Corporate Bitcoin treasuries — the cohort that supercharged the 2025 bull market — have all but stopped buying, and new onchain data suggests their previous purchases now hang over the market as overhead supply rather than support.
Analytics platform Glassnode reports that in 2026 listed companies have added roughly 5,900 BTC over the past three months. That figure represents less than 7 percent of what the same cohort purchased in July 2025 alone, when companies bought 89,000 BTC even as BTC traded above 100,000 USD.
An 80.5K cost basis turns into a ceiling
The deeper problem is profitability. Glassnode calculates that the aggregate cost basis of existing corporate treasuries — the Corporate Treasury Cost Basis — sits around 80,500 USD, approximately 6 percent above the current spot price. “The group as a whole is under water,” the firm wrote in the latest edition of its newsletter, The Week Onchain.
Price data shows 2026 has produced only two serious attempts to reclaim that cost basis, and both ultimately failed as BTC could not hold above the level. The consequences are mechanical: with spot sitting below their average entry, treasury holders are locked into unrealized losses and have little incentive — or political cover — to keep accumulating.
Glassnode’s framing is blunt. “A buyer that has stopped buying and holds a paper loss is not support,” the firm wrote. “A reclaim of 80.5K would put the treasuries back in profit and remove one layer of overhead supply; until then their entry is one more ceiling.”
Strategy’s slower cadence mirrors the cohort
The trend is visible even at the top of the market. Strategy, which holds the world’s largest corporate Bitcoin treasury, made its most recent purchase at the end of August — 4,603 BTC, its first acquisition in two months. The cost basis of its 845,050 BTC holdings stands at 75,412 USD, making it one of the few large treasuries still comfortably in profit at current levels, though well below the margins it enjoyed at the 2025 highs.
The slowdown reflects a broader shift in sentiment that has accompanied Bitcoin’s ongoing bear market. Current macro conditions — including the Federal Reserve’s first interest-rate hike since July 2023, enacted Wednesday and potentially the start of a tightening cycle — have left institutions uncertain about near-term BTC price strength. Tightening cycles have historically presented headwinds for crypto market liquidity, and corporate boards appear to be responding accordingly.
ETF flows flip, realized cap rolls over
Buyer appetite in exchange-traded products tells a similar story. US spot Bitcoin ETFs saw net outflows of 462.7 million USD across the five trading days through Sept. 11, reversing a stretch of three consecutive weeks of net inflows. Glassnode attributes the whipsaw to a “market in waiting” — capital that remains deployed but is unwilling to add exposure while price sits below key onchain thresholds.
The most consequential signal may be Bitcoin’s realized cap — the cumulative price at which the supply last moved onchain — which began falling as of Sept. 15. Realized cap currently sits around 1.069 trillion USD, and a declining reading indicates that coins are transacting at lower prices than their previous onchain acquisition points, a signature of weakened buyer appetite rather than active distribution.
“A return to positive daily Realized Cap changes would say the buyers are back; a run of outflows while price sits under the mean would mean the range’s buyers have started to give up,” Glassnode concluded.
What would revive the treasury trade
For the corporate treasury thesis to regain momentum, the market likely needs one of two catalysts: a decisive reclaim of the 80,500 USD aggregate cost basis, which would flip a large cohort of balance sheets back into profit and remove a psychological barrier to new purchases, or a fresh wave of treasury formations at lower cost bases that resets the cohort’s average entry.
Until then, the 89,000-BTC months of 2025 look increasingly like a high-water mark. The 5,900 BTC accumulated over the past three months is a fraction of that pace — and with realized cap rolling over, ETF flows negative and the Fed tightening, the corporate buyers who once propped up every dip have become, in Glassnode’s words, one more ceiling rather than a floor.
Market snapshot at press time: BTC trades near 76,408 USD, ETH near 2,447 USD and SOL near 102 USD, per CoinGecko data.
5,900 BTC in three months vs 89,000 in july 2025 alone. that glassnode chart has to look like a cliff edge lol
It does, I pulled the numbers yesterday. The 80.5K aggregate entry sitting about 6 percent above spot worries me more than the buy slowdown tbh
^ the buy slowdown is reversible, a 6 percent underwater cohort selling into strength is not. asymmetry nobody wants to say out loud
Two failed reclaims of 80.5K in a year tells you where the sellers live. Every treasury mark-to-market dashboard has that line highlighted now.
5,900 BTC in three months vs 89,000 in july 2025 alone. that chart has to look brutal next to each other
@Henrik exactly, its not conviction fading, its just accounting. they bought the 100k top and now the same coins are resistance
glassnode said the quiet part out loud with the whole overhead supply framing. every rally into 80.5k is gonna get sold by treasuries desperate to breakeven
Strategy buying 4,603 BTC after two months of silence reads more like optics than conviction. And they are still in profit at a 75,412 cost basis while most of the cohort is under water.
Also worth noting 4,603 BTC is their smallest buy since they resumed. optics is generous, its a rounding error next to their old stacks
Under water at an 80.5K aggregate basis explains everything. No CFO is adding to a losing position with the board watching.
glassnode calling them overhead supply is the politest way possible of saying the corporate bid is gone