Bitcoin Treasury Companies
Executive summary
The Bitcoin treasury company has graduated from a Michael Saylor curiosity into a recognised category of public-equity vehicle. Strategy (formerly MicroStrategy) holds 843,775 BTC as of July 2026, roughly 4% of total supply, financed through a sequence of convertible notes, ATM equity issuance and the novel STRC and STRK preferred-stock instruments. Behind Strategy a cohort of followers has formed: Twenty One Capital, the Tether- and SoftBank-backed vehicle, with 43,514 BTC; Metaplanet in Japan with 43,000 BTC; Strive Asset Management, which absorbed Semler Scientific and its roughly 5,000 BTC in January 2026; Marathon Digital and Riot Platforms holding mining-derived treasuries; the UK's Smarter Web Co; plus Block and Tesla as smaller incumbents. The collective playbook — issue equity at premiums to NAV, lever via low-cost preferreds and convertibles, and accumulate BTC mechanically — produced equity premiums above net asset value of 1.5x to 2.5x for the cleanest names through 2025 — but the premium compressed sharply in 2026: Strategy's mNAV fell below 1.0 in late June 2026 and the company made its first-ever BTC sale (3,588 BTC for ~$216m) in early July 2026 to fund preferred dividends. The 2026 questions are whether the premium model survives a multi-quarter bear move, whether US accounting and SEC pushback compresses the structure, and whether the category outgrows its dependence on a small set of charismatic capital allocators.
Background and current state
The Bitcoin treasury company emerged in August 2020 when MicroStrategy, a tepid enterprise-software business, allocated $250m of its corporate cash to Bitcoin under Saylor's direction. The conviction trade compounded into an institutional posture, then a financing strategy. By July 2026 the entity, rebranded Strategy, holds 843,775 BTC — about 4% of total supply — worth roughly $54 billion at BTC prices near $64,000, per The Block's treasury tracker. Strategy's market capitalisation historically exceeded its BTC NAV by 1.5-2.0x in normal conditions and touched 3x in euphoric phases, making the equity itself a leveraged BTC exposure — but that premium compressed through 2026 and the mNAV ratio fell below 1.0 in late June 2026, valuing the company at less than its bitcoin. The category broadened materially in 2024-2025. Metaplanet, a Japanese hospitality company turned BTC vehicle, scaled from zero to 43,000 BTC (as of July 2026) and a market capitalisation that has at points rivalled Strategy in BTC-per-share terms. Semler Scientific, a US medical-devices issuer, adopted the playbook in mid-2024 and accumulated just over 5,000 BTC before being absorbed into Strive Asset Management in January 2026. Marathon Digital (MARA) and Riot Platforms, primary listed Bitcoin miners, hold treasuries of approximately 36,000 and 16,000 BTC respectively — both materially reduced in Q1 2026, when MARA sold roughly 20,880 BTC and Riot 3,778 BTC to repurchase convertible debt and fund operations. The UK's Smarter Web Co, a small-cap with a similar pivot announced in 2025, holds roughly 2,878 BTC (May 2026) and has traded near or below NAV in 2026. Block (formerly Square) holds 8,000-9,000 BTC as a strategic position. Tesla's once-prominent treasury has shrunk to 11,509 BTC after the 2022 disposal and has been held flat through the first half of 2026. Aggregating, listed corporate BTC treasuries hold roughly 1.26 million BTC across some 209 companies as of July 2026 — more than 6% of total supply — with Strategy alone accounting for around two-thirds of it.
Key actors and market structure
Strategy occupies a position no other treasury company has matched, defined by three reinforcing factors. First, scale: at 843,775 BTC (July 2026), Strategy is a price-relevant accumulator whose announcement of fresh purchases routinely moves spot. Second, the financing toolkit: Saylor's team has constructed and re-constructed a capital stack across convertible notes (with 2027-2032 maturities, mostly zero-coupon, deeply out-of-the-money strikes that minimise dilution if BTC rallies), at-the-market equity programmes that raise multi-billion dollar tranches without book-building friction, and the bespoke STRK and STRC preferred-stock instruments introduced in 2025 that pay coupons — a fixed 8.00% on STRK, a variable monthly rate on STRC — as unsecured obligations of the company (not instruments directly collateralised by BTC) and issue at strong prices when demand from yield-seeking institutional investors is strong. Third, narrative monopoly: Strategy is the reference vehicle for institutional investors who want indirect BTC exposure but cannot or will not buy spot ETFs. Metaplanet has built a parallel structure tuned to Japanese capital markets, exploiting JPY-denominated investor demand and the yen's structural weakness against BTC. Semler Scientific ran a smaller pure-play replica of the Strategy playbook in US small-cap markets until Strive Asset Management absorbed it in January 2026. Marathon and Riot occupy a different niche — operating miners whose treasuries are an artefact of mining strategy and dilution arbitrage rather than a core financing posture. Beyond these primary actors a long tail of micro-cap and Pink Sheets issuers has announced 'BTC treasury strategies' since 2024, of which roughly thirty have followed through with material accumulation; the rest function as marketing campaigns whose announcement effect on share price tends to fade within weeks.
Mechanism and economics
The premium-to-NAV machine works through reflexive feedback. Step one: an issuer announces a BTC treasury strategy, equity rallies, and the equity now trades at a premium to its underlying BTC value. Step two: the issuer files an at-the-market equity programme and sells shares into that premium, capturing the spread between equity issuance price and BTC purchase price. Step three: BTC accumulated this way raises BTC-per-share, which is the metric the marginal buyer cares about, sustaining or expanding the premium. The cycle continues until the premium compresses materially, at which point the issuer pivots toward debt instruments. Convertible notes are favoured because the embedded equity call option lets issuers price at zero or near-zero coupon, with conversion strikes 30-60% above the issuance share price; if BTC rallies and shares convert, dilution occurs at advantageous prices, and if not, the issuer rolls the debt. The STRC instrument, introduced in July 2025, is a perpetual preferred paying a variable-rate cumulative dividend adjusted monthly to keep the stock trading near its $100 stated amount; it is an unsecured obligation of Strategy — not collateralised by a segregated BTC reserve — and provides a financing channel that does not dilute the common equity. STRK, introduced in February 2025, is an 8.00% convertible preferred. The economics depend critically on three things: BTC's long-run trajectory remaining upward; the equity premium persisting; and continued institutional appetite for the preferred instruments. Break any of these and the financing engine slows. The miners' economics are different in nature — they accumulate BTC via the cheapest cost source (mining) but must offset capex, energy costs and ASIC depreciation, which complicates the simple BTC-per-share narrative.
Recent milestones (2024-2026)
Several events define the recent history. September 2024: MicroStrategy crosses 250,000 BTC (252,220 announced September 20). October 2024: it announces the '21/21 Plan' to raise $42bn over three years — $21bn in equity, $21bn in debt — to keep accumulating. December 2024: Strategy admitted to the Nasdaq-100, generating mechanical ETF buying and broadening the institutional holder base. February 2025: rebrand to 'Strategy' completes, signalling the BTC-treasury identity has displaced the legacy software business in self-conception. July 2025: the STRC perpetual preferred IPO closes at $2.52bn — the largest US IPO of 2025 to that point — demonstrating institutional appetite for collateralised BTC-yield instruments. Mid-2025: Metaplanet's BTC-per-share growth rate accelerates and the stock briefly trades at 4x premium to NAV in Tokyo as Japanese retail and institutional flows pile in. January 2025: the FASB ASU 2023-08 fair-value rule takes effect, requiring fair-value treatment of BTC holdings on corporate balance sheets and eliminating the impairment-only treatment that had previously distorted reported earnings. November 2025: Strategy prices STRE, a €620m euro-denominated 10.00% perpetual preferred, extending the family beyond STRK and STRC. H1 2026: Strategy passes 800,000 BTC (843,775 by early July); Metaplanet crosses 43,000 BTC; Strive Asset Management absorbs Semler Scientific; aggregate corporate treasuries top 1.26 million BTC after a record ~110,000 BTC of Q2 purchases. Early July 2026: days after its mNAV slips below 1.0, Strategy discloses its first-ever BTC sale — 3,588 BTC for roughly $216m (June 29-July 5) — to fund dividends on its preferred securities. The category is now formally tracked by index providers, with a handful of treasury-focused thematic funds emerging.
Key risks and open questions
Three risks dominate. The first is the premium-collapse risk. The Strategy and Metaplanet equity premiums depend on a self-fulfilling expectation that BTC-per-share will keep growing. A multi-quarter BTC bear move that compresses the premium below 1x — making spot-ETF exposure cheaper than treasury-equity exposure — would freeze the equity-issuance channel and force reliance on the convertible and preferred instruments, which have their own pricing constraints in a BTC drawdown. In a deep bear scenario, refinancing risk on the convertibles is non-trivial, though the extreme out-of-the-money strikes mitigate immediate distress. The second risk is regulatory and accounting pushback. The SEC has not formally challenged the treasury-company model; a future enforcement posture or a securities-law reinterpretation of certain preferred instruments would be disruptive. The third risk is governance. The category remains tightly identified with a small number of charismatic founders — Saylor at Strategy, Simon Gerovich at Metaplanet — whose continued commitment is core to the equity narrative. Founder-departure risk, while not imminent, is unhedged. A fourth, slower-moving risk is dilution arithmetic: if BTC's long-run appreciation moderates while issuance continues, BTC-per-share growth slows and the premium narrative weakens.
Regulatory landscape
Regulation enters the treasury-company story through three channels. First, accounting: the FASB ASU 2023-08 fair-value rule, in force from 2025, has been a tailwind, eliminating the asymmetric impairment treatment and producing earnings volatility that more accurately reflects BTC price moves. Strategy's reported earnings now show BTC-driven profit and loss directly, which has made the equity easier for traditional analysts to model and arguably contributed to Nasdaq-100 inclusion. Second, securities law on the preferred instruments: STRC and STRK are bespoke, unsecured structures whose dividend-reset and redemption mechanics are novel for listed US preferreds — Strategy amended the STRK certificate of designations in July 2025 to revise its liquidation-preference mechanics — and their disclosure treatment remains an evolving area. (An earlier claim of specific SEC comment-letter scrutiny has been removed pending verification.) Third, the broader regulatory framing of BTC as a strategic asset under the post-2025 US administration has been favourable, with executive-branch signals encouraging corporate accumulation and making federal agency posture supportive rather than adversarial. In other jurisdictions the picture varies. Japan has been broadly supportive of Metaplanet's accumulation, with FSA guidance not constraining the structure. The UK's regulatory frame for Smarter Web Co and similar issuers operates under conventional listed-equity rules with no specific BTC-treasury treatment. The EU, in contrast, has not seen meaningful corporate BTC-treasury issuance, partly because MiCA's CASP regime creates friction for any related crypto operations and partly because the European institutional capital base remains less BTC-friendly. Tax treatment varies sharply: Japan's eye-watering personal capital-gains rates make corporate BTC accumulation a tax-arbitrage vehicle for individual holders, which has propelled Metaplanet's flows.
Competitive dynamics with spot ETFs
The natural comparator is the spot Bitcoin ETF complex, which since January 2024 has accumulated roughly 1.21 million BTC — just over 6% of mined supply as of July 2026 — at lower management fees than treasury-company equity premiums imply. The treasury-company response is multi-fold. ETFs offer pure beta to BTC at low cost; treasury companies offer leveraged beta plus the optionality of continued accumulation. ETFs cannot issue equity to grow holdings; treasury companies can, which is the basis of the BTC-per-share growth narrative. ETFs are accessible only through brokerage channels in jurisdictions with regulatory approval; treasury equities are accessible globally through any listing venue. ETFs are subject to outflows when sentiment turns; treasury holdings are sticky and the equity overhang is the proximate variable. The result is that the two structures are complements rather than direct substitutes for many investor types. However, in a bear market the calculation tightens: an investor wanting BTC exposure who is paying a premium for treasury equity will find the math less compelling when ETFs offer the same beta at lower spread. Strategy's bet is that institutional investors who cannot buy spot crypto, or who specifically want a leveraged accumulation vehicle, are a deep enough pool to sustain the premium. The 2024-2025 evidence supported that thesis; 2026 has delivered the test — Strategy's mNAV slipped below 1.0 in late June 2026 and the company sold BTC for the first time in early July to fund preferred dividends.
Outlook through 2027
The forward picture has three plausible vectors. Most likely: the category survives and modestly expands, with Strategy continuing to dominate, Metaplanet entrenching as the Asia anchor, two or three new significant entrants in Europe and Latin America, and the long tail of marketing-only treasury announcements producing a few additional credible names. Premiums normalise toward 1.5x in calm markets and compress to 1.1-1.3x in BTC drawdowns, but the equity-issuance engine remains viable. The preferred-instrument market continues to deepen, with STRC-like structures issued by multiple treasury companies and possibly traded as a thematic complex. A credible bear case exists in which BTC enters a multi-year sideways or down period, the premiums collapse below NAV at several issuers, and forced unwinds — selling BTC to defease convertible debt or to fund preferred coupons — convert the category from a one-way buyer to a meaningful seller, amplifying the bear move. The bull case extends current dynamics: BTC continues to appreciate, premiums stay elevated, sovereign and quasi-sovereign entities adopt treasury postures (some Bukele-style, some via state-owned enterprises), and the category aggregates 5-10% of BTC supply by 2027. Whichever path obtains, the central insight is that Bitcoin treasury companies have become a recognised structural feature of the BTC capital-markets ecosystem, with their own financing playbook, their own analyst coverage, and their own correlation patterns to spot. That institutionalisation is itself a form of completion of the asset's path into mainstream finance.
Watch points
- Strategy's quarterly BTC purchase pace and BTC-per-share growth metric
- Premium-to-NAV behaviour during the next material BTC drawdown
- Issuance pace and pricing of STRC and STRK and competitor preferred instruments
- Metaplanet trajectory and emergence of credible Europe and Latin America treasury entrants
- SEC staff guidance or enforcement posture on bespoke preferred-stock structures
- Any sovereign or state-owned-enterprise BTC treasury announcements
TL;DR
Bitcoin treasury companies, led by Strategy at 843,775 BTC with Twenty One Capital and Metaplanet each above 43,000 BTC (July 2026), have built a working capital-markets playbook around premium-to-NAV equity issuance, convertible notes and the STRK/STRC preferreds — collectively holding more than 6% of BTC supply — but the model is now being stress-tested: Strategy's mNAV fell below 1.0 in late June 2026 and it made its first-ever BTC sale (3,588 BTC) in early July 2026 to fund preferred dividends.
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Sources & verification
- Strategy holdings and valuation (843,775 BTC, ~$54.1B, July 2026): The Block — Strategy Bitcoin Holdings
- Metaplanet at 43,000 BTC (July 2, 2026): CoinDesk
- Aggregate corporate holdings (~1.26M BTC, 209 companies, >6% of supply; record Q2 2026 buying) and Twenty One Capital at 43,514 BTC: Crypto Briefing
- Strive–Semler Scientific combination (January 2026): SEC press release filing
- STRC preferred IPO ($2.52B, July 2025): Strategy press release
- BTC spot price (~$64,100, July 12, 2026): CoinGecko
- Strategy's first-ever BTC sale (3,588 BTC, ~$216m, June 29-July 5, 2026): Crypto Briefing
- Strategy mNAV below 1.0 (late June 2026): CoinDesk
- MARA Q1 2026 sales (~20,880 BTC sold; 35,303 BTC at March 31) and subsequent 36,303 BTC: MARA 10-Q; Crypto Briefing
- Riot Platforms Q1 2026 sale of 3,778 BTC; 15,680 BTC at end of March 2026: Yahoo Finance
- Tesla holdings (11,509 BTC, unchanged through Q1 2026): The Block; CoinDesk
- Smarter Web Co (2,878 BTC; mNAV ~0.97): Crypto Briefing
- US spot BTC ETF holdings (~1.21M BTC, July 10, 2026): Bitbo US ETF tracker
- MicroStrategy at 252,220 BTC (September 20, 2024) and 21/21 Plan (October 30, 2024): Strategy press release; Business Wire
- STRC terms (variable monthly rate, unsecured, ~$100 par) and STRE €620m 10.00% preferred (priced November 6, 2025): Strategy — STRC; Strategy 8-K (STRE)
- FASB ASU 2023-08 fair-value rule (effective fiscal years beginning after December 15, 2024): FASB
Figures last verified July 15, 2026. Premium-to-NAV multiples and forward scenarios are editorial analysis.