With bitcoin finishing the first half of 2025 with a gain of 13% and again flirting with record highs, much ink is being spilled on the market participants that are driving prices of the largest cryptocurrency to the upside.
Fresh data from Glassnode the number of bitcoin wallets holding at least $1 million of the digital currency has been steadily rising since the start of this year while another report from Coinbase Institutional says institutional players, including issuers of exchange traded funds, are factoring prominently into bitcoin’s ascent.
Those are logical explanations for bitcoin’s rally. After all, spot bitcoin ETFs are popular with advisors and retail investors – they’re some of the most successful new ETFs of any stripe – and institutional market participants have the resources to affect prices. However, there are other reasons why bitcoin is rallying and could have even more significant upside ahead of it.
Enter corporate buyers, or companies that are stashing bitcoin in their treasuries/on their balance sheets. New data from Bitcoin Treasuries confirm that the second quarter marked the third consecutive three-month span in which corporate buyers purchased more bitcoin than ETF issuers. That trend has clearly been a catalyst for higher prices.
Companies Cozying Up to Bitcoin
Here’s the second-quarter tale of the tape, according to Bitcoin Treasuries. During the April through June period, corporations bought 131,000 bitcoin, expanding their holdings by 18% while ETF issuers boosted their holdings by 111,000, or 11%.
(Image Courtesy: CNBC)
Many investors, particularly newer market participants, are likely curious as to why the number of publicly trading firms holding bitcoin is rising so rapidly. As Nick Marie, head of research at Ecoinometrics, told CNBC, corporate bitcoin buyers have different motivations than institutional investors. Put simply, many companies view bitcoin treasuries as an avenue for boosting shareholder value.
That reasoning is sound. After all, on aggregate basis, US-based companies hold massive amounts of cash, but unless that capital is deployed, it sits around collecting tiny rates of interest (when rates are low) and not doing anything else to benefit investors.
With bitcoin, corporate buyers get an asset with appreciation potential and one that can serve as a buffer against dollar weakness. Both traits benefit investors and with that in mind, it’s no wonder that some experts believe public companies will add 1 million bitcon to their treasuries by the end of 2026.
Strategy in the Spotlight
Michael Saylor’s Strategy (MSTR) is far away the largest corporate holder of bitcoin. The company 597,325 bitcoin, or more than 11x as much as the next biggest corporate holder. That’s made the shares a bitcoin proxy in equity form and while that’s invited some criticism, shareholders have been reward by Saylor’s devotion to bitcoin.
For risk-tolerant investors, smaller corporate bitcoin holders, such as GameStop and ProCap, could be worth examining with the latter being an arguably more pure avenue to crypto exposure.
The field of well-known corporate bitcoin owners is likely to expand, particularly when shareholders of some cash-rich mega-cap companies realize their interests could be better served by allowing those corporations to own even small amounts of bitcoin in their treasuries. It’s unlikely Strategy’s scale will be rivaled on that front, but bitcoin bulls don’t care who the corporate buyers as long as those purchases are occurig.
