Companies Buying Bitcoin: An Overlooked Megatrend

In a newly released memo dated January 13, 2025, Matt Hougan, Chief Investment Officer (CIO) at Bitwise, argues that the phenomenon of corporations purchasing Bitcoin for their treasuries is far more widespread and influential than most investors realize.

As Bitwise CIO Matt Hougan points out in a new memo, MicroStrategy’s BTC acquisitions dwarfed the entire new supply of Bitcoin mined last year. Now, Hougan argues that a much larger trend is being overlooked by most investors.

Hougan's Key Points:

- MicroStrategy's BTC purchases were more than all the Bitcoin mined in 2024.

- 70 publicly traded companies own Bitcoin on their balance sheets.

- Private companies also hold at least 368,000 BTC.

- Hougan predicts that hundreds of companies will buy Bitcoin for their treasuries in the next 12-18 months.Hougan's full memo can be found below.

Companies Buying Bitcoin: An Overlooked Megatrend

MicroStrategy is often the center of attention when it comes to companies buying Bitcoin. But as we've highlighted before, there's a much bigger story that most investors are overlooking.

To put MicroStrategy's purchases in perspective, they're ranked 220th globally by market capitalization (a bit bigger than Chipotle and a bit smaller than Sherwin-Williams). Despite their modest size, their BTC acquisitions are astronomical.

Last year, MicroStrategy bought ~257,000 BTC… more than all the Bitcoin mined in 2024 (218,829 BTC). To put this another way, MicroStrategy purchased an amount of Bitcoin that would take, at current production rates, more than seven years to mine at fully diluted prices.

And they're not done yet. MicroStrategy has announced plans to raise over $42 billion to purchase more Bitcoin (again, at fully diluted prices and current production rates, that's about 2.6 years’ worth of new supply).

To give you an idea of what might happen if really big companies start to take a page from MicroStrategy's book, consider this: Mark Zuckerberg's Meta is 20x the size of MicroStrategy.

But MicroStrategy is just the tip of the iceberg. Many other companies are already including BTC on their balance sheets. In total, 70 publicly traded companies own Bitcoin on their balance sheets. This includes crypto-centric firms like Coinbase and Marathon Digital, as well as mainstream players like Block, Tesla, Semler Scientific, and Mercado Libre.

Together—excluding MicroStrategy—these companies hold 141,302 BTC. Block.one and Marathon each have large (and undisclosed) positions that are likely to be at least 100,000 BTC each (Block.one is valued at $3.8 billion and Marathon at $5.2 billion, and MicroStrategy is valued at $6.3 billion).

Private companies also hold significant amounts of bitcoin. Data from BitcoinTreasuries.com shows that private firms like SpaceX and Block.one collectively own at least 368,043 BTC.

That's significant. It means that, even today, MicroStrategy is less than 50% of the corporate BTC market. And their share will be a small fraction of it eventually.

Why Bitcoin Corporate Adoption Is Set To Explode

Two factors have historically constrained corporate adoption: reputational risk and unfavorable accounting rules. Both have shifted rapidly.

Last year, the CEO of one large publicly traded company faced huge hurdles in adding Bitcoin as a treasury asset. Negative media coverage, potential shareholder lawsuits, and regulatory attention loomed over the decision.

But reputational risks have peeled back significantly in the past few months. Post-election, with Washington embracing crypto at the highest levels, it's becoming much more commonplace—and popular—to own Bitcoin.

A new accounting guideline, ASU 2023-08, was also introduced by the Financial Accounting Standards Board. Previously, BTC was classified as an “intangible asset” subject to impairment testing. This forced companies to write down the value of their Bitcoin if its price fell (but never allowed them to mark the value back up if it rose). Now, companies can mark BTC to market and book a profit when its price appreciates.

If 70 companies were willing to add Bitcoin to their balance sheets when, from an accounting perspective, it literally could only go down, imagine how many will add it… now.

Two hundred? Five hundred? A thousand?

Some skepticism remains as to why companies choose to hold BTC. But corporate motivations largely mirror those of individual investors. Some companies are greedy… Others are worried about the debasement of the dollar… Still others want to signal that they're part of the Bitcoin tribe… Some probably just have a hunch.

Ultimately, understanding each company's motivations is less important than observing the magnitude of overall demand. You just need to look at the numbers and ask yourself two questions:

1. Where does all of this demand from companies look like it's going?

2. And what