Most Bitcoin Treasury Stocks Have Lost Money Over the Past 18 Months

Bitcoin treasury stocks have broadly lost value

Over the past 18 months, the vast majority of publicly traded companies that pivoted to a Bitcoin treasury strategy have lost money since their initial purchase announcements. While nearly 200 public companies globally hold BTC according to monitoring service Bitcoin Treasuries, most have small market capitalizations and many adopted the strategy during a brief mania in the summer of 2025.

By late July 2025, every new BTC treasury stock was trading below its highest price of the year, with a median drawdown of 52%. Many stocks have since declined more than 90%, and some have been delisted entirely.

Key numbers from the data

• Nearly 200 public companies hold BTC globally.
• The median 18-month return for the 20 largest non-mining BTC treasury stocks is roughly negative 18%.
• Five of the 20 largest stocks have lost more than half their starting value.
• The price of BTC itself is roughly flat, up less than 3% over the same period.
• Twelve of the 20 largest stocks have negative returns.

The best and worst performers

The top performers among the 20 largest BTC treasury stocks were companies with diversified business operations unrelated to Bitcoin. Aker ASA, a Norwegian industrial conglomerate, is up 182% over 18 months, though its BTC unit Seetee holds just 0.4% of Aker's total assets. Tesla gained about 60% and Galaxy Digital gained roughly 114%. The article notes that these companies' outperformance was driven by reasons unrelated to their BTC holdings.

By contrast, heavily BTC-focused companies fared far worse. Fold Holdings lost 91% since March 2025, Exodus Movement lost 83%, and Strategy, Semler, Metaplanet, Remixpoint, and Genius Group each lost more than 40%. Even Strategy, the market leader with roughly $85 billion in holdings, has shed half of its common stock price over the past year.

The pattern is clear: the more a company focused on Bitcoin as its primary business, the worse its stock performed.

Returns look slightly better from initial announcement

When returns are recalculated from the date each company first announced its BTC purchase rather than from a fixed 18-month window, the picture tilts slightly more positive. MicroStrategy, which started the trend on August 11, 2020 with a $250 million BTC purchase, is up over 1,000% since. Boyaa Interactive, which disclosed its first 1,100-BTC purchase on January 26, 2024, is up 456%. Metaplanet, the Japanese hotel operator that approved a BTC pivot in April 2024, is up 476%.

Across all 20 stocks recalculated from their announcement dates, exactly half show positive returns, with a median return of negative 15%. However, the article notes that early rallies from Strategy and Metaplanet proved that some speculative interest exists, but most imitators have not been able to replicate those performances.

Why this matters

The data suggests that buying Bitcoin with borrowed money and hoping the stock market would bid up a company's share price has not proven to be a reliable strategy for most companies. Protos has previously found that most new 2025 BTC treasury stocks were already down at least 50% within a few weeks of their initial announcements, and the premium investors pay for these stocks has continued to fall over the past 18 months.

What remains unclear

The article does not specify which companies were delisted or provide a complete list of all companies that have lost money beyond the 20 largest stocks analyzed. The analysis covers non-mining BTC treasury companies only; mining stocks were excluded because they acquire BTC through energy-intensive operations and sell BTC to cover costs.

Sources

• Protos