Bitcoin Treasury Companies Unwind as Share Prices Collapse — But BTC Holds Its Ground

Bitcoin is trading at 65,174 USD, up 1.3% over the past 24 hours, even as a wave of publicly listed companies that once raced to hoard the cryptocurrency on their balance sheets are now selling, restructuring, or walking away entirely — and the price barely flinched.

By Sarah Park | July 27, 2026

The Hook

Remember when every other public company wanted to be the next Strategy? Back in 2025, firms from London to Tokyo were borrowing money, issuing shares, and buying as much Bitcoin as their balance sheets could stomach. The playbook was simple: buy Bitcoin, watch the stock price soar, rinse and repeat. At its peak in October 2025, Bitcoin hit a record near 126,000 USD, and the digital asset treasury model looked unstoppable.

Fast forward to today, and the picture looks very different. Bitcoin has fallen roughly 50% from that all-time high, and the companies that loaded up on BTC using debt and shareholder money are feeling the squeeze. According to Matthew Sigel, Head of Digital Assets Research at VanEck, several companies have now exited crypto entirely or are substantially reducing their holdings. The great Bitcoin treasury experiment is going through its first real stress test — and not everyone is passing.

Yet here is the thing that should make any investor sit up and pay attention: despite all this selling, Bitcoin is holding firm. It traded around 65,400 USD on Friday Asian hours, down less than 1% on the day. Ethereum sits at 1,935.65 USD, up 3.3%. Solana is at 76.30 USD, gaining 2.6%. The broader market is calm. That is either a sign of remarkable maturity in the Bitcoin market — or a calm before something bigger.

On-Chain Evidence

The selling is not imaginary. It is happening on-chain, and it is happening fast. This week alone, Satsuma Technology shareholders approved the liquidation of all 668 BTC, with plans to return capital and delist from the London Stock Exchange. Another LSE-listed firm, Smarter Web Company, sold 178 BTC to repay a convertible instrument. Sequans Communications sold 1,025 BTC and has disposed of nearly 80% of its remaining holdings to repay convertible debt, leaving it with 658 BTC and no plans to buy more.

Nakamoto, the SPAC-led venture that saw its shares fall 99% since its May 2025 debut, sold approximately 284 BTC to raise working capital, then sold another 40 BTC from its derivatives program. Almost 70% of its remaining 5,342 BTC are pledged against a Kraken loan maturing in December — a detail VanEck’s Sigel described as a potential binary event, meaning the company’s fate could hinge on what happens at that maturity date.

Even the company that started it all is selling. Strategy, led by Michael Saylor, has sold roughly 3,620 BTC in recent weeks and authorized additional sales to support its USD reserves. Strategy still holds more than 840,000 BTC — by far the largest publicly listed position — and Saylor remains publicly bullish. He even suggested the company might sell some Bitcoin to fund a dividend, framing it as a way to inoculate the market rather than a signal of distress. But the optics matter: when the pioneer starts trimming, people notice.

Bitcoin miners are also joining the exit. MARA Holdings and Bitdeer have both sold Bitcoin to repay debt and are redirecting their energy infrastructure toward AI data centers. It is a pivot that makes financial sense — AI compute pays predictable revenue, while mining BTC at current prices with older hardware may not. But it also means fewer hands holding newly mined coins.

The Core Conflict

Here is where the story gets genuinely interesting — and where investors need to think carefully. On one side, you have forced and semi-forced selling from companies that built leveraged positions at or near the top of the market. These firms bought Bitcoin with borrowed money when it was above 100,000 USD. Now that it is around 65,000 USD, the math does not work anymore. Convertible debt holders want repayment. Share prices have collapsed. The treasury model that looked like genius on the way up looks like a trap on the way down.

On the other side, you have the options market telling a decidedly different story. On Deribit, the leading crypto options exchange, a massive cluster of bullish bets has formed at the 70,000 USD and 72,000 USD strike prices. Together, these two strikes account for nearly 5 billion USD in notional open interest — roughly 18% of the platform’s total 28 billion USD in BTC options. Call options vastly outnumber puts at both levels. At the 70,000 USD strike, approximately 39,000 call contracts are open versus just 3,800 puts. At 72,000 USD, the ratio is even more skewed: about 37,900 calls to only 1,200 puts.

In plain English: some of the biggest and most sophisticated traders in the market are betting that Bitcoin goes up, not down, over the next few weeks. And they are putting very real money behind that view.

The question every investor should be asking is simple: who is right? The companies dumping Bitcoin because their debt structures demand it, or the options traders loading up on calls at levels 7% to 10% above the current price?

Market Implications

The answer may be that both can be right at the same time — and that is what makes this moment so important. The treasury company selling is not driven by a view that Bitcoin is going to zero. It is driven by balance sheet mechanics. When you owe money and your collateral has fallen 50%, you sell what you have to sell. It is not a thesis call; it is a margin call in slow motion.

The options market, meanwhile, reflects a different kind of participant entirely. These are traders with fresh capital, looking forward, not backward. Much of the recent call-buying activity was linked to optimism around the CLARITY Act, the crypto regulation bill working its way through the U.S. Congress. That optimism has cooled somewhat — Senate Majority Leader John Thune indicated the Senate is unlikely to pass the bill before its August recess, and Polymarket odds of it being signed into law this year dropped from 51% to 38% — but the positioning remains heavily skewed to the upside.

There is also a resilience factor worth noting. On Thursday, the Magnificent Seven megacap tech stocks shed nearly 800 billion USD in market value in their worst single day since the April 2025 tariff selloff. The S&P 500 fell 1.2%. The Nasdaq 100 dropped 1.9%. And Bitcoin? It slipped less than 1%. For an asset that has spent the past month trading as a proxy for the AI capital cycle, that kind of steadiness during an equity rout is notable. It may not prove a full decoupling — Bitcoin miners have been rebuilding themselves as AI data-center operators, so a sustained retreat from AI spending would eventually reach them — but it is the first real sign that the correlation may be looser than it appeared.

For everyday investors, the takeaway is about supply and demand dynamics. The forced selling from treasury companies represents a finite amount of Bitcoin hitting the market. Once those positions are unwound, the selling pressure goes away. The bullish options positioning, by contrast, represents conviction capital waiting for a catalyst — a regulatory breakthrough, a macro shift, or simply enough time for the selling to exhaust itself.

The Verdict

Bitcoin at 65,174 USD is absorbing corporate selling the way a mature asset should — quietly, without panic, and with buyers stepping in at key levels. The treasury company unwind is a real headwind, and investors should not dismiss it. Nakamoto’s December loan maturity is a ticking clock. Further sales from Strategy could continue. More companies may exit.

But the broader picture is one of a market that is processing bad news and holding its ground. When nearly 800 billion USD evaporates from tech stocks and Bitcoin moves less than 1%, something has changed in the character of this market. When options traders cluster 5 billion USD in bullish bets at strikes just above the current price, they are not doing it on a whim.

The digital asset treasury model is going through a painful reset. Bitcoin is not. Those might sound like contradictory statements, but they are not. The companies that over-leveraged at the top are paying the price for leverage, not for believing in Bitcoin. The asset itself is proving that it can absorb the fallout and keep ticking. For long-term holders, that is exactly the signal you want to see.

For now, the smartest thing an investor can do is watch the options market for signs of unwinding, keep an eye on Nakamoto’s December maturity, and pay attention to whether the CLARITY Act moves after the August recess. The pieces are on the board. The next move is coming. Bitcoin has shown it can take a punch — the question now is whether it can start swinging back.

Disclaimer: This article is for informational purposes only and does not constitute financial advice. Cryptocurrency investments are subject to high market risk. Always do your own research and consult with a qualified financial advisor before making investment decisions. BitcoinsNews.com and the author may hold positions in digital assets mentioned in this article.