The crypto market has shoved digital asset treasury stocks into a harsh reality this year, wiping out the excitement that built up under President Trump as Bitcoin went on a monster rally through the first half of 2025. That rally had pushed more than 180 public companies into holding tokens on their balance sheets, and around 100 of them copied the same debt-fueled strategy invented by Michael Saylor in 2020. That play worked when prices were rising. Then bitcoin cracked in October, and the whole sector flipped into survival mode. Now many treasury firms are stuck with unrealized losses, sliding stocks, and a market that wants to see who actually has a real business and who was just riding momentum. DAT stocks fall as bitcoin and ether drop Bitcoin’s October liquidation hit Strategy first. The stock has fallen about 40% since Oct. 10. But the imitators took even bigger damage. KindlyMD (NAKA) is down 39%. Eric Trump’s American Bitcoin (ABTC) has dropped 60%. Anthony Pompliano’s ProCap Financial (BRR) has fallen 65%. Ether-heavy treasury firms got dragged down too. Bitmine Immersion Technologies (BMNR), chaired by Tom Lee, is down more than 33% as ether fell more than 25% in the same stretch. SharpLink Gaming (SBET) and Bit Digital (BTBT) have each lost about 40% over two months. The main metric investors are watching is mNAV, which compares a company’s market cap with the crypto it holds. An mNAV below 1 tells the market that traders value the company at less than the tokens on its books. Strategy’s mNAV moved close to 1x in late November, triggering worry that the firm could be pushed into selling bitcoin to cover dividends and debt. The company responded with a $1.44 billion cash reserve to keep those payouts going for 21 months if volatility stays rough. Strategy has also challenged MSCI ahead of its January decision on whether to cut companies whose token holdings make up at least half their assets. Bernstein analysts wrote that Strategy should survive the crypto winter, but they flagged many copy-cat firms as vulnerable. Gautam Chhugani wrote that concerns about Strategy are “overstated,” but that several imitators may keep trading below their NAV with no clear way to raise long-term capital. Weaker DAT firms face losses, restructurings, and consolidation A report from Bitcoin Treasuries counted 100 bitcoin treasury firms with a measurable cost basis. Sixty-five of them bought bitcoin above current prices, leaving them underwater. During last month’s sell-off, five of those firms unloaded a combined 1,883 bitcoins. Matt Zhang from Hivemind Capital said his team reviewed more than 100 DATs this year and invested in only a dozen. “I think you’ll see a lot of the DATs become irrelevant,” he said. He compared the moment to the 2000 dot-com bubble, when people added dot-com to their business cards without real models to back it up. Zhang said he expects every S&P 500 company to eventually hold bitcoin and ether as a store of value, but said that holding tokens isn’t enough. “The question is what are you going to do beyond just that?” he said. He pointed to the need for a real operating business that can generate cash flow and support the token treasury. He noted that consolidation could happen, but said it depends on how the market evolves. Will Owens at Galaxy Digital wrote that treasury companies are heading into a “Darwinian phase.” He said new all-time highs in bitcoin could revive the sector for survivors, but added that “the bar appears to be higher now.” One new player trying to meet that bar is Twenty One Capital (XXI), backed by Tether and SoftBank. The firm dropped 19% on its first trading day on Dec. 9. CEO Jack Mallers pushed back against comparisons to Strategy or Coinbase. “People want to size us up like Strategy — we’re not,” he said. “We’re going to build cash flows, businesses, products. People size us up to a Coinbase. We’re not. We already own far more bitcoin than they do.” Mallers said the market will “take as much time as they want” to figure the company out. Want your project in front of crypto’s top minds? Feature it in our next industry report, where data meets impact.
