Bitcoin treasury slump deepens as 40% trade at discount: ‘It’s an abomination’

The trend that became the biggest boom of 2025 is starting the new year as a bust.

At least 37 of the top 100 Bitcoin treasury companies now trade at discounts to their net asset value, according to data from BitcoinTreasuries.net. That means nearly 40% of major treasuries are worth less than the Bitcoin they hold.

“The initial hype is over,” Brian Huang, co-founder of investment platform Glider, told DL News.

Indeed, the premium era has ended. For the first three-quarters of 2025, treasury companies enjoyed significant premiums on their holdings. That allowed them to issue new stock above their Bitcoin value, use the proceeds to buy more coins, and repeat the cycle — all without diluting shareholders.

Scores of companies, many of them without any previous connection to crypto, rushed to emulate the trade. The boom meant nearly 200 public companies now collectively hold over 1 million Bitcoin worth around $96 billion.

But that playbook only works when companies’ equity trades at a premium to the crypto on their balance sheets. Strategy, the sector’s pioneer, traded at more than double its Bitcoin value last year. Today it offers a 17% discount.

The entire trade began to slump in October. Ultimately, just one Bitcoin treasury company, France’s The Blockchain Group, outperformed the 16% the S&P 500 returned to investors in 2025, according to a December report from BitcoinTreasuries.net.

Every other treasury underperformed the bellwether S&P 500, and 60% of Bitcoin treasuries spent more on their Bitcoin than it’s now worth.

The Grayscale comparison

For macro analyst Alex Kruger, the Bitcoin treasury trade ominously reminds him of a situation that Bitcoin dealt with exactly five years ago.

“When it comes to analogies across cycles and Bitcoin Treasury companies, June 2025 is analogous to December 2020 and the Bitcoin Grayscale trade,” Kruger told DL News.

In 2020, Grayscale traded at a 40% premium to its Bitcoin holdings, meaning investors paid $1.40 for every $1 of Bitcoin the trust held because it was the only way institutions could get regulated Bitcoin exposure.

But then came Bitcoin exchange-traded funds. Investors could get Bitcoin exposure easily on their BlackRock or Fidelity account, collapsing Grayscale’s appeal — and premium. Eventually, Grayscale’s product traded at a 50% discount, pinning down investors who were forced to sell at massive losses.

The discount disaster

The 37 Bitcoin treasury companies trading below NAV range from major players like Strategy and Twenty One Capital — two of the top five treasuries, which each have a 17% discount to their Bitcoin holdings — to smaller firms like Sweden-based H100 Group, which trades at a 32% discount, and Vanadi Coffee, which is valued by investors at a 61% discount to its Bitcoin holdings.

Another five to six companies hover precariously close to 1.0x, including Brazil-based OranjeBTC at parity. Any modest equity drawdown could push them below NAV, and turn them into food for giants.

Kruger reckons consolidation is on its way, as failed treasuries become acquisition targets.

In September, Bitcoin treasury Strive purchased Semler Scientific in an all-stock transaction.

Other treasury figures predict a similar scenario playing out.

Katherine Dowling, president of Bitcoin Standard Treasury Company, said the strongest digital asset treasuries that survive 2025’s year-end collapse will become even bigger — by acquiring the weak.

“Bitcoin DATs will push through this current noise as well. We will also likely see some DAT M&A opportunistic activity,” Dowling previously told DL News.

‘It’s an abomination’

Companies trading below 1.0x mNAV cannot issue stock to buy more Bitcoin because doing so destroys shareholder value.

Let’s say a treasury holds $100 million in Bitcoin but trades at a 30% discount, so its market cap is $70 million. If it issues $10 million in new shares to buy Bitcoin, shareholders now own $110 million in Bitcoin but the market cap only rises to $77 million. Shareholders got diluted for nothing.

This dynamic destroys the entire treasury playbook, ending access to capital markets, the allegedly endless Bitcoin purchases, and the potential for an expanding premium.

Instead, the scheme turns into no more than holding and hoping.

“The model is an abomination,” said Kruger.

Pedro Solimano is DL News’ Buenos Aires-based markets correspondent. Got a tip? Email him at [email protected].