Crypto asset prices retraced this week, but the spot market is faring better than most digital asset treasury companies, which have lost over 90% of their value in some cases due to market saturation and investor concerns over the sustainability of the digital asset treasury business model.
Strategy, the largest Bitcoin (BTC) treasury company, is down about 45% from its all-time high of $543 per share during intraday trading in November. Comparatively, BTC is up about 10% since hitting a high of over $99,000 over the same month.
Additionally, BTC has printed successive new highs since December, hitting an all-time high of over $123,000 in August, whereas Strategy has failed to reach a new all-time high in 2024 or even recapture its previous all-time high during the same time period.
BTC treasury company Metaplanet tells a similar story; shares of Metaplanet have declined by about 78% since the all-time high of $16 in May.
Metaplanet shares are swapping hands at about $3.55 at the time of this writing. Bitcoin’s price has declined by about 2% since May’s high of over $111,000.
Analysts from global bank Standard Chartered said that the collapse in the multiple on net asset value (mNAV), a metric tracking the enterprise value of a company in relation to its underlying assets, is contracting due to the increase in crypto treasury companies.
“We see market saturation as the main driver of recent mNAV compression,” Standard Chartered analysts wrote. There are currently 140 public companies that have adopted a crypto treasury strategy, according to CoinGecko.
Investors and traders took positions in crypto treasury plays, hoping that the treasury companies would outperform their underlying crypto assets.
However, the negative price performance of these companies in 2025 has created fear that they may exacerbate the next crypto market downturn through forced selling to meet debt obligations.
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Altcoin treasury plays are performing even worse
Shares of SharpLink Gaming, an Ether (ETH) treasury company, have fallen by about 87% since May 2025, when the stock spiked to about $124 per share. SharpLink is trading at about $15.72 at the time of this writing.
However, ETH has experienced a parabolic rally in recent months, rising by about 115% since May.
Helius Medical Technologies, a Solana (SOL) treasury company, has lost over 97% of its value year-to-date, according to Yahoo Finance.
Meanwhile, SOL is only down about 33% from its all-time high of about $295, which it reached in January amid the memecoin frenzy.
CEA Industries, which converted to a BNB (BNB) treasury company in 2025, has lost about 77% of its value since August, when the company hit an all-time high of over $34 before declining sharply.
Shares of CEA Industries are trading at about $7.75 at the time of writing. The company’s sharp decline occurred amid BNB’s price rally in August, which culminated in the altcoin reaching a new all-time high of over $1,000 in September.
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