Imagine that when your company is facing a bankruptcy crisis, you only need to issue additional shares to buy, or simply announce that Bitcoin will be used as an asset reserve, to easily defeat the annoying short sellers and return to the center of market attention from the edge of liquidation. If this is true, would you do it?
After $MSTR once again became the buzzword of the year in the investment circle, Bitcoin is rapidly encroaching on the balance sheets of global companies. In this new capital game surrounding Bitcoin, some people are chasing the trend, some are imitating poorly, and some are discovering new business opportunities and turning themselves into the organizers behind the creation of the price miracle.
MSTR flows to the world
In 2024, MSTRs stock price soared 477%, ranking second among technology companies with a market value of more than $5 billion in the U.S. stock market, second only to AppLovin. Bitcoin investment also brought the company a book profit of up to $13.14 billion, pushing its market value to exceed $100 billion at one point, making it a star company in the U.S. stock market.
As of April 2025, the company holds a total of 528,185 BTC, with a holding cost of approximately US$33.14 billion and an average purchase price of US$66,385. Based on the current price of Bitcoin of approximately US$81,400, the total market value is approximately US$43 billion, accounting for more than 2.5% of the global circulation.
Related reading: The strategy of issuing bonds to buy coins has not changed, why did the MSTR premium suddenly soar?
As early as August 2020, when the crypto market was at the end of a bear market, MicroStrategy purchased 21,454 BTC for the first time in the $10,000 range of Bitcoin, launched the Bitcoin Treasury Strategy, and became the first listed company to invest corporate funds in Bitcoin on a large scale.
Since then, the company has continued to increase its holdings during the trough period, from 2020 to 2022, and steadily increased its holdings in 2023. After Bitcoin entered the bull market from 2024 to 2025, MicroStrategy further accelerated its position building, forming a clear operation path of building a bottom in a bear market and accelerating in a bull market. The madness of stock prices is like a stone thrown into a pond, causing ripples. Companies are beginning to ask themselves: If we cant outrun Bitcoin, why dont we just buy it?
According to data from Bitcointreasuries, as of April 16, 2025, a total of 178 entities hold more than 3.16 million BTC, of which listed companies hold about 665,636 BTC, and this number is still growing rapidly. This micro trend has swept the world, involving 26 US listed companies, 22 Canadian listed companies, and 8 Chinese (including Hong Kong) listed companies, including some marginal companies that originally had low market capitalization and were rarely paid attention to.
Image source: bitcointreauries.net
Represented by Hong Kong Asia Holdings, a group of traditional companies that were originally on the margins are reconstructing their business narratives by allocating Bitcoin.
This was originally a marginal enterprise with little presence, mainly engaged in the wholesale and retail business of prepaid products (such as SIM cards and value-added coupons). In February 2025, the company spent $96,150 to purchase 1 Bitcoin for the first time. As soon as the news came out, the companys stock price soared by 93%.
After tasting the sweetness, Hong Kong Asia increased its holdings for three consecutive days, becoming the first listed company in Greater China to officially include Bitcoin on its balance sheet.
GameStop, a retailer that became famous for the retail investor war in 2021, saw its stock price rise by more than 18% before the market opened due to rumors before it announced the issuance of $1.3 billion in zero-interest convertible bonds to purchase Bitcoin on March 27, 2025. Japans Metaplanet is no exception. Since it followed MicroStrategys example in purchasing Bitcoin in April 2024, its stock price has soared by about 4,000%, and its 2025 target is 10,000 Bitcoins.
In addition to high-profile companies such as GameStop, Hong Kong Asia Holdings, and Metaplanet, more and more listed companies around the world that originally had nothing to do with the crypto field are quietly copying the MicroStrategy model and making a bold bet on Bitcoin to fight inflation and bet on the future.
For example, Eric Semler, CEO of the US medical company Semler Scientific, bluntly said, Not holding Bitcoin is irresponsible to shareholders. The board of directors of Indias Jerking Company has approved a large-scale Bitcoin position. KULR Technology directly used 90% of the companys cash reserves to buy Bitcoin in batches. Canadian cannabis company LEEF Brands issued a $5 million bond to support Bitcoin. Boyaa in Hong Kong exchanged $50 million of Ethereum for Bitcoin.
Related reading: Listed companies crowd to buy BTC: The top 15 profit list is revealed, who has increased nearly 30 times?
From medical to marijuana, from North America to Asia, companies from different industries seem to be swept up in the same wave and plunged into a field that they may have been completely unfamiliar with. Since then, Bitcoin is becoming the new protagonist on the balance sheets of more and more companies.
The golden fingers behind the price miracle: bankers, white gloves and Eric Trump
When capital meets political leverage, there will always be many price miracles. This trend represented by MicroStrategy is far more than what it seems. Everything started to heat up rapidly from the market frenzy triggered by the re-election of Crypto President Trump.
As the Trump administration promotes the implementation of the Bitcoin Strategic Reserve Plan and the SEC relaxes its crypto regulation, these policies are like a gust of east wind, pushing the price of Bitcoin close to the historical high of $110,000. When the crypto industry and politicians arbitrage each other, the undercurrents behind are often unknown.
In this capital feast where the global stock market is surging and the crypto market is frenzying, UTXO Management and Sora Ventures seized the opportunity and transformed themselves into bankers in the capital market, pushing a number of monster stocks to the forefront one after another.
Amplification Effect
If you have been paying attention to the Hong Kong or Japanese stock markets recently, you may be puzzled by the sudden surge in the stock prices of several strange companies.
An operator of cheap hotels, a game manufacturer that relies on playing Texas Holdem, and an old telecommunications company that sells data cards, all have basically no bright spots in their businesses, but their share prices have skyrocketed several times or even thousands of percentage points in a short period of time. What magic elixir did these critically ill stocks that were originally rotten to the point of being rotten take?
Let’s first look at the most typical case, Metaplanet. The company was originally called Red Planet, a budget hotel operator. In 2024, CEO Simon, who graduated from Harvard and was a senior executive at Goldman Sachs in Tokyo, changed the name to Metaplanet after selling most of the hotel business. The CEO also serves as the chairman of Red Planet Hotels and the head of a Thai real estate company.
In addition to its core BTC strategy, Metaplanet is redeveloping one of its remaining hotels into “The Bitcoin Hotel,” which will open in the third quarter of 2025, attempting to provide companies with one-stop services from treasury, operations to Bitcoin education.
Metaplanets business scope (BTC holding, BTC education, BTC theme hotel), source: Metaplanet
With this series of capital operations, Metaplanet became Japans first publicly listed company holding coins, holding about 3,050 BTC in a short period of time, and issuing 2 billion yen bonds in 2024 to continue building positions. Its stock price also soared by more than 4,000% from a long-term low of less than 50 yen.
In April 2024, Jason Fang, founder of Sora Ventures, wrote on his personal Twitter account: Metaplanet is Asias first micro-strategy, and through cooperation with UTXO Management, Mark Yusko and others, he helped Metaplanet include Bitcoin in its balance sheet, becoming the first listed company in Japan to publicly hold the currency.
This is the first time that Jason Fang has brought Sora Venture to the forefront as a director of Metaplanet. In fact, Sora has always been very radical in the path of replicating micro-strategy.
Similar operations seemed to have happened to Hong Kong-listed gaming company Boyaa Interactive in the same year.
Boyaa was founded in 2004 and mainly focuses on Texas Holdem and other board games. Its founder Zhang Wei graduated from Shenzhen University. He relied on the enthusiasm of Chinese players to increase the stock price from HK$5.35 to HK$15.16. However, as the popularity faded, the company quickly fell to the bottom and hovered below HK$1 for many years. On November 14, 2023, Boyaa announced that it would invest $100 million to enter the cryptocurrency market, specializing in Bitcoin and Ethereum.
In November 2024, the company suddenly announced that it would convert 14,200 ETH on its balance sheet into 515 BTC, and its total holdings soared to 3,183, surpassing Japans Metaplanet in one fell swoop. Its stock price soared 9 times in one year. Then in December, Sora Venture announced its establishment of a $150 million fund dedicated to promoting the adoption of Bitcoin treasury strategies by Asian listed companies, and Boyaa Interactive was its first pilot .
Another noteworthy detail is that in July 2024, Boyaa publicly announced a $1 million investment in UTXO Management’s Bitcoin Ecosystem Fund, hoping to increase exposure to Boyaa’s transformation through BTC Inc.’s resources (such as Bitcoin Magazine).
Sora Venture is not the only one on the “road to replication”. In the above two cases, we can see the shadow of another “good helper” - UTXO Management.
UTXO Management also played a key role in advancing Metaplanets Bitcoin strategy. Its partner Dylan LeClair serves as Metaplanets Bitcoin strategy director, Tyler Evans serves as Metaplanets independent director, and UTXO is Metaplanets main investment institution.
This year, the two institutions once again teamed up to create another price miracle in the Hong Kong stock market.
In early 2025, Sora Ventures and UTXO Management jointly invested approximately HK$126 million to acquire more than 70% of the shares of Hong Kong Asia Holdings and officially took over.
Hong Kong Asia Holdings was originally a company that sold data cards and ran traditional distribution. Its profits were extremely low and it had long been classified as a penny stock by the Hong Kong stock market (the share price was less than HK$1). After the acquisition, the company was renamed Moon Inc., and Hong Kong Asia Holdings underwent a thorough encryption blood transfusion from the board of directors to the management, and quickly determined the Bitcoin-centric treasury strategy.
Image source: http://1723.HK
However, as of the time of writing, the company only holds 28.88 BTC in its account. Hong Kong financial commentator Li Ming also bluntly stated: This position is not even a test. Despite this, after the company first announced the purchase of 1 BTC, the stock price quickly climbed from HK$0.29 to HK$0.38, an increase of about 31%. As of April 17, 2025, it closed at HK$4.84, down 32.5% from its 52-week high, but still up about 1669% from HK$0.29 at the beginning of the year.
Critically ill companies are often the targets of low-cost, high-return transformation. Metaplanet, Hong Kong Asia Holdings and other “junk shell companies” had long-term depressed stock prices before the implementation of the Bitcoin strategy. Sora and UTXO were never interested in the business of these companies, but their cheap shell resources and potential capital amplification effect.
The Trump family’s “Bitcoin trader”
In the global stock market in 2024, Sora Ventures and UTXO Management are like two highly skilled chess players, making frequent moves.
In 2024, Sora Ventures and UTXO Management jointly launched the $2 million Sora TTP Fund, betting on the TTP ecosystem under the Ordinals protocol, becoming the worlds first decentralized index fund based on Ordinals, attracting the participation of BTSE and Origin Protocol founders. With the help of UTXO and Bitcoin Magazines promotion, the $PIPE token soared 150% in one month.
The story of Sora Ventures began in Hong Kong in 2017. Founder Jason Fang, who had accumulated rich experience in the exchange BTSE, founded this investment institution focused on the Bitcoin ecosystem. At first, Sora focused on early Web3 investments, with a management scale of more than $100 million. By 2024, the companys ambition gradually emerged: to vigorously promote Asian listed companies to adopt Bitcoin as a core treasury strategy.
Soras expansion is also due to its close collaboration with UTXO. In the case of Metaplanet, UTXO brought in Trumps second son Eric Trump as a consultant. Over the past period of time, this crypto believer has been giving the Trump familys crypto map the green light through World Liberty Financial.
Left: Eric and Simons photo, right: Metaplanet core members; Image source: X, Metaplanet
So what is the origin of UTXO?
The story of UTXO Management begins in Tennessee, USA, as the investment department of BTC Inc. (the organizer of Bitcoin Magazine and Bitcoin Conference). They initially focused on allocating Bitcoin assets for high-net-worth clients, and as early as 2013, they had invested in more than 60 mining and early-stage project companies.
With the approval of the Bitcoin ETF in 2024 (BlackRock recommends a 5% allocation, and traditional capital sends a signal to Bitcoin that it can be allocated), UTXO immediately smelled the business opportunity of institutional capital and began to transform. UTXOs hedge fund 210k Capital became a rising star in this transformation. With heavy holdings in Bitcoin treasury stocks such as Strategy and Metaplanet, it achieved an annual return of 164%, ranking among the top five in HFR.
Its chief investment officer Tyler Evans proudly said: 80% of our portfolio is concentrated in Bitcoin-related stocks, and Metaplanet and Strategy are the main sources of income. These companies provide the most comfortable entry point for institutional investors (such as the Wisconsin Teachers Pension Fund and the Abu Dhabi Sovereign Wealth Fund) to enter Bitcoin through securitized Bitcoin.
At the same time, The Smarter Web Company invested by UTXO Management plans to IPO on the UK Aquis Exchange. It is called the British version of Metaplanet, and its Bitcoin financial model is penetrating into the European market. Behind this series of layouts of UTXO is the rich parent company BTC Inc., and there is no lack of implicit support from the political resources of the Trump family.
The relationship between BTC Inc. and the Trump family goes far beyond superficial cooperation, but is deeply rooted in the interweaving of business interests and political resources.
BTC Inc., the organizer of Bitcoin Magazine and the worlds largest Bitcoin conference, provides the Trump family with a platform for controlling public opinion through its strong industry influence, and also helps the Trump family through a series of business collaborations.
The origin of this relationship can be traced back to Trumps 2024 campaign, when Trump publicly supported the crypto industry for the first time as a presidential candidate at the Bitcoin 2024 conference hosted by BTC Inc. BTC Inc. CEO David Bailey personally organized a high-profile donation dinner with ticket prices as high as $844,600 per person, raising $25 million in campaign funds.
Trump mentioned BTC Inc.s support several times in his speech and praised it as a pillar of the Bitcoin community. During the campaign, BTC Inc. continued to report on Trumps crypto policy stance through Bitcoin Magazine, winning the support of a large number of crypto industry voters.
After the successful election, BTC Inc. continued to provide a stage for the Trump familys crypto policy through the conferences it hosted. On December 9-10, 2024, Trumps son Eric Trump was the keynote speaker at the Bitcoin MENA Conference in Abu Dhabi, predicting that Bitcoin will reach $1 million and emphasizing that his father will become the most pro-crypto president in history.
The core of the relationship between BTC Inc. and the Trump family lies in the mutually beneficial exchange of public opinion control and political resources. Bitcoin Magazine, a subsidiary of BTC Inc., continues to endorse the Trump familys crypto projects, such as reporting on the creation of American Bitcoin and the progress of World Liberty Financial.
From financial support during the election campaign to policy promotion at the conference to the commercial layout of mining companies, the two are inseparable. This dance of two inevitably triggers many associations between the outside world and the political influence and commercial ambitions behind it.
There will be more and more micro-strategies in the U.S. stock market
As Michael Saylor said, there are more and more micro-strategy companies in the US stock market. If you carefully disassemble these micro-strategy companies, you will find that the motivations behind them are different. Not every company is as deeply bound to Sora and UTXO as Metaplanet. Some companies are more like borrowing coins and optimizing their balance sheets by holding Bitcoin, or for market value management considerations.
Why do US companies buy Bitcoin?
Among the US stock companies that buy Bitcoin, GameStop may be a typical representative. This former offline game retail giant tried to prolong its life through transformation of holding currency, using Bitcoin to hedge against inflation pressure and the ugly data on financial statements. It was more of a want to buy rather than a have to buy.
The announcement of the purchase of Bitcoin through $1.5 billion in convertible bonds and CEO Ryan Cohens increase of $10.7 million in stock both stimulated the stock price to rise in the short term, but the stock price soon fell back. Although the investment of $1.5 billion is not small, it is still a drop in the bucket compared to the loss of more than $100 million in GameStops 2024 financial report.
GameStops series of operations are more like an attempt to recreate the glory of the 2021 meme stock craze through the Bitcoin craze. The strategy is more inclined towards capital market operations rather than business transformation.
Cohens increase in holdings is more of a short-term stimulus. Judging from his experience of selling pet e-commerce Chewy for $3.2 billion, Ryan Cohens style has always been full of e-commerce marketing flavor.
According to media reports, although GameStop has total assets of $5.875 billion, nearly 81% of it is cash reserves, and the cash flow from operating activities is only $146 million, which clearly shows its difficulty in making profits from its main business. The companys investment of a quarter of its assets in Bitcoin highlights the short-term nature of GameStops reliance on speculative strategies without solving its core business.
Another company with a quiet stock price and abundant cash is Semler Scientific. Chairman Eric Semler joined the board of directors two years ago and calls himself the radical on the board. He described Semler at the time as a zombie company that makes money but is not recognized by the market, with an asset structure very similar to that of MicroStrategy in 2020: lots of cash, little growth, and low valuation.
Instead of mergers and acquisitions or drastic business reforms, Semler pushed the company to include Bitcoin in its treasury strategy, becoming the second US-listed company to do so after MicroStrategy. This move triggered a reassessment of its value by the market and brought long-lost attention to the previously neglected business.
However, not all companies blindly follow the MicroStrategy-style Bitcoin treasury operations. In October 2024, Microsoft seriously discussed whether to include Bitcoin in its balance sheet at the shareholders meeting, but ultimately rejected the proposal by an overwhelming majority. The main concern is that the high volatility of Bitcoin may disrupt the companys financial stability. Microsofts Chief Financial Officer Amy Hood also made it clear: Our capital allocation tends to focus on core growth areas such as AI and cloud computing, rather than getting involved in speculative assets.
Can anyone do micro-strategy?
Comparing these companies, it is not difficult to find that MicroStrategy has deeply bound Bitcoin to its financial structure and has long been all in. As for other companies, some are trying to use Bitcoin to save themselves (Hong Kong Asia), some use it as a financial hedge (Metaplanet), and some may just want to try their luck with alpha (GameStop).
We cannot simply say that they are poor students imitating top students. A more accurate statement is that they all want to do something with Bitcoin, but in different directions.
Currently, MicroStrategys holdings are 27,987 times that of Hong Kong Asia Holdings, 125 times that of Metaplanet, and 30 times that of GameStop. There are also a series of other small companies whose holdings are also very small. The gap between MicroStrategy and these companies in holdings is very large, and its small scale cannot actually form a real hedging effect.
The more crucial difference lies in the crushing financing capabilities. MicroStrategy is like having unlimited ammunition. If it doesn’t have enough money, it can issue bonds, and the borrowing interest rate is super low. The overall cost of Bitcoin is lower after the calculation.
Since 2020, it has raised more than $10 billion through bond issuance and stock increase. In 2024, it will issue an additional $1 billion in stocks to continue to increase its holdings. In the first quarter of 2025, it raised a total of $7.69 billion, and $4.4 billion was used to purchase coins. This continuous financing ability allows MicroStrategy to continue to increase its holdings amid Bitcoin price fluctuations.
In contrast, the funds for Hong Kong Asia Holdings purchase of tokens only came from the acquisition of Sora Ventures and UTXO Management (at a cost of 126 million yuan), and its subsequent financing capacity is almost zero. Although Metaplanet raised funds by issuing zero-interest bonds, the total investment was only about 250 million US dollars, far less than the scale of MicroStrategy. GameStop issued 1.5 billion US dollars of convertible bonds, but its stock price plummeted by 22.1% after the announcement. It can be clearly seen that the markets confidence in its financing is obviously insufficient.
From the perspective of the stock market, the US stock market has strong liquidity, and Saylors operations can often be quickly reflected in the stock price. However, Hong Kong Asia Holdings is limited by the low liquidity of the Hong Kong stock market, small-cap stocks are easily manipulated, and the trend is more dominated by retail investor sentiment. Metaplanet is limited by the ceiling of the Japanese market itself, and its growth space is relatively limited.
From the perspective of company equity, the equity structure of Metaplanet, Hong Kong Asia Holdings and GameStop is highly dispersed, with a large number of small and medium-sized investors in the shareholder structure, rather than being dominated by a single or a few large shareholders. For example, about 40% of GameStops shares are held by retail investors, and a post on Reddit or Twitter can cause its stock price to jump by more than ten or twenty points. Emotions come quickly and naturally go away quickly.
For secondary market investors, perhaps they are more like a leveraged BTC concept ticket.
Figure: Metaplanets number of shareholders continues to soar
MicroStrategy is backed by stable large asset management companies such as BlackRock and Vanguard, and its founder Saylor holds 20% of his companys shares, so its overall stability is much higher. One is like a cryptocurrency trading group, and the other is like a treasury bond fund. Its not about which one is better, but whether you want to chase a gust of wind or bet on a game.
In terms of market attention and importance, MicroStrategy was included in the Nasdaq 100 Index in 2024, and the proportion of institutional holdings also increased to 60%. Defiance and T-REX successively launched leveraged ETFs (such as MSTX, SMST, MSTU) with 2x long and short positions in MicroStrategy. As of now, MicroStrategy is held by 216 ETFs, and VanEck has the heaviest allocation to it. The ETF halo is comparable to the Seven Giants in US Stocks.
As for other followers such as GameStop, Metaplanet and Hong Kong Asia Holdings, none of them have exclusive ETF products, and have not even been included on a large scale by mainstream ETFs. In this wealthy club, without the support of a stock index like Nasdaq, it is difficult for them to get the golden protection of the capital market.
Fentanyl addiction: the risk of a systemic stock market collapse
As of April 7, 2025, affected by Trumps announcement of additional tariffs, the global market was shaken violently, and the decline in Bitcoin prices was like a cold wind. The share prices of Hong Kong stocks 1723 (Hong Kong Asia Holdings), GameStop, Metaplanet and MicroStrategy all fell.
The high binding between the stock prices of these companies and the price of Bitcoin exposes an obvious risk: they are like the same kind of trees planted on the same mountain. Once a storm hits, they will inevitably fall down collectively. This copying homework Bitcoin strategy seems to have brought short-term prosperity, but it also lays the hidden danger of systemic collapse.
The company has staked its fate on a single asset, Bitcoin, and lacks diversified support. Once Bitcoin market sentiment changes or regulation tightens, a broken capital chain, debt pressure, and a collapse in market confidence may occur one after another, forming a chain reaction.
Although MicroStrategy is somewhat stable due to its scale and first-mover advantage, its holdings of over 440,000 BTC are backed by highly leveraged financing, and the risk of debt default cannot be ignored. The funds of Hong Kong stocks 1723, GameStop and Metaplanet are smaller, and their risk resistance is almost zero. The essence of this strategy is to maximize speculation, but it fails to build a moat in the core business.
Related reading: If MicroStrategy is forced to sell BTC, how much selling pressure will it bring to the market?
The deeper problem is that most of these companies don’t do “real things.” Hong Kong Asia Holdings’ SIM card business has no hope of growth, GameStop’s physical retail business is on the decline, Metaplanet’s Web3 transformation is in name only, and even MicroStrategy’s software business has long been marginalized.
They choose Bitcoin not because it has any synergy with their main business, but because they see it as a lifeline in the capital market. If all companies in the stock market abandon real industries and turn to chasing speculative outlets such as BTC, it is unimaginable that the entire economic ecosystem may be unbalanced.
Just imagine, if giants like Microsoft and Apple also give up technological innovation to hoard Bitcoin, where will the foundation of the global industry be? Industry is the mainstay of the economy. It creates value and meets needs, rather than relying solely on financial leverage to pile up bubbles.
In summary, now that the tariffs have stalled and the tide has receded, those companies without solid business support are doomed to swim naked. The capital market should reward those companies that are down-to-earth and create long-term value, rather than blindly chasing speculative stories. After all, a healthy forest needs a variety of tree species, not a single speculative tree.
