Crypto-hoarding companies are ditching their holdings in a bid to prop up their sinking share prices, as the craze for “digital asset treasury” businesses unravels in the face of a $1tn cryptocurrency rout.
Shares in Michael Saylor-led Strategy, the world’s biggest corporate bitcoin holder, have tumbled 50 per cent over the past three months, dragging down scores of copycat companies.
About $77bn has been wiped from the stock market value of these companies, which raise debt and equity to fund purchases of crypto, since their peak of $176bn in July, according to industry data publication The Block.
With Saylor’s company now worth less than the bitcoin it holds, investors worry that a business model that relied on a virtuous circle of rising crypto prices and massive share and debt issuance is now unravelling.
“There’s going to be a fire sale at these companies; it’s going to get worse,” said Adam Morgan McCarthy, senior research analyst at crypto data firm Kaiko. “It’s a vicious cycle. As soon as the prices start tanking, it’s a race to the bottom.”
Saylor’s software business inspired a raft of copycats in industries including film production, vaping and electric vehicles, after its pivot to a “bitcoin treasury” strategy drove a huge increase in its share price. Purchases by such companies have been a big driver of bitcoin hitting a record high last month.
But the craze has soured as cryptocurrencies bore the brunt of a sell-off in speculative assets this autumn, in a sharp reversal for a sector that had been buoyed by President Donald Trump’s pledge last year to turn the US into a “bitcoin superpower”.
Shares in Japan’s biggest bitcoin holder Metaplanet have plunged 80 per cent since their June peak. The company on Tuesday raised a $130mn loan backed by its bitcoin, which it said would be used for purposes including buying back stock. The Smarter Web Company, the UK’s biggest bitcoin buyer, has experienced a 44 per cent stock price drop this year. It is valued at £132mn while the bitcoin it holds is worth about $232mn.
“It was inevitable,” said Jake Ostrovskis, head of OTC trading at Wintermute, referring to the sell-off in digital asset treasury stocks. “It got to the point where there’s too many of them.”
Several companies have begun selling their crypto stockpiles in an effort to fund share buybacks and shore up their stock prices, in effect putting the crypto treasury model into reverse.
North Carolina-based ether holder FG Nexus sold about $41.5mn of its tokens recently to fund its share buyback programme. Its market cap is $104mn while the crypto it holds is worth $116mn. Florida-based life sciences company turned ether buyer ETHZilla recently sold about $40mn worth of its tokens, also to fund its share buyback programme.
Sequans Communications, a French semiconductor company, sold about $100mn of its bitcoin this month in order to service its debt, in a sign of how some companies that borrowed to fund crypto purchases are now struggling. Sequans’ market capitalisation is $87mn while the bitcoin it holds is worth $198mn.
Georges Karam, chief executive of Sequans, said the sale was a “tactical decision aimed at unlocking shareholder value given current market conditions”.
While bitcoin and ether sellers can find buyers, companies with more niche tokens will find it more difficult to raise money from their holdings, according to Morgan McCarthy. “When you’ve got a medical device company buying some long-tail asset in crypto, a niche in a niche market, it is not going to end well,” he said, adding that 95 per cent of digital asset treasuries “will go to zero”.
Strategy, meanwhile, has doubled down and bought even more bitcoin as the price of the token has fallen to $87,000, from $115,000 a month ago. The firm also faces the looming possibility of being cut from some major equity indices, which could heap even more selling pressure on the stock.
But Saylor has brushed off any concerns. “Volatility is Satoshi’s gift to the faithful,” he said this week, referring to the pseudonymous creator of bitcoin.
