treasuries use “intelligent leverage and yield, and clear compliance,” Kyle Chassé, chairman of MV Global and founder of PAID Network, said.

“Companies like MSTR use low-cost debt or equity issuances to buy BTC, then generate yield through lending or derivatives, turning it into a cash-flow machine,”  Chassé added.

Chassé said a good litmus test is if the treasury doesn’t enhance core value, such as by hedging inflation for a cash-rich tech firm, it’s probably more marketing than a material move. “Real ones, like Swan or River’s models, treat BTC as a robust balance sheet booster, not a headline chaser,” he said. 

Other experts also argued that the question is not what makes a treasury “good” or “bad,” but rather, who it is good or bad for.

From a bitcoin adoption perspective, new capital markets pipes hoovering up dollars and other currencies and directing them into bitcoin are largely positive, Two Prime’s Blume said.

He added that treasury strategies can be good for the corporations executing them. “They get to monetize other people’s money to buy bitcoin they control and grow their shareholder value at a premium to the actual assets they hold,” he said. 

But he added that it’s less good for retail investors speculating on these treasuries with an ill-informed understanding of why they’re going up in value and how long it can last. “It does not make a great deal of sense that a company solely dedicated to buying bitcoin should be worth 10x more than the value of the bitcoin they hold,” Blume said.