Public companies now hold 1,194,065 BTC as of May 6, 2026, representing 5.47% of Bitcoin's fixed 21 million supply and valued at approximately $95.8 billion. The figure has grown from roughly 60 companies in early 2024 to 187 public entities, with 200 bitcoin treasury companies operating globally...
"We're just about $10 billion of adoption in less than one year... that's the second fastest product launch in capital markets history." — Matt Cole, Chairman and CEO, Strive
Public companies now hold 1,194,065 BTC as of May 6, 2026, representing 5.47% of Bitcoin's fixed 21 million supply and valued at approximately $95.8 billion. The figure has grown from roughly 60 companies in early 2024 to 187 public entities, with 200 bitcoin treasury companies operating globally when private firms are included. But the model that launched this movement — buy crypto, hold crypto, trade at a premium to net asset value — is fracturing under the weight of compressed premiums, dilution mechanics, and diverging strategies.
Strategy Inc. (MSTR), the company that pioneered the corporate bitcoin treasury in 2020, now trades at a 0.96x mNAV — a slight discount to the bitcoin it holds. Its market capitalization of $59.3 billion sits below the $65.7 billion value of its 818,334 BTC. The premium that once exceeded 2.8x during the 2024 peak has evaporated. Meanwhile, Metaplanet in Tokyo and Forward Industries in the Solana ecosystem have carved out structurally different approaches, and a new $10 billion "digital credit" market is emerging atop these treasuries. The corporate crypto treasury is no longer a single playbook. It is splintering into at least four distinct models, each with different risk profiles and economic logic.
The core proposition of a crypto treasury company is simple: a public equity wrapper around a concentrated crypto position that trades at a premium to its underlying holdings. Investors pay above NAV for leverage, liquidity, and the operational thesis of the management team. When premiums compress or flip to discounts, the model's economic logic reverses. Equity issuance becomes dilutive rather than accretive, and shareholders effectively pay management fees to hold an asset they could buy directly through ETFs.
Strategy's mNAV peaked above 2.8x in late 2024. By November 2025, it fell below 1.0x for the first time since January 2024. As of May 8, 2026, the basic mNAV stands at 0.96x — Strategy's market capitalization of $59.3 billion against bitcoin holdings valued at $65.7 billion. The company's stock has declined approximately 50.6% over the past year.
Twenty One Capital (XXI), backed by Tether and SoftBank with 43,514 BTC, debuted on the NYSE and immediately fell 20% despite a rising bitcoin price, according to The Block. The market assigned no premium to the treasury wrapper on day one.
This pattern is not isolated. According to data from BitcoinMiningStock.io, most companies that aggressively accumulated at $100,000+ have gone quiet or begun selling. Bitcoin has fallen approximately 41% from its October 2025 all-time high of $124,720 to roughly $80,400 as of May 9, 2026.
Strategy holds 818,334 BTC — roughly 3.9% of total bitcoin supply — acquired at an aggregate cost of approximately $53.6 billion. To fund this accumulation without relying solely on dilutive common stock issuance, the company has built an increasingly complex capital structure.
The firm now carries $8.25 billion in convertible debt and approximately $10.3 billion in preferred stock across four series: STRK (8% coupon), STRF (10%), STRC (11.5%), and STRD. Together, the preferred stack generates a cash-dividend obligation approaching $1 billion annually. In March 2026, Strategy filed for dual $21 billion ATM programs for common stock and STRC preferred, plus an additional $2.1 billion for STRK, totaling $42 billion in capital-raising capacity.
The company reported a 22.8% "BTC yield" for 2025 — a metric measuring bitcoin growth per fully diluted share rather than traditional return on capital. In Q1 2026, Strategy acquired 64,948 BTC, a 74% increase over Q4 2025 purchases of 37,278 BTC. A single-week purchase of 17,994 BTC on March 8 marked the company's largest individual acquisition in over a year.
The risk embedded in this structure centers on the preferred dividends. At roughly $1 billion per year in mandatory cash obligations, Strategy requires either continued access to equity markets or bitcoin appreciation to sustain the model. With the mNAV below 1.0x, common equity issuance is dilutive on a per-share basis. The company is, in effect, selling dollars of stock for less than a dollar of bitcoin exposure.
Metaplanet Inc. (Tokyo Stock Exchange: 3350), Japan's first publicly listed bitcoin treasury company, holds 40,177 BTC and has set a target of 21,000 BTC by end of 2026. According to CryptoSlate, Metaplanet is "the only Bitcoin treasury surviving a brutal market shift that has left Strategy investors totally exposed."
The structural advantage is currency-denominated. Metaplanet raises capital in depreciating Japanese yen, purchases bitcoin denominated in dollars, and benefits from the persistent yen weakness that has characterized Bank of Japan monetary policy. This creates a natural tailwind: even when bitcoin is flat in dollar terms, it appreciates in yen terms.
Metaplanet generates revenue through an options strategy. The company wrote covered calls on its bitcoin holdings and generated approximately $55 million in options-based revenue in fiscal year 2025, according to 24/7 Wall Street. This transforms bitcoin from a passive balance-sheet item into an income-producing asset, partially funding operations without selling the underlying position.
The company's mNAV remains above 1.0x, meaning equity issuance remains accretive. This stands in direct contrast to Strategy's current sub-1.0x mNAV, where the same issuance mechanics work against shareholders.
The bitcoin treasury model has been replicated in the Solana ecosystem, though at smaller scale. Twenty-two publicly traded companies hold a combined 17.6 million SOL, valued at approximately $1.5 billion. Holdings grew 272% through mid-2025, driven primarily by Forward Industries (FWDI), but have plateaued since December 2025.
Forward Industries holds 7.01 million SOL — more than its next three competitors combined. The company's validator infrastructure generates 6.73% gross APY through staking, and it has produced over 133,450 SOL in staking rewards since initiating its treasury strategy in September 2025. Revenue for fiscal Q1 2026 increased more than 4x to $21.4 million, driven primarily by staking income. Forward is scheduled to report fiscal Q2 results on May 14.
DeFi Development Corp. (DFDV) announced a $200 million at-the-market equity facility on May 4, 2026 to acquire additional SOL. CEO Joseph Onorati stated the company has "one job: stack SOL for our shareholders." DFDV operates its own validator and stakes its holdings, generating yield from both staking rewards and delegated stake fees.
The Solana treasury model differs structurally from bitcoin treasuries in one significant respect: staking generates protocol-level yield. Bitcoin treasuries must manufacture yield through options strategies, lending, or financial engineering. Solana treasuries earn native staking rewards of approximately 6-7% APY, creating an organic income stream that bitcoin holders cannot replicate.
At Consensus Miami on May 7, 2026, a panel of bitcoin treasury executives outlined what they described as a $3 trillion addressable market in bitcoin-backed digital credit instruments. According to Matt Cole of Strive, the digital credit market has grown to approximately $10 billion in under one year, making it "the second fastest product launch in capital markets history" after bitcoin ETFs.
Digital credit instruments are typically structured as perpetual preferred stocks — fixed-income securities paying regular dividends, backed by bitcoin holdings, with no fixed maturity date. Strategy's STRK, STRF, STRC, and STRD represent the first generation. Strive has launched its own product, SATA.
Kwasi Kwarteng, executive chairman of Stack, noted that approximately 200 bitcoin treasury companies exist globally versus 5,000 U.S. banks, suggesting significant room for growth. Katherine Dowling, president of Bitcoin Standard Treasury Company, indicated her firm is preparing to bring roughly 30,000 BTC onto its balance sheet and views digital credit as "tremendously important."
The digital credit thesis rests on the assumption that even 1% of the $300 trillion global credit market allocated to bitcoin-backed instruments would represent $3 trillion in demand. That figure dwarfs bitcoin's current approximately $1.6 trillion market capitalization and implies substantial price appreciation would be required to collateralize such a market.
Data compiled by BitcoinMiningStock.io reveals a sharp divergence in behavior among treasury companies since bitcoin's October 2025 peak. In Q4 2025, corporate treasuries collectively added approximately 62,085 BTC at prices between $87,000 and $125,000. In Q1 2026, they added 68,526 BTC as bitcoin fell to $71,400.
Strategy accounted for the vast majority of Q1 2026 purchases. According to CoinDesk, in March 2026 alone, public and private companies added 47,435 BTC — and nearly all were purchased by Strategy.
Several companies moved in the opposite direction. Bitdeer Technologies (BTDR) liquidated its entire position of 2,029 BTC by February 20, 2026. Genius Group (GNS) reduced holdings 58%, from 200 BTC to 84 BTC. Cango Inc. (CANG) sold 59.5% of its holdings — approximately 4,451 BTC — in February, using proceeds for AI infrastructure. It later resumed buying, adding 290 BTC and finishing Q1 at 3,313 BTC.
GameStop (GME) took a different path entirely. The company pledged 4,709 of its 4,710 BTC to Coinbase Credit as collateral for a covered-call options strategy, writing short-dated calls with strike prices between $105,000 and $110,000. Under U.S. GAAP, GameStop derecognized the pledged bitcoin from its balance sheet, recording a digital assets receivable of $368.3 million and a $131.6 million loss on digital assets for its fiscal year ended January 31, 2026. The strategy generated option premium income but capped upside above the strike price.
The concentration risk is stark. Strategy represents over 60% of all publicly held corporate bitcoin. The remaining 186 companies collectively hold fewer than 400,000 BTC. If Strategy were removed from the dataset, the corporate treasury movement would be a fraction of its headline numbers.
The corporate crypto treasury model is undergoing a structural transformation. The first generation — buy bitcoin, wrap it in public equity, trade at a premium — functioned when premiums were expanding and bitcoin was appreciating. Both conditions have reversed. Strategy, the sector's dominant force, now trades below the value of its bitcoin, and its capital structure has grown complex enough that preferred dividend obligations alone consume approximately $1 billion annually.
What is emerging in its place is not one model but several. Metaplanet's currency-arbitrage approach, Forward Industries' yield-generating Solana validator model, and the nascent digital credit market each represent distinct economic architectures. The question is no longer whether corporations will hold crypto on their balance sheets — 187 already do. The question is which structural model can sustain itself when the asset it holds declines 40% from peak and the premium evaporates.
The data from Q1 2026 provides partial evidence. Strategy kept buying. Most others stopped. Whether that represents conviction or escalation of commitment will be determined by where bitcoin trades when Strategy's $1 billion in annual preferred dividends comes due.