1) The core thesis: 2025 wasn’t “companies buying BTC”… it was
companies securitizing BTC
The report’s main claim is a regime change:
- 2020–2024 vibes: “We bought Bitcoin with excess cash.”
- 2025 reality: “We manufactured BTC exposure via capital markets,” using:
- ATM / continuous equity issuance
- PIPEs / private placements
- Convertibles
- Preferred equity stacks
- BTC‑backed credit
That’s not a cosmetic difference. It’s the difference between:
- a treasury allocation (slow, conservative, capped), and
- a repeatable financing machine (scalable, path‑dependent, vulnerable to market access).
This is why the report keeps framing strategies in capital stack terms (common = residual claim; converts = equity‑linked leverage; preferreds = “digital credit”; BTC‑backed loans = liquidity bridge). (Capital markets playbook section)
2) Key quantitative punchlines (the “wow, ok” numbers)
Pulled straight from the report:
- Public companies added ~494,000 BTC in 2025 (net additions), and holdings rose steadily through the year even as price performance was weak. (Exec summary + intro)
- BTC was the worst-performing major asset in 2025 in their comparison table (BTC down on the year while traditional assets were up). (Intro)
- “Digital Credit” (liquid preferred‑style instruments tied to BTC‑dominant issuers) went from zero to multi‑billion market cap in 2025, and paid about $370M in dividends by year-end since the first payouts. (“Digital Credit” section)
- Late-2025 stress showed liability structure matters: some companies sold BTC specifically to manage debt/repayments (examples include Sequans and Satsuma). (Divergence section)
Net: demand didn’t need BTC momentum; it increasingly rode on financing capacity.
3) What “adoption” actually means in this report (important nuance)
This isn’t primarily about:
- merchants accepting Bitcoin, or
- companies using BTC operationally.
It’s mostly about public-company balance sheet holdings and how they’re funded and financialized.
So corporate adoption here = “BTC as a treasury asset + capital markets strategy,” not “BTC as a payments rail.”
That’s why the report spends more time on issuance mechanics than on product/business use cases.
4) The playbook that emerged (and the real tradeoffs)
A) ATM / “ATM-like” issuance = the drip-feed machine
Pro: scalable, opportunistic, can match issuance to liquidity/price windows.
Con: constant dilution + dependence on equity bid staying alive.
The report flags diffusion beyond Strategy, including an example of an ATM‑type framework in Europe (Capital B / former Blockchain Group). (Capital markets playbook)
B) PIPEs / private placements = the “buy a mountain of BTC now” button
Pro: committed capital on a closing date → instant BTC positioning.
Con: often comes with warrants/structure complexity; terms can get punitive when premiums compress.
They list large examples (DJT, Strive/ASST, various Cantor-linked vehicles, etc.) as emblematic of 2025. (Private placements table)
C) Convertibles = “sell volatility, cheap debt… plus hidden market impact”
The report explicitly calls out the classic dynamic:
- converts embed an equity call option,
- arb desks hedge by shorting stock,
- which can dampen upside volatility over time. (Convertibles section)
Convertibles also force investors to think in fully diluted share counts when discussing “BTC per share.”
D) Preferred equity (“Digital Credit”) = the new lane
This is the report’s signature concept: preferreds as yield instruments backed by “digital capital” (BTC-heavy balance sheets).
Pro: expands buyer base beyond high-beta equity; can create a “credit” curve inside BTC treasury companies.
Con: creates recurring obligations (dividends), and pushes the conversation into liquidity buffers, refinancing, and survival through drawdowns.
E) BTC-backed credit = liquidity without selling BTC (but collateral risk is real)
The report notes miners and some treasuries used BTC-backed facilities to add flexibility. The subtle point: even if loans fund capex, if mining output is held, the facility indirectly supports accumulation. (Credit facilities section)
5) “Digital Credit”: why this matters more than it sounds
The report argues 2025 introduced a new asset class behavior: liquid preferred instruments tied to BTC-dominant issuers, aiming to behave like credit.
It lists instruments launched (Strategy: STRK/STRF/STRD/STRC/STRE; Strive: SATA; Metaplanet: MERCURY, and MARS planned). (“Digital Credit” table)
Two deeper implications:
1) This turns BTC treasury companies into
mini capital markets ecosystems
Once you have:
- common equity,
- converts,
- multiple preferred tranches,
you’ve basically built an internal ladder of risk.
Now investor discussion shifts from “number go up” to:
- seniority,
- cumulative vs non-cumulative dividends,
- duration/put features,
- refinancing path,
- cash reserve policy.
2) The market is still learning how to price it
The report highlights relative-value mispricing between Strategy preferred series (credit spreads not lining up with seniority/risk for long stretches), and frames this as “norms still forming.” (Fixed-rate preferred spreads section)
That matters because immature pricing regimes create:
- opportunity for sophisticated allocators, and
- fragility for issuers relying on stable/cheap funding.
6) Adoption breadth rose… but scaling power concentrated
This is one of the report’s most important “two truths at once” messages:
- More companies held some BTC (the long tail grew; companies with <1000 BTC increased).
- But meaningful scaling clustered among well-capitalized issuers with durable market access.
Their distribution analysis implies a bifurcation:
- smaller holders drifted toward lower balances / tighter clustering,
- mid-to-large holders grew and spread out unevenly (some scaled much faster). (Box plot interpretation)
Translation: the headline “more adopters” is real, but the strategic battlefield is dominated by a few financing machines.
7) Concentration: the report basically says “don’t get complacent”
They use Gini + Palma ratio framing and show that excluding Strategy changes the trend, suggesting that even outside the #1 whale, larger holders are becoming an increasing force. (Concentration section)
They also note Palma ratio context:
- excluding Strategy reduces the top-vs-bottom skew meaningfully (e.g., ~600x down to ~210x as described),
- but concentration remains extreme. (Palma discussion)
So the report is not “corporate BTC is decentralizing = all good.”
It’s more like: “the long tail is growing, but the upper tail is still doing heavy gravitational damage.”
8) The econometrics section: what it really tells you (and what it doesn’t)
This is a clean, useful behavioral result—with big caveats.
Finding:
- Market conditions did not reliably predict whether incumbents change holdings (activity decision had high overdispersion; regressors didn’t explain it).
- But conditional on acting, higher downside volatility strongly correlated with reducing the probability of adding BTC (direction decision shows strong significance for downside volatility). (Behavior + results)
Interpretation (in plain language):
Companies don’t necessarily react month-to-month in whether they do something—governance cadence, deal timing, and financing windows dominate.
But when they do act, they get risk-sensitive fast:
- high downside volatility → tilt away from buying → more reduction behavior.
Caveats the report itself flags:
- short time series (12 months),
- aggregated month-level counts (not firm-level panel),
- correlation ≠ causation. (Behavior section)
If you’re an executive: treat this as a directional behavioral fingerprint, not a predictive trading signal.
9) Late 2025: the “stress test” phase (divergence gets real)
The report frames late-2025 as the moment strategies split into distinct species:
- Capital-markets-funded accumulation (works while premium + access exist)
- Episodic accumulation (buy when windows open; pause when they shut)
- Treasury + income overlay (derivatives / yield strategies on BTC)
Key stress behavior: some companies sold BTC to meet liabilities when refinancing got uncertain (Sequans, Satsuma examples). Others paused or pivoted (Prenetics explicitly ceased daily buying; USBC indicated no current intent for further purchases while exploring derivatives income). (Divergence section)
This is a critical point for any board:
Once you have fiat liabilities with dates, BTC stops being “untouchable” in a crunch unless you’ve built a liquidity plan.
10) “Making BTC productive”: the report treats this as higher-risk evolution, not free lunch
They cover several “income overlay” approaches:
- Metaplanet’s volatility/derivatives-style income generation line,
- Bitfarms’ options-based program (later simplified),
- Lightning routing fee models (LQWD; Block discussed). (Income overlay section)
The report’s stance is basically:
- This can reduce reliance on dilution-funded accumulation,
- but it introduces new risk categories (derivatives convexity, leverage mechanics, execution quality, counterparty risk).
In other words: you traded “simple BTC exposure” for “running a trading shop.”
11) The sleeper insight: miners are structurally advantaged accumulators
Their frequency table shows only 24 public companies added BTC in at least five months of 2025—and 10 of them were miners. (Miners section)
Why this matters:
- Miners can accumulate as a function of operations (production), not just financing windows.
- They can also naturally write strategies like covered calls against near-term production (the report hints at this advantage).
So even as “treasury companies” get the spotlight, miners remain a persistent accumulation engine.
12) What you should do with this report (executive / investor action map)
If you’re a board / CFO considering BTC:
This report basically implies your real decision is not “buy BTC?”
It’s “do we want to become a capital markets strategy company?”
A practical checklist implied by the paper:
- Mandate & governance cadence: who can buy/sell, under what triggers, what’s the disclosure plan?
- Capital stack design: equity-only vs adds converts/preferred; what happens when premium compresses?
- Liquidity plan: cash reserve policy (especially if issuing preferreds with dividends).
- Metrics discipline: track BTC per share on a fully diluted basis if you use converts/preferred convert features.
- Stress scenarios: liability schedule vs BTC drawdowns vs market access freeze.
If you’re an institutional investor:
The report pushes you toward underwriting these like hybrid vehicles:
- equity optionality + credit layering + BTC beta.
So you’d want to analyze: - seniority ladders,
- dividend mechanics (cumulative vs not),
- refinancing runway,
- and how the issuer behaves when trading at/under BTC NAV.
13) My critique (tight, fair, and useful)
Even without disputing the facts, there are structural limitations you should keep in mind:
- A 12-month sample for behavior modeling is thin; results are suggestive, not definitive.
- The report heavily spotlights Strategy (understandably), but that also means a lot of “industry narrative” is anchored to one firm’s innovation cycle.
- “Digital Credit” metrics (like Strategy’s BTC Rating / BTC Risk) are explicitly described as company-defined, illustrative tools—not rating-agency substitutes. Treat them as internal frameworks, not gospel. (Digital Credit metrics section)
None of that kills the report—it just tells you how to use it responsibly.
If you want, I can also do either of these fast:
- A one-page memo you can send to a board (thesis + risks + decision framework), or
- A scorecard template (capital stack, liquidity, dilution, “BTC per fully diluted share,” premium/discount, dividend coverage) aligned to the report’s lens.