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80% of Corporate Holders Now Underwater

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US Liquidity Is the Real Culprit


Nearly 80% of corporate Bitcoin holders are sitting on unrealized losses as BTC trades well below the average treasury purchase price.

Around 80% of companies holding Bitcoin (BTC) as a treasury asset are sitting on unrealized losses, according to an analysis by Charles Edwards, founder of Capriole Investments.

The data comes at a time BTC is pushing back toward $71,000, raising questions of whether the widespread institutional pain is a warning sign or a contrarian buy signal.

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The Numbers Behind the Corporate Pain

Edwards shared a series of charts on X on March 10 showing that the simple average cost basis for Bitcoin treasury holdings is at around $90,000, which is well above where BTC is trading today.

On a weighted basis, which gives more weight to larger holders such as Strategy, the average purchase price dropped to about $81,000, showing that the biggest buyers got in earlier and at a lower level. But either way, the number one cryptocurrency is currently below both figures.

“At 80%, almost all treasuries are at a loss on their Bitcoin purchase today,” Edwards wrote. “Though history suggests this could get worse if 2026 is like 2022. There is no free Bitcoin yield.”

In the same thread, Edwards noted that institutions are also broadly down on their BTC positions, with the average institutional purchase price sitting near $78,000. He also said that ETF holders were in the red as well.

However, the analyst did flag one piece of data that stood out, namely that treasury and ETF buying had flipped net positive by 200% on the day of his post.

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“The last time it was this high, Bitcoin was at $90,000,” he stated, calling it “very good news, especially amid war.”

That appetite Edwards was referring to was typified by Strategy, which yesterday announced a purchase of 17,994 BTC at an average price of approximately $71,000 per BTC, bringing its total holdings to 738,731 BTC bought for $56 billion. At current prices, the firm’s position is carrying an unrealized loss in the region of $6 billion.

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Separately, Strategy’s perpetual preferred stock posted a new 2026 trading volume high of $299 million on March 9, which BitcoinTreasuries estimated was enough to fund another 1,360 BTC purchase.

The broader supply picture adds some context to why institutional accumulation is drawing attention, with analyst Darkfost noting that Bitcoin reserves on centralized exchanges have fallen to levels last seen in 2019.

Additionally, ETFs have absorbed around 1.3 million BTC since their January 2024 launch, while corporate treasury companies collectively hold about 1.1 million BTC, which is nearly 5% of the total supply.

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Bitcoin Price Overview

Bitcoin was changing hands near $71,000 at the time of this writing, up over 4% in 24 hours after bouncing from around $67,500. In the last seven days, the asset gained 6.4% and has almost doubled that over 14 days. Still, it remains down nearly 13% year-on-year and about 44% below its October 2025 all-time high.

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Crypto World

Brian Armstrong’s Bold Prediction: AI Agents Will Soon Dominate Global Financial

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Brian Armstrong's Bold Prediction: AI Agents Will Soon Dominate Global Financial

TLDR:

  • Brian Armstrong says AI agents cannot open bank accounts but can hold crypto wallets.
  • Coinbase launched Agentic Wallets via the x402 protocol for fast AI-to-AI payments.
  • Wallets enable gasless trading on Base, Coinbase’s Ethereum layer-2 network.
  • Mastercard and crypto firms build solutions to support AI agent commerce.

Brian Armstrong’s AI agents and crypto wallets discussion gained attention after the Coinbase CEO highlighted that autonomous AI programs will soon dominate financial transactions.

Armstrong stated that AI agents cannot open bank accounts, but they can generate crypto wallets and transact globally.

Coinbase Launches Agentic Wallets for Machine Transactions

On March 9, Brian Armstrong posted on X explaining that AI agents will soon outnumber humans in financial activity. He argued that traditional banks cannot serve AI because of the Know Your Customer requirements.

AI agents require payment capabilities to execute assigned tasks autonomously. Without bank accounts, agents cannot pay for services like server hosting or software tools.

Coinbase introduced Agentic Wallets on February 11, 2026, via its x402 protocol. The protocol is designed for machine-to-machine payments and has processed over 50 million transactions by the time of Armstrong’s post.

The wallets can be created and funded quickly through Coinbase developer tools. They also allow gasless trading on Base, Coinbase’s layer‑2 network built on Ethereum.

Armstrong emphasized that AI agents can own crypto wallets immediately, bypassing the human identity verification barrier. This capability positions crypto as a natural infrastructure for the coming machine economy.

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Other crypto leaders have shared similar views on AI-driven financial activity. Former Binance CEO Changpeng Zhao predicted that AI agents will produce millions of times more transactions than humans.

Industry Prepares for AI Agent Commerce

Traditional financial companies are developing systems to accommodate agent-driven transactions. Mastercard launched Verifiable Intent, a framework co-developed with Google, to track AI purchases securely.

The system creates a cryptographic record linking the consumer’s authorization, the AI agent’s action, and the transaction. It uses selective disclosure to share only the necessary information with merchants and issuers.

Meanwhile, crypto platforms continue to expand blockchain-based payment rails for AI agents. EigenCloud partnered with Google Cloud to serve as a verifiable backbone for agent transactions.

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The Ethereum Foundation also established the dAI Team to make Ethereum a preferred settlement layer for machine-driven commerce.

These efforts illustrate two approaches: traditional finance builds trust layers, while crypto platforms provide blockchain-native solutions.

Taken together, these developments indicate that AI agents are likely to rely on crypto wallets for autonomous transactions.

Coinbase’s Agentic Wallets and blockchain infrastructure offer immediate solutions for machine-to-machine financial operations.

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BitGo Partners with StableX to Support $100M Crypto Treasury Plan

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Western Union, NYSE

BitGo will provide custody and trading services for StableX Technologies’ digital asset treasury as it plans to acquire up to $100 million in crypto tokens tied to the stablecoin sector.

According to Tuesday’s announcement, BitGo Bank & Trust, N.A. will serve as the custodian for StableX’s digital asset holdings, while BitGo’s trading platforms will help execute the company’s planned acquisitions through its over-the-counter liquidity desk.

StableX (SBLX) is a publicly traded company focused on stablecoin infrastructure and related technologies. Shares of the Nasdaq-listed company gained as much as 9% in afternoon trading following the news, before closing up 1.6%.

Chen Fang, chief revenue officer at BitGo, told Cointelgraph that the “partnership underscores BitGo’s expanding role as the go-to infrastructure provider for a new wave of publicly traded companies building digital asset treasury strategies.” He added:

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“The StableX deal is notable because it goes beyond Bitcoin-centric treasury strategies. It signals demand for institutional custody infrastructure around stablecoin ecosystem tokens.”

StableX has already begun building its digital asset treasury, previously announcing purchases of tokens including FLUID and Chainlink’s LINK (LINK) in October.

BitGo, a digital asset infrastructure company founded in 2013, provides custody, trading and other services for institutional crypto clients. The company went public on the New York Stock Exchange in January, pricing its shares at $18 in its initial public offering.

The stock rose about 25% on its first day of trading before reversing course and later falling below its IPO price. The NYSE-traded shares closed up more than 11%.

Western Union, NYSE
Source: Yahoo Finance

Related: Societe Generale-FORGE launches EURCV stablecoin on Stellar

Investment products target stablecoin infrastructure

Interest in the stablecoin sector has grown as the total stablecoin market capitalization has climbed to more than $314 billion, according to the latest DefiLlama data. Though dedicated investment products remain limited, some investors are beginning to focus on the infrastructure that supports these tokens.

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In September, Bitwise filed with the US Securities and Exchange Commission to launch a Stablecoin & Tokenization ETF designed to track companies and digital assets tied to the stablecoin and tokenization sectors.

The proposed exchange-traded fund would follow an index composed of companies involved in stablecoin issuance, infrastructure, payments and exchanges, alongside crypto assets such as Bitcoin (BTC) and Ether (ETH).

Western Union, NYSE
Stablecoin market cap. Source: DefiLlama

In January, MarketVector Indexes also launched benchmarks focused on stablecoin and real-world asset tokenization infrastructure, which underpin two exchange-traded funds from Amplify ETFs: the Amplify Tokenization Technology ETF (TKNQ) and the Amplify Stablecoin Technology ETF (STBQ).

Several stablecoin issuers are also publicly traded companies. Circle issues the USDC stablecoin, the second-largest dollar-pegged token in circulation, while PayPal launched its PayPal USD stablecoin (PYUSD) in 2023 to support blockchain-based payments and settlement.

Western Union, one of the world’s largest remittance providers, recently announced its planned stablecoin settlement system will run on Solana and include a US Dollar Payment Token (USDPT), which the company expects to launch in the first half of 2026.

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