Digital Asset Treasury Stocks Suffer Deeper Losses Than Bitcoin

As bitcoin lost about half its value since its October peak, the value of many of the digital asset treasury companies that emerged during the digital asset boom fell even more, Bloomberg reported Friday (June 5).

Since October, the combined market value of fully diluted bitcoin treasury company stocks has lost $62 billion, falling from about $134 billion to $72 billion, the report said, citing data from Artemis.

Over the past year, shares of several bitcoin treasury companies have fallen by more than 80%, with Nakamoto down almost 100%, Twenty One Capital down 84%, and Metaplanet down more than 80%, according to the report.

Nakamoto announced May 28 that its chairman and CEO, David Bailey, purchased 191,448 shares of the bitcoin company’s open stock on the open market between May 26 and May 28 and that this move reflects confidence in the company’s strategy.

“The market continues to discount the long-term value of the business, but our conviction in the future has never been stronger,” Bailey said in a press release.

Metaplanet said in an April 2 post on X, which is currently pinned atop its other posts, that it added another 5,075 bitcoin to bring its total holdings to 40,177 bitcoin.

According to Friday’s Bloomberg report, bitcoin’s 15% drop this week was driven in part by bitcoin treasury company Strategy’s Monday (June 1) disclosure that it sold bitcoin for the first time since 2022.

Strategy said in a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) that between May 26 and May 31, it sold 32 bitcoin at an average sale price of $77,135 and an aggregate sale price of $2.5 million.

“Proceeds from the bitcoin sales are expected to be used to fund distributions on preferred stock,” the company said in the disclosure.

Strategy still holds 843,706 bitcoin, as of May 31, per the disclosure.

Strategy Founder and Executive Chairman Michael Saylor pioneered the crypto treasury method of selling shares or borrowing funds and putting that cash into crypto in 2020, when he turned his software company, then called MicroStrategy, into the bitcoin-focused firm now called Strategy.