Nakamoto Just Sold 284 Bitcoin to Pay the Bills — Is the Treasury Company Model Breaking?
Here is a number that should make every crypto investor nervous: 99%.
That is how far Nakamoto Holdings’ stock has fallen since its peak in May 2025. The company — founded by David Bailey and built on the thesis that companies should hold Bitcoin on their balance sheets — just sold 284 BTC for $20 million. Not because it wanted to. Because it had to.
Think of it like this: the Bitcoin treasury company model was supposed to be a cheat code. You buy Bitcoin, your stock goes up, you issue more shares, you buy more Bitcoin. Rinse, repeat, print money. Strategy (formerly MicroStrategy) made it look easy.
But Nakamoto just showed everyone what happens when the music stops.
The Numbers Are Ugly
Nakamoto sold its 284 BTC at an average price of $70,422 per coin. That is roughly 5% of its total holdings, gone in one month. The reason? It has an 8% interest loan from Kraken — a $210 million USDT-backed facility secured by the majority of its remaining Bitcoin.
Let that sink in. A company whose entire thesis is “we hold Bitcoin” had to sell Bitcoin to make interest payments on a loan backed by… Bitcoin. That is a circular firing squad.
The company reported a $52.2 million pre-tax loss for 2025. That is not a typo. It lost $52 million in a year when Bitcoin was trading above $60,000 for most of it. The previous year’s loss? Just $3.6 million.
Why This Matters Beyond Nakamoto
Nakamoto is not alone. Dozens of companies copied the Strategy playbook over the past two years. Some did it responsibly. Others took on massive debt, leveraged their Bitcoin holdings, and assumed prices would keep climbing forever.
Here is what most people miss: the treasury model only works if Bitcoin goes up faster than your cost of capital. When real interest rates are surging — the 10-year TIPS yield just hit 2.12%, the highest since June 2025 — the math gets brutal.
If you are paying 8% on a loan while your Bitcoin sits there yielding nothing, you need Bitcoin to appreciate at least 8% annually just to break even. In a flat or declining market, you bleed. And eventually, you sell.
3 Things to Do Right Now
1. Audit any Bitcoin treasury stocks you own. Look at their debt-to-BTC ratio. If a company has borrowed heavily against its Bitcoin holdings, it is one bad quarter away from forced selling. Check the 10-K filings — Nakamoto’s own filing laid all of this bare.
2. Watch the absorption-to-emissions ratio. Bitfinex’s AER has collapsed from 5.3× in late February to just 1.3× now. That means institutional demand barely covers new Bitcoin being mined. When this ratio drops, treasury companies that need liquidity become the marginal sellers — and they push prices lower.
3. Understand the real yield signal. When TIPS yields rise above 2%, capital flows out of zero-yielding assets. Bitcoin is one of them. If the Federal Reserve does not cut rates soon — and with oil at $103 because the Strait of Hormuz is still shut, they probably will not — this headwind persists. Treasury companies stuck in leveraged positions will keep getting squeezed.
The Smart Play
In my view, the Bitcoin treasury model is not dead. Strategy itself still holds over 500,000 BTC and has far more financial flexibility than smaller copycats. But the era of “any company can just buy Bitcoin and watch the stock moon” is over.
The companies that survive will be the ones with low debt, strong cash flows from actual businesses, and Bitcoin as a bonus — not the entire business model. The ones that die? They will look a lot like Nakamoto: bleeding cash, selling coins, and watching the stock go to zero.
If you own any Bitcoin treasury stocks that are not Strategy, now is the time to ask one question: Can this company survive 12 more months of Bitcoin at $65,000? If the answer is no, you know what to do.
