Businesses Shed Bitcoin Treasuries Amid Market Downturn

Companies that spent years building up bitcoin treasuries are now reportedly exiting the market.

As Coindesk reported Thursday (April 2), publicly-traded companies were once viewed as long-term bitcoin holders, but are now increasingly unloading the coin as ongoing price weakness crimps their plans and balance sheets.

The report cites the example of Empery Digital, which announced Wednesday (April 1) that it had sold 370 of its 2,989 bitcoin at an average price of $66,632, generating $24.7 million.

The company had started building its bitcoin treasury in July of last year, amassing approximately 4,000 at one point. Empery’s shares are down 75% from the record $15.80 it reached last year, Coindesk added.

According to Coindesk, the trend is not confined to businesses. The government of Bhutan has been reducing its share of bitcoin, selling 3,103 of the token. In one transaction earlier this week, the government liquidated 375 bitcoin, the report added.

The country built its bitcoin holdings over several years via state-backed mining operations, with its crypto treasury peaking at more than 13,000 BTC in October 2024.

The report that public bitcoin treasury companies still hold around 1.1 million bitcoin, more than 5% of the total bitcoin supply of 21 million.

This news follows reports from last fall about a downturn in the crypto treasury space, with companies that had hoarded digital assets launching share buybacks to juice their stock prices as their market values dropped below that of their cryptocurrency holdings.

“It’s probably the death rattle for a few [of these companies],” Adam Morgan McCarthy, senior research analyst for crypto analytics company Kaiko, told the Financial Times.

Meanwhile, recent research by PYMNTS Intelligence shows that, among middle market companies, crypto is used mostly for payments rather than treasury.

The research shows a “gap between awareness and use,” with just 13% of middle market firms using stablecoins, and only 5% use cryptocurrencies.

“Even among those that have adopted digital assets, usage remains tightly bounded. Stablecoins are most often used for specific payment functions, such as paying domestic suppliers or receiving cross-border funds,” PYMNTS wrote recently.

“Cryptocurrencies are even less embedded, with usage largely confined to isolated transactions rather than recurring workflows.”

The absence of recurring usage suggests that digital assets are part of the conversation at these companies, though not part of the systems that CFOs depend on to run the business.