Publicly traded Bitcoin treasury companies — firms whose primary business is holding BTC on their balance sheets — are undergoing their most severe stress test since the model's inception in August 2020. Of 179 listed firms across 30 countries collectively holding 1,287,144 BTC (approximately 6.1...
"There's no free money forever." — Raphael Zagury, CEO, Twenty One Capital
Publicly traded Bitcoin treasury companies — firms whose primary business is holding BTC on their balance sheets — are undergoing their most severe stress test since the model's inception in August 2020. Of 179 listed firms across 30 countries collectively holding 1,287,144 BTC (approximately 6.1% of total supply, worth $102 billion), roughly 40% now trade below the market value of their Bitcoin holdings, according to data from The Block and BitcoinQuant. At least 20 companies have liquidated, reduced, or loosened their crypto accumulation strategies since Q1, per VanEck research. Strategy Inc. (formerly MicroStrategy), the model's originator and largest holder with 845,050 BTC, broke its long-standing "never sell" pledge in May 2026, selling 3,620 BTC to date to fund preferred dividend obligations that now exceed $1.4 billion annually.
The sector faces a structural reckoning: bitcoin's approximately 40% decline from its October 2025 peak near $126,000 has collapsed the mNAV premiums that once enabled accretive equity issuance. Companies that could previously issue shares at 2-3x NAV to buy bitcoin at market prices now trade at or below 1x, eliminating the financial engine that justified the model. Satsuma Technology is returning capital and delisting from the London Stock Exchange. Sequans Communications disposed of nearly 80% of its holdings. Bitcoin miners MARA and Bitdeer are pivoting capital toward AI infrastructure. What was once described as an "infinite money glitch" has become a solvency exercise.
The Bitcoin treasury model, pioneered by Michael Saylor's MicroStrategy in August 2020, operates on a simple premise: a public company issues equity or debt at a premium to the market value of its Bitcoin holdings, uses the proceeds to buy more Bitcoin, and the resulting increase in BTC per share generates a metric called "Bitcoin Yield" that attracts more investors, driving the stock premium higher.
The mechanism is circular by design. When a company trades at 2x the value of its Bitcoin (an mNAV of 2.0), it can issue $1 billion in stock but effectively buy $1 billion of Bitcoin while only diluting shareholders by the equivalent of $500 million in BTC value. Each share issuance, paradoxically, increases Bitcoin per share. Strategy deployed this approach to accumulate over 845,000 BTC, funded by $25.3 billion in capital raises during 2025 alone.
By September 2026, 179 public companies across 30 countries have adopted some form of the strategy, according to SatsIntel. The total corporate holdings reached 1,287,144 BTC. But concentration is extreme: Strategy alone holds approximately 66% of all corporate Bitcoin. The top three — Strategy (845,050 BTC), Twenty One Capital (43,514 BTC), and Metaplanet (43,000 BTC) — account for roughly 72% of the total.
Bitcoin peaked near $126,000 in October 2025. As of mid-September 2026, it trades near $77,000 — a decline of approximately 39%. The price compression has devastated the model's core mechanic.
According to The Block's Treasury Tracker and reporting by DL News, roughly 40% of publicly listed Bitcoin treasuries now trade at a discount to their net asset value. Strategy's enterprise mNAV has fallen to approximately 0.82x, meaning the market values the company at 82 cents for every dollar of Bitcoin it holds. Twenty One Capital trades at 0.7x. For these firms, every share issuance is now destructive rather than accretive — issuing stock below NAV dilutes existing shareholders' Bitcoin exposure without compensation.
Matthew Sigel, VanEck's head of digital assets research, warned as early as October 2025 that many treasury companies lacked "deep and liquid markets for the secondary trading of their securities," particularly options. Once demand cooled, raising fresh capital became materially harder. By July 2026, the warning proved prescient.
Michael Saylor's most quoted line was simple: "Never. No. We're not sellers. We're only acquiring and holding bitcoin. That's our strategy." He repeated versions of this at least five times between 2020 and 2025.
In May 2026, Strategy sold 32 BTC at an average price of $77,135, booking approximately $1 million in realized losses. Between June 29 and July 5, the company sold 3,588 BTC for $216 million to fund preferred dividend payments. Year-to-date 2026 bitcoin sales total $218.4 million.
The sales are not optional. Strategy's preferred stock obligations have ballooned to approximately $1.4 billion per year across four instruments:
| Instrument | Notional Value | Dividend Rate | Annual Cost (approx.) | |-----------|---------------|---------------|----------------------| | STRC | $10.49 billion | 11.50% | $1.21 billion | | STRF | $1.28 billion | 10.00% | $128 million | | STRE | €775 million | 10.00% | €77.5 million | | STRK | Undisclosed | Variable | N/A |
The company's $1.4 billion cash reserve covers roughly 21 months of preferred dividend payments. The board has authorized up to $1.25 billion in bitcoin sales for its USD Reserve. Strategy reported a Q2 loss of $24.45 per share, driven by an $8.6 billion non-cash mark-to-market charge on its Bitcoin holdings. Holdings grew 11% quarter-over-quarter to 845,050 BTC at an average cost basis of $75,412.
Saylor's clarification, issued at Bitcoin Conference 2026 in August, drew a distinction between personal and corporate strategy: "When I say 'Never Sell Your Bitcoin,' I speak as one saver to another. I have never sold mine. Not one satoshi." Strategy, he noted, has disclosed since 2020 that it may buy or sell Bitcoin as part of capital management.
On July 23, 2026, VanEck's Sigel documented at least 20 public Bitcoin treasury companies that had either liquidated, reduced, or loosened their crypto accumulation strategies. He categorized them into three groups: nine complete exits, seven partial or forced sellers, and four that moved toward active management without selling.
Specific cases illustrate the scale:
Two companies liquidated 511 BTC within 24 hours to escape $31.7 million in combined debt obligations. Bitcoin miners MARA and Bitdeer diverted capital from treasury accumulation toward AI data center infrastructure.
Not every treasury company is retreating. Japan's Metaplanet Inc. (3350.T), the third-largest corporate holder with 43,000 BTC, is expanding. On September 11, 2026, the company cut its Series 10 stock rights pool by 41.1%, reducing potential dilution from 319.5 million to 188.2 million shares. The move increased Bitcoin per share to 0.0286646 BTC from 0.0263554 as of June 30 — an 8.8% improvement.
Metaplanet's interim target is 100,000 BTC by year-end 2026. Its long-term goal: 210,000 BTC by end of 2027, representing 1% of total supply. The company has launched subsidiaries in Miami and Hong Kong. Its Hong Kong arm, Metaplanet Asset Management Asia Limited, was approved September 11 with $1 million in initial capitalization and a mandate spanning proprietary trading, asset management, and structured products.
What differentiates Metaplanet from failing peers, at least for now, is its cost basis. The company acquired its 43,000 BTC at an average cost of approximately $95,209, closer to current market prices than Strategy's blended basis across multiple price regimes. Metaplanet also benefits from cheap yen-denominated financing and a domestic investor base with limited access to direct Bitcoin exposure through regulated ETFs.
The 2026 shakeout exposes a fundamental tension in the model. During rising Bitcoin prices, treasury companies could issue equity at premiums, and preferred dividends were easily covered by unrealized gains and new issuance. When Bitcoin falls, the mechanism reverses:
Twenty One Capital CEO Zagury's public warning that premiums should compress toward 1x as more firms replicate the strategy amounts to an admission that the model's edge was scarcity of imitators, not structural superiority.
The corporate Bitcoin treasury model, built on the premise that public-market premiums could fund perpetual accumulation, has hit its mathematical limits. A 40% bitcoin drawdown from the October 2025 peak exposed the model's dependence on a rising price environment. Companies that layered preferred instruments atop volatile collateral now face fixed obligations without the ability to issue accretive equity. The sector is bifurcating: a small number of well-capitalized survivors are pivoting toward operational revenue streams, while undercapitalized imitators are liquidating holdings to service debt they assumed during the premium era. The question is no longer whether the model works in a drawdown — the data shows it does not in its original form — but whether survivors can evolve into something that generates value independent of bitcoin's direction.