The year 2024 was a record year regarding investments in Bitcoin made by the so-called public companies.

This is what was revealed by Ryan Rasmussen, Head of Research at Bitwise Asset Management.

Year 2024 saw record investments by so-called public companies in Bitcoin, and 2025 is already shaping up to be another record year.

This is what Ryan Rasmussen, Head of Research at Bitwise Asset Management, pointed out.

What are the companies buying the most Bitcoin?

Recently, Bitwise shared an interesting chart highlighting the trend in the total BTC purchased annually by public companies.

In 2019, this figure was almost zero, while in 2020, when MicroStrategy (now Strategy) started buying, it did not exceed 100,000 BTC.

At the time, the price was below $20,000, so the investments needed to buy, for example, 100,000 Bitcoin were much lower.

In 2021, thanks to the great bull run, more than 200,000 BTC were purchased, while in 2022, due to the bear market, it fell below that figure, despite the more affordable prices.

In 2023, just over 250,000 BTC were purchased, and in 2024 there was a real boom, even greater than that of 2021: almost 600,000 BTC purchased in a single year by all the public companies monitored by Bitwise.

Rasmussen himself writes:

“In 2024, public companies purchased twice as many bitcoins as in all previous years combined”.

Now, in 2025, the 600,000 BTC purchased by public companies has already been surpassed in the first quarter.

According to Rasmussen, the approximately 70 companies they monitor currently hold a combined value of 52 billion dollars in Bitcoin, which is about 3% of the total supply.

Public company

The term “public company” simply refers to companies with widespread shareholding, meaning those whose shares can be bought and traded (on the stock exchange), and that do not have a single majority owner.

They are called public companies not because they are publicly owned (they are in all respects private companies), but because by law they must make their financial statements public.

Precisely because publicly traded companies are legally required to disclose their data, it is possible to monitor, for example, their purchases and sales of Bitcoin, which they are also obligated to make public.

Practically all the major companies fall into this category, including Apple, Microsoft, Nvidia, and the other magnificent seven.

Private company and Bitcoin

The first public company to start investing heavily in Bitcoin was MicroStrategy in 2020.

Now the company has changed its name, it is called just Strategy and owns almost half a million BTC.

Of the 52 billion dollars mentioned by Rasmussen, 41.5 belong to Strategy, which in this special ranking has a dominance of almost 79%.

Already in 2021 alone Strategy had surpassed 100,000 BTC, while to date there does not appear to be any other public company that reaches this figure.

It should be noted, however, that among the companies not listed on the stock exchange (the private companies), there is at least one that would exceed that threshold: it is Block.one, the company behind the crypto project EOS, which should own about 164,000.

The difference between public companies and private companies is primarily the fact of being listed on the stock exchange, as private companies are not. Since they are not, they are not required to make their data public, and therefore it is more difficult to obtain information about their accounts.

Moreover, the third company in the world by number of BTC owned, after Strategy and Block.one, is also a private company. It is the famous Tether, the company behind the stablecoin USDT, which now appears to have acquired more than 83,000.

In total, the public companies appear to collectively hold approximately 658,000 BTC, while the private companies hold 424,000.

Note that those held by state institutions, such as the USA Department of Justice, amount to approximately 526,000.

The spot Bitcoin ETFs

These numbers, however, pale in comparison to the nearly 1.3 million BTC held by ETPs (including ETFs and ETNs).

However, there is a huge difference.

In fact, both the Bitcoins owned by private companies and those held by state institutions are actually their property, and therefore they can dispose of them at will, as long as they do so in compliance with the laws.

Instead, the BTC held by funds such as ETFs are not their property.

Or rather, funds