Digital asset treasury companies that rushed to copy Michael Saylor’s Bitcoin strategy are now hemorrhaging shareholder value, with median stock prices down 43% year to date, even as the broader market climbs higher, as per .Source: Bloomberg

More than 100 publicly traded companies transformed themselves into cryptocurrency-holding vehicles in the first half of 2025, borrowing billions to buy digital tokens while their stock prices initially soared past the value of the underlying assets they purchased.

The strategy seemed unstoppable until market reality delivered a harsh correction.Strategy’s Model Spawns Industry-Wide Collapse

Strategy Inc.’s Michael Saylor pioneered the approach of converting corporate cash into Bitcoin holdings, transforming his software company into a publicly traded cryptocurrency treasury.

The model worked spectacularly through the mid-2025, attracting high-profile investors, including the Trump family.

SharpLink Gaming epitomized the frenzy. The company pivoted from traditional gaming operations, appointed an Ethereum co-founder as chairman, and announced massive token purchases.

💰Sharplink Gaming added $80M in Ether to its reserves, lifting total holdings to $3.6B and cementing its spot as the second-largest corporate holder of ETH. — Cryptonews.com (@cryptonews)

Its stock exploded 2,600% within days before crashing 86% from peak levels, leaving total market capitalization below the value of its Ethereum holdings at just 0.9 times crypto reserves.

Bloomberg data tracking 138 U.S. and Canadian digital asset treasuries shows the median share price has fallen 43% year-to-date, dramatically underperforming Bitcoin’s modest 7% decline.

In comparison, the S&P 500 gained 6% and the Nasdaq 100 rose 10%.

Strategy shares have dropped 60% from their July highs, even as they have risen by more than 1,200% since the company began buying Bitcoin in August 2020.Source: Bloomberg

“Investors took a look and understood that there’s not much yield from these holdings rather than just sitting on this pile of money,” B. Riley Securities analyst Fedor Shabalin told Bloomberg.Debt Obligations Expose Structural Flaws

The fundamental problem plaguing these companies stems from how they fund cryptocurrency purchases.

Strategy and its imitators issued massive amounts of convertible bonds and preferred shares, raising over $45 billion across the industry to acquire digital tokens that generate no cash flow.

These debt instruments carry substantial interest and dividend obligations that cryptocurrency holdings cannot service, creating a structural mismatch between liabilities that require regular payments and assets that produce zero income.

Strategy faces annual fixed obligations of approximately $750 million to $800 million tied to preferred shares.

Companies that avoided Bitcoin for smaller, more volatile cryptocurrencies suffered the steepest losses.

Alt5 Sigma, backed by two Trump sons and planning to purchase over $1 billion in World Liberty Financial’s WLFI token, has crashed more than 85% from its June peak.Source:

Strategy attempted to address funding concerns by raising $1.44 billion in dollar reserves through stock sales, covering 21 months of dividend payments.Saylor Admits Potential Bitcoin Sales

The industry now faces its defining moment. Strategy CEO Phong Le the company would sell Bitcoin if needed to fund dividend payments, specifically if the firm’s market value falls below its cryptocurrency holdings.

Those comments sent shockwaves through the digital asset treasury sector, given Saylor’s repeated insistence that Strategy would never sell, famously joking in February to “sell a kidney if you must, but keep the Bitcoin.“

At December’s Binance Blockchain Week, Saylor the revised approach, stating that “when our equity is trading above the net asset value of the Bitcoin, we just sell the equity,” but “when the equity’s trading below the value of the Bitcoin, we would either sell Bitcoin derivatives, or we would just sell the Bitcoin.“

The reversal raises fears of a downward spiral where forced crypto sales push token prices lower, further pressuring treasury company valuations and potentially triggering additional selling.

Strategy’s monthly Bitcoin accumulation has collapsed from 134,000 BTC at the 2024 peak to just 9,100 BTC in November, with only 135 BTC added so far in December.

The company now holds approximately 650,000 BTC, valued at over $56 billion, representing more than 3% of Bitcoin’s maximum supply.

Market participants worry that leveraged traders using borrowed money to invest in these companies could face margin calls, forcing broader market selloffs.

Strategy has created a $1.4 billion reserve fund to cover near-term dividend payments, but shares remain on track for a 38% decline this year despite the company’s massive Bitcoin holdings.

​WESTLAKE, Ohio (WJW) — Police in Westlake said a computer scam artist was so convincing in the story he pitched to an elderly victim that she put thousands of dollars into a Cryptocurrency ATM, even after store employees and officers pleaded with her to stop.

On Nov. 26, police were alerted by an employee at a Marathon convenience store on Center Ridge Road that a 71-year-old woman was feeding a large amount of cash into a Bitcoin ATM, while speaking with someone on her cell phone. The employee warned the woman that it appeared she was the target of a scam, but she refused to listen and kept pumping money into the machine.

On body camera video obtained by Fox 8 News, an officer approached the woman and told her, “We deal with this all the time, stop what you’re doing, I’m telling you, stop. If somebody tells you to do this, you are being scammed.” The woman responded, “They’re on the phone; they can hear everything.” The officer then told her, “Right, and they’re scamming you.”

However, the 71-year-old ignored repeated warnings from officers, after being persuaded by a scammer posing as a bank fraud investigator, that she needed to put $18,000 into the crypto machine, or risk having her life savings stolen from her account.

The officer told her, “Stop what you’re doing, you’re going to lose this money. They’re lying to you; that’s not how it works, I promise you. They’re lying, they don’t tell you to go to a gas station and go buy Bitcoin, I’m telling you, you should stop what you’re doing.”

Officers eventually convinced the woman to stop putting cash into the ATM, but not before she lost $5,500.

The victim later told investigators the elaborate scam began earlier that day, when she received a pop-up message on her computer, indicating it was infected with a virus. A number was provided to get help, which put her in the clutches of the scam artist.

WPD Captain Jerry Vogel told Fox 8,  “She sees the pop-up, so she knows that there is an issue. Unfortunately, now the scammers use that and say, ‘Hey, it looks like maybe someone has been planting pornography or some other illicit material on your computer, you’re going to be in some trouble if you don’t get this money out of your bank and put it into a crypto machine.”

The scammer told the victim that bank employees would ask her questions about why she was taking out so much money from her account. He even gave her a story to tell, which was that she needed the cash to buy a car.

The woman told detectives, “He said, ‘Do this, do that, go here, go there.’” The final piece of the scam came when the con artist sent a QR code to the victim’s phone, which she used to direct the funds loaded into the ATM to his crypto account.

“They weave these stories so well that the victims really believe they need to do this immediately,” said Captain Vogel.

While there is no guarantee the victim will be able to recover the money she put into the ATM, detectives were able to use new technology to immediately freeze the crypto wallet being used by the scammer. It’s part of an ongoing battle between law enforcement and cyber criminals.

According to Captain Vogel, “We take one step forward, they take another step forward, so it’s a cat and mouse game.”