- Strategy comprised 99.2% of all Bitcoin buying last week.
- The treasury trade has dried up as Bitcoin suffers a debilitating price drop.
- In any case, over 1.1 million Bitcoin still sits in corporate coffers.
Strategy remains the final bastion of the once-booming Bitcoin treasury trade.
Just last week, the company led by Bitcoin permabull Michael Saylor, picked up another $39 million in Bitcoin, taking its staggering stack to a new record of 717,722 coins worth about $45 billion.
Meanwhile, the rest of the treasury market, which is made up of 193 public companies, according to BitcoinTreasuries.net, has virtually vanished. While Strategy added to its stack, over the same period, three micro-cap companies added barely more than $305,000 in Bitcoin to their balance sheets — with two of the purchases under $20,000.
That means Strategy accounts for 99.2% of all Bitcoin buys these days. Even so, its position sits in unrealised losses that topple $6.5 billion.
Strategy’s unparalleled concentration reveals the sector’s fundamental fragility. The other firms seemingly can’t afford to keep up with Strategy, whether on access to institutional capital or simply cash reserves that allow it to deploy more to buy Bitcoin.
Bitcoin treasuries are companies that buy Bitcoin to hold on their balance sheets. Some are doing it simply to diversify their reserves, while others use convoluted financial schemes and have made buying Bitcoin their sole business model.
Evaporated buying
Investors don’t even need to go that far back in time to see how stark the collapse has been.
In late January, five treasuries deployed 1,677 Bitcoin across a single week. Those firms were diversified in nature as well, spanning across South Korea, Singapore, the United Kingdom, and the US. Moreover, they came from a range of sectors, including Bitcoin mining and the food services.
Even during Bitcoin’s crash to $60,000 in early February, small treasuries bought aggressively, making the most of Bitcoin’s cheaper prices.
Nowadays that buying has evaporated entirely.
Bitcoin miners are usually responsible for 200 to 400 Bitcoin weekly through operational production. Last week, they contributed zero in treasury adoption. One company, Bitdeer, effectively sold its entire treasury.
Pedro Solimano is a markets correspondent based in Buenos Aires. Got a tip? Email him atpsolimano@dlnews.com.