When they launched by the hundreds over the past year, Digital Asset Treasuries had one goal: to outperform the cryptocurrencies they hold. This is a (very) difficult goal to achieve now that the market is plummeting, exposing leaders Strategy and BitMine to significant unrealized losses.
Bitcoin falls below Strategy’s average purchase price
The year 2025 will clearly have been the year of institutional adoption of cryptocurrencies, symbolized by the unprecedented proliferation of publicly traded companies eager to add them to their treasuries in order to attain the highly coveted status of Digital Asset Treasury (DAT).
This economic model has already been tested since 2020 by the undisputed leader in the sector, Strategy, which now heads a portfolio of 712,647 BTC—approximately $54 billion—equivalent to just over 3.5% of its currently available quantity.
As a result, Michael Saylor’s company has established itself as the world’s largest holder of Bitcoin. This position appears solid at first glance, but there is one important detail: its average purchase price of exactly $76,037 has just become higher than the price of BTC, which has now fallen below $76,000.
This is likely to further destabilize a company whose stock is already trading at a discount of more than 65% from its historic high last July and nearly 60% over the past year, especially with $8.2 billion in convertible debt on its balance sheet.
However, unlike many of its peers, Strategy is not a DAT born out of the latest cryptocurrency bull cycle. This position allows it to boast an estimated $2.2 billion in dollar liquidity reserves, enough to cover its obligations for an estimated period of almost three years.
In this context, the decline in Bitcoin essentially means that Strategy will have to slow down its compulsive buying. However, the price of BTC should not continue to fall, or remain below its average purchase cost for too long, at the risk of seeing its stock price plummet even further.
BitMine posts $7 billion in unrealized losses
The situation is just as complicated for the leader in Ethereum Treasuries, BitMine, largely exacerbated by the aggressive policy of its CEO, Tom Lee, who had just made a massive purchase of 40,000 Ethers last week, just before the price of ETH collapsed by more than 20%.
As a result, the company now has unrealized losses of nearly $7 billion, with the value of its Ether reserves—approximately 4.24 million units—falling from nearly $14 billion last October to around $9 billion at the time of writing.
BitMine’s stock has fallen nearly 10% over the last five days. And it’s fair to say that Tom Lee’s promise of $164 million in annual revenue from staking his ETH seems like a drop in the bucket to turn around what was supposed to become one of the most profitable companies in the United States.
