Corporate Bitcoin Bet Backfires: $80 Billion Gone in Just Over a Year

For a while, buying Bitcoin and parking it on the balance sheet looked like a foolproof way for public companies to boost shareholder value. That story is falling apart. New research tracking the 50 biggest corporate Bitcoin holders found their combined market value has dropped from around $150 billion to roughly $67 billion over the past 13 months, a loss north of $80 billion.

The Blueprint Behind the Boom

This whole trend traces back to 2020, when a company later renamed Strategy began converting cash into Bitcoin and raising money through stock and debt sales to keep buying more. The approach worked because the stock traded above the value of the coins it held, letting management raise fresh capital at a premium and reinvest it into more Bitcoin. Once that premium disappeared, new stock sales started hurting shareholders instead of helping them, and dozens of copycat firms across unrelated industries found themselves stuck holding a strategy that no longer paid off.

Selling Instead of Stacking

The clearest sign of the shift: these companies have gone from consistently buying Bitcoin to actually selling it. Strategy itself has offloaded thousands of coins recently just to cover interest payments and dividends on its preferred stock, a notable reversal for a firm whose founder spent years telling people never to sell.

Not Just a Bitcoin Problem

Companies built around holding Ether have faced the same pattern, with premiums vanishing and stock prices collapsing even as some firms keep accumulating more tokens despite mounting losses.