A worker installs a new row of Bitcoin mining machines (Mark Felix/Getty Images)

Metaplanet adds to its bitcoin stash and Strategy loads up to buy

Which companies own the most bitcoin? Here’s our weekly update.

2/21/25 3:34PM

It was another week of relatively smooth sailing for bitcoin, which held steady, trading at about $97,000 midday Friday compared to about $96,000 on Monday morning, according to CoinGecko.

This week, Japanese company Metaplanet added to its bitcoin reserve, buying 68.59 additional bitcoin. Its total stash now stands at 2,100 bitcoin, or, as uber-stockpiler and Strategy CEO Michael Saylor posted, “one basis point” of the total supply.

One Basis Point of Bitcoin https://t.co/KnNyajjwEa
— Michael Saylor⚡️ (@saylor) February 20, 2025

“As disclosed in the ‘Bitcoin Plan’ on January 28, 2025, the Company remains focused on its previously stated targets of reaching 10,000 BTC by the end of 2025 and 21,000 BTC by the end of 2026,” Metaplanet said in an announcement.

Something else that held steady this week was Strategy. The company’s total didn’t change from last week, but it did outline plans to buy a lot more bitcoin.

The largest corporate bitcoin owner announced a $2 billion senior convertible note offering to fund more purchases of the assets on February 18. Strategy resumed its bitcoin accumulation last week by adding 7,633 bitcoin to its stash, bringing its total to 478,740. The company wrote in an X post that this represents “~76% of all bitcoin held by public companies.”

Sage D. Young14h

Altcoin trading activity has lost its mojo

Non-bitcoin cryptocurrencies have seen their trading volume plummet in the past five months. The combined trading volume of ethereum, XRP, solana, dogecoin, SUI, and chainlink has decreased by 60% since crypto’s October 10 liquidation event, according to Thomas Probst, a research analyst at crypto markets data provider Kaiko.

Main Altcoins Trading Volume in USD — The trading volume of ETH, SOL, XRP, DOGE, SUI, and LINK.

For all altcoins, spot trading volume on Binance has declined between 80% and 85% to $7.7 billion, while altcoin volume on other exchanges has dropped to $18.8 billion, down from a range of $63 billion to $91 billion in October, a Friday report from Decrypt found, citing data from CryptoQuant.

“This trend may be explained by a contraction in market liquidity over the same period,” Probst told Sherwood News. “This phenomenon is also reflected in the average 1% market depth, which stood at approximately $2.6 million before the October 10 crash and is now closer to $1.7 million when aggregated across ETH, XRP, SOL, SUI, and LINK.”

Market depth is used by investors and traders to gauge the scale of liquidity in a market. 1% market depth refers to the amount of liquidity needed to move the market by 1%.

CoinGlass’s Altcoin Season Index, a measure to assess the performance of non-bitcoin cryptocurrencies, has been sitting above 50 this week, suggesting that the current market is neither in a bitcoin dominant phase nor an altcoin season.

“Triple witching” day may put further pressure on bitcoin’s price

This is not “a favorable environment for risk assets.”

Yaël Bizouati-Kennedy15h

Sage D. Young

3/19/26

Hyperliquid is the “1,000 pound gorilla in the room” leading year-to-date market gains amid conflict in the Middle East

While the crypto industry has shed $564.3 billion in 2026, Hyperliquid’s native token has bucked the downtrend and jumped 54.8% year to date.

Yaël Bizouati-Kennedy

3/19/26

Bitcoin tumbles as oil and gas prices spike and the market’s mood turns risk-off

Bitcoin ETFs reverted to outflows and bitcoin suffered $192 million in liquidations in the past 24 hours.

Sage D. Young3/18/26

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