Is the Crypto Treasury Trend Running on Fumes? A 2025 Reality Check

Corporate crypto treasuries hit a wall as volatility exposes balance sheet gambles.

The accounting headache no CFO wants

Mark-to-market nightmares plague early adopters. Quarterly reports swing wildly based on Bitcoin's mood—turning earnings calls into high-stakes poker games.

Regulatory shadows lengthen

SEC scrutiny intensifies as greenwashing claims multiply. Public companies now face activist investors demanding blockchain transparency they can't provide.

Institutional patience wears thin

Hedge funds rotate out of digital asset exposure as traditional yields rebound. The 'digital gold' narrative cracks under pressure from actual gold's resurgence.

Another finance trend proving that what goes parabolic eventually meets gravity—usually during a Fed meeting.

Crypto treasury companies are losing money

Most crypto treasury companies are losing money or are basically empty shell companies. The only thing driving their stock prices up is executives and investors believing their digital tokens will gain value.

A biotech firm called 180 Life Sciences renamed itself ETHZilla last month and started buying ether tokens. Its stock has dropped 76 percent from its August high point. The company is worth $416 million, even though it owns about $460 million worth of ether.

Last week, ETHZilla borrowed $80 million using its ether holdings as collateral from Cumberland DRW, the crypto division of market Maker DRW run by Don Wilson. The company plans to use this money to buy its own shares as part of a $250 million buyback program.

“We continue to view repurchasing shares as opportunistic and an accretive use of capital,” said McAndrew Rudisill, who serves as ETHZilla’s chief executive.

However, some experts think these buybacks show the crypto treasury business model might be finished.

“It’s only been six months and we’re already talking about their demise,” said Elliot Chun, a partner at crypto advisory firm Architect Partners. “A very small percentage are going to succeed.”

Chun explained that raising money to buy back shares instead of spending it on tokens goes against the whole crypto treasury idea.

Public companies have been doing more share buybacks in recent years. Company leaders usually do this when they think their stock is undervalued. Real estate investment trusts often buy their own shares when their market value drops below what their properties are worth. But crypto treasury companies built their business on the idea that their stock value WOULD rise faster than their crypto holdings.

For companies now doing buybacks, this is not happening anymore. Morgan McCarthy from Kaiko said the companies are “just trying to buy time, sustain things, tide things over until they can capitalize on that next wave of crypto prices rising.”

“It’s very circular,” he said about these buyback operations. “A lot of these companies are like a house of cards and are going to collapse very quickly.”

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