The bitcoin-treasury experiment has entered its first "Deep Discount” phase. Since 2024, a handful of listed companies have made a radical bet: turning their cash into a strategic bitcoin reserve.
The idea is simple:
- Raise funds (share issues, convertible bonds)
- Buy BTC
- Let the market value the stock as a leveraged bitcoin proxy
Strategy, the undisputed champion of this playbook, now holds more than 700,000 bitcoins (or $54.26bn at acquisition cost). BTC miners such as Mara, Riot or Hut 8 have also amassed bitcoins, either by buying them on the market or by producing them through the bitcoin-mining process (proof of work). For them, the aim is either to ride a speculative upswing or to monetize the mined asset (after paying for electricity and machines).
But those bitcoins come with two requirements: mark-to-market accounting (fair-value marking imposed by accounting standards) and, above all… a future exit to realize a profit. In other words, without buyers willing to pay up over the long run, the bet loses all meaning.
In October 2025, when BTC flirted with $126,000, the mechanics looked unstoppable. The most aggressive players piled up sizeable war chests. Investors sometimes paid twice the net value of the bitcoins held to get equity-market exposure to BTC. Then the correction arrived. In four months, bitcoin was nearly cut in half, now hovering around $67,000.
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Strategy is now valued in the stock market at just 0.85 times the value of its bitcoin portfolio (mNAV). Never before had investors accepted the stock trading below the gross value of its BTC (they used to pay twice that value just for the exposure). Strategy's unrealized loss now stands at $6bn.
CoinGecko
This unprecedented "discount” reflects a shift in mindset. In the stock market, you could say the company would be worth more "dead than alive” as its strategy is being called into question. Three reasons explain it:
1) the risk of having to liquidate bitcoins to deal with heavy convertible-bond debt (raised when BTC was flirting with $100k).
2) at this price, the inability to issue new value-accretive shares (the usual move of creating value through new issuance is now dilutive).
3) the maturity of the convertible notes: if the share price stays low, they will have to be repaid in cash-a headache for the company's coffers.
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Miners: from producers to buyers
Unlike "pure accumulators” like Strategy, mining companies already have another source of value: production. The heavyweights of mining can lean on other activities to offset the price drop. For example, Hut 8 (4.97x mNAV) has ancillary cash flows (a power plant, AI data centers) that add extra stability, while Riot (4.22x) only acquired bitcoin through mining-no borrowing leverage, and therefore less accounting stress.
Still, pressure is rising everywhere. The average cost to produce a bitcoin is estimated at around $87,000. With BTC at about $64,000, many miners are operating at a loss. Some players are already looking to turn part of their cheap holdings into cash: that is what MARA's moves suggest, for instance. On February 6, the miner MARA moved 1,318 BTC ($86.9m) to various custodial accounts. Among the transfers, 653.8 BTC went to Two Prime (a collateral or trading specialist) and 300 BTC to custodian BitGo. Such transactions can be used as collateral or to prepare an over-the-counter (OTC) sale.
Historically, a slide in the Bitcoin hashrate (the network's total computing power) signals mining capitulations aimed at limiting the damage. A decline in the global hashrate is already visible, falling from 1.15 zetahash/s to under 950 terahash/s in late January. Longer term, if BTC does not rebound quickly, more miners can be expected to "lock in” gains by selling older mined bitcoins to stay profitable-which could put additional pressure on the price.
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