Strategy has spent recent weeks rebuying 5,553 of the BTC it sold over the summer. After selling low in the summer and re-buying high this autumn, the opportunity cost of its roundtrip trade exceeds $100 million.

Despite years of promises that he’d never sell, Michael Saylor’s company sold 6,948 BTC between May and August for an average of $62,150 apiece, then repurchased 5,553 coins at an average $80,207.

In other words, Strategy ended up with the same 5,553 coins it started with, but spent $445.4 million to replace those it sold for $345.1 million.

Its rebuy was 29% more expensive, foregoing a $100.2 million investment gain for being out of the market during a BTC rally.

In addition to that realized opportunity cost, the pain for shareholders goes even deeper.

The point of the sale was essentially for media purposes — not even because the company was short on cash. Indeed, on a May 5 call with analysts, Saylor said the company would sell BTC “just to inoculate the market” and send the message for news publications that it had done so. 

He told Fortune, “the skeptics and the short-sellers don’t recognize that we’re just selling a BTC derivative, and we have the option to sell the BTC.” 

Saylor and CEO Phong Le appeared on numerous TV interviews and podcasts, explaining that Strategy’s initial BTC sale was for messaging purposes. 

Official SEC filings for the sales claimed that proceeds funded dividends, despite the company holding plenty of cash to cover those dividends without selling BTC.

Over the past 18 months, the vast majority of publicly traded companies that pivoted to a BTC treasury strategy have lost money since their initial purchase announcement. 

Globally, nearly 200 public companies hold BTC, according to monitoring service Bitcoin Treasuries, although most have small market capitalizations.

Many adopted their digital asset treasury DAT during a brief mania in the summer of 2025. 

By late July 2025, every new BTC treasury stock was trading below its highest price of the year, and the median drawdown was -52%. Things have only deteriorated since.

Many stocks have now declined more than 90% to date, and some are even delisted from trading entirely.

Even Protos’ generous analysis below, charting the 20 largest BTC treasury stocks which have disproportionate positive performance among their far more numerous peers, shows 12 losses.

The top 20 bitcoin treasury stocks since March 2025

Relative to 18 months ago, the majority of non-mining BTC treasury stocks have negative returns. Mining stocks are excluded here due to their continuous acquisition of BTC through energy-intensive operations and consistent sales of BTC to pay for their power, infrastructure, and personnel.

The price of BTC itself is roughly flat, up less than 3% over the same time span, which allows the chart to speak for itself.

The median 18-month return of this cohort of 20 stocks is roughly -18%.

Five of the 20 have lost more than half their starting value, including several nearly “pure play” BTC treasuries like Remixpoint and Genius Group that planned minimal business operations aside from BTC acquisition during their initial optimism.

If someone had invested an equal amount of money into all 20 stocks 18 months ago, their portfolio would be worth less than its starting value today.

Pure play BTC treasuries

Worse, the returns would be even more negative for pure play BTC stocks, given that the best performers of the cohort — Tesla (+59.8%), Galaxy Digital (+114%), and Norwegian industrial conglomerate Aker (+181%) — have diversified business operations that aided their outperformance for reasons unrelated to BTC.

As a general rule, the more the company-focused on BTC, the worse the stock performed.

Heavily BTC-focused companies like Fold Holdings lost 91% since March 2025, Exodus Movement lost 83%, and Strategy, Semler, Metaplanet, Remixpoint, and Genius Group each lost more than 40%. 

Even Michael Saylor’s $85 billion Strategy, the market leader, has shed half of its common stock price over the past year.

The biggest winner over the past 18 months, Aker ASA, is up 182% despite its BTC unit, Seetee, holding just 0.4% of Aker’s total assets.

It’s no secret that Wall Street analysts are very bullish on Rocket Lab (NASDAQ: RKLB). The majority rate the stock a buy with an average price target of about $109 per share. This is substantially higher than where the stock is trading as of this writing, at about $64.

Rocket Lab also just posted record revenue numbers in its latest quarterly earnings. Revenue increased 62% year over year, the space company’s backlog ballooned to more than $2.3 billion, and momentum is strongly on Rocket Lab’s side. Still, I’m not quite ready to jump on board.

Missed AI’s “Act 1”? Act 2 Could Be 15x Bigger. Most investors think they missed the AI boat because they didn’t buy Nvidia in 2005. But according to our analysts, we’re only at the end of “Act 1″—the R&D phase. “Act 2” is the global rollout. Continue »

Let’s start with the bottom line. Rocket Lab isn’t close to profitable, and it looks like the prospect of becoming profitable is slipping further into the distance. The company’s second-quarter earnings report showed total operating expenses accelerating from the year prior, reaching $142 million in the quarter and $274 million halfway through the year.

Rocket Lab’s management expects cash burn to remain elevated for roughly the two years after its Neutron’s first successful flight. The Neutron inaugural launch keeps getting pushed back as well. Its original target launch was slated for 2025, but even its latest target of Q4 2026 seems likely to slip again to 2027.

Rocket Lab is also facing significant integration risk at the moment, having completed two acquisitions in 2026 and about to close another deal with Iridium Communications, which will add even more complexity.

Rocket Lab is positioning itself for immense growth in the coming years, particularly in a relatively nascent space. Still, profitability is getting pushed further out while the execution risk grows. I would like to see the company navigate these immediate issues before paying for a stock trading at an immense premium. Shares of Rocket Lab are trading at roughly 50 times its sales as of this writing.

Missed Nvidia in 2009? This Rare Signal Is Flashing Again

In 2009, a “Double Down” signal flashed for a little-known chipmaker called Nvidia. If you’d invested $5,000 then, you’d be sitting on $2,955,706 today.*

Now, for the first time in years, that same “Total Conviction” signal is flashing for a company 1/100th the size of Nvidia. It’s a key player in the $1.8 trillion space race, and with the stock recently sitting 20% off its highs, the window to get in early is closing fast.

Last week’s US Senate failure to advance a digital asset market structure bill could light a fire under cryptocurrency industry groups seeking to sway key congressional races in the 2026 US midterm election that‘s just 42 days away.

Senators on Sept. 15 voted 49 in favor and 50 against advancing the Digital Asset Market Clarity (CLARITY) Act, significantly reducing the chances of Congress passing the legislation with limited days in session before 2027.

While some crypto advocates haven’t ruled out the possibility of CLARITY coming up for another vote before the next session of Congress, at least one of the industry’s political action committees (PACs) isn’t taking any chances.

One PAC backed by Coinbase and Ripple Labs, Fairshake, now plans to pour $30 million into opposing Sherrod Brown in Ohio’s Senate race. Brown chaired the Senate Banking Committee when Democrats were in the majority and espoused many policies against crypto, making his potential return a challenge to another vote.

“[If Brown] wins, he might well be the deciding vote or one of the two deciding votes in a Democratic majority in the Senate,“ wrote economist Paul Krugman in a Tuesday Substack post. “And we now know that the Democratic Party is not clean as the driven snow. It is not immune to financial influence. It’s not even immune to de facto bribery from crypto.“

Steve Gannon, a partner at law firm Davis Wright Tremaine, told Cointelegraph that the CLARITY vote “provided the industry with a very clear picture of who are long-term reliable supporters and who are not,“ adding:

“It will be difficult for those who voted against Clarity to make the case that the industry should support them financially in the midterms.“

Related: CLARITY Act could get another shot during lame-duck session, policy advocate says

The former Ohio senator lost his 2024 reelection bid to Republican Bernie Moreno after Fairshake spent about $41 million opposing the Democrat. The PAC also spent more than $130 million on ads in the 2024 election cycle, offering a preview for how it might respond when faced with the threat of CLARITY not passing before the midterms.

Cointelegraph requested comments from Brown’s campaign but did not receive an immediate response.

How will the crypto industry react to CLARITY votes in the midterms?

Stand With Crypto, an initiative launched by Coinbase in 2023, warned that lawmakers who failed to advance the CLARITY Act in Congress last week could face “consequences” in the 2026 midterms based on their votes.

The organization responsible for rating politicians based on their positions on crypto could have a significant impact on the elections and on how PACs aligned with the industry use funds to target certain candidates, potentially influencing voters in an election year that could shake up control of the Senate and House of Representatives and give the market structure bill another chance of passing.

“The results of [the CLARITY Act] vote make it clear which officials are with our community, and which are against us — and we’ll make sure our advocates are ready to cast their ballots accordingly in this and future elections,” said Stand With Crypto executive director Mason Lynaugh.

As of Monday, Fairshake and its affiliate PACs Defend American Jobs and Protect Progress had not disclosed any expenditures to the Federal Election Commission (FEC) following the CLARITY vote.

FEC filings also showed no post-CLARITY spending by Fellowship, another crypto-aligned PAC funded by Cantor Fitzgerald and Anchorage Digital, or the Digital Freedom Fund, a group backed by Gemini co-founders Tyler and Cameron Winklevoss.

Magazine: Is there any chance left to save the CLARITY Act?

Six of Canada’s largest banks are exploring a Canadian-dollar tokenized deposit system designed to move money faster between financial institutions and eventually connect with other digital asset initiatives, TD Bank announced Tuesday.

Bank of Montreal, Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce, National Bank of Canada, Royal Bank of Canada, Scotiabank and TD Bank Group form the joint venture, whose first phase focuses on moving tokenized deposits across participating banks. The joint statement said more banks could join the project later.

“The first phase of the project aims to move tokenized deposits efficiently across Canadian financial institutions with a longer-term goal to connect with other emerging digital assets initiatives,” they said.

The participating banks are collectively known as Canada’s Big Six: the dominant group in the country’s banking system, with operations spanning consumer banking, commercial lending, capital markets and wealth management.

The banks said the project aims to offer faster, more efficient and programmable payments to Canadian customers while preserving financial stability and regulatory oversight.