Quarterly losses were huge, but the selloff never came
Crypto treasury companies, or DATs, just finished a brutal earnings season. Strategy reported a net loss of $8.22 billion for the second quarter, including an $8.32 billion fair-value markdown on its Bitcoin holdings. Strive lost $258 million, with more than 90% of that tied to Bitcoin and the drop in the value of its STRC preferred shares. Sharplink posted a $394 million loss. Metaplanet lost 182.8 billion yen, or about $1.15 billion, in the first half, including roughly $430 million in the second quarter alone. Bitmine, whose fiscal year ends in August, lost $83.6 million in its March-to-May quarter, but its net loss over the past nine months has topped $9 billion. Together, the five companies lost about $10 billion in the second quarter and more than $30 billion in the first half.
A year ago, that kind of report would have triggered panic. This time, it did not. Strategy rose 4.73% on the day it reported earnings, even though the options market had priced an 8% move in either direction. From their June lows, Bitmine rebounded about 36%, Sharplink about 37%, while Strategy and Strive both gained more than 10%. Metaplanet recovered roughly 15% from its late-June trough.
The losses were expected. The real debate is per-share crypto exposure
Few investors were surprised that these DATs would post ugly second-quarter numbers. The only question was whether the combined loss would be closer to $100 billion or $99 billion. Large treasury companies are watched with unusual intensity. Their financing moves, every Bitcoin or Ether purchase and sale, are tracked closely by the market. By the time earnings arrive, the damage has already been seen.
What has changed is the metric investors care about. DATs are no longer being judged on a simple growth story. The focus has shifted to how much crypto sits behind each share.
Strategy raised $8.4 billion in the quarter, more than in any quarter last year. In May, it repurchased $1.5 billion of convertible debt at 92% of face value, cutting total convertibles from $8.2 billion to $6.7 billion. Its dollar reserves rose to $3.75 billion, enough to cover 2.1 years of preferred dividends and interest. Sharplink completed a $75 million private placement at a premium to net asset value in June, then bought back its own stock at an average price of $4.70.
The message from earnings guidance and conference calls was nearly identical across the group: increase the amount of crypto represented by each share. Last year, the DAT trade was simple — buy faster, rally harder. This year, the survivors have replaced that logic with a single KPI: per-share crypto holdings. Strategy grew Bitcoin per share by 5% sequentially in the second quarter. Metaplanet raised fully diluted Bitcoin per 1,000 shares by 9.6% in the first half. Sharplink kept stressing higher ETH exposure per share.
That target comes with discipline. Metaplanet now follows a capital allocation rule: issue stock to buy Bitcoin when mNAV is above 1x, stop issuing when it falls below 1x, and switch to preferred shares, credit tools or even buybacks. Because its mNAV fell below 1x in the second quarter, the company abandoned a third-party placement and accepted slower growth in holdings rather than dilute shareholders at a discount. Sharplink and Strategy also launched buybacks. The old reflex of expansion at any cost is gone; the question is now simple: how do you make each share back more coin?
Strategy even paid a price for that shift, straining its long-standing promise never to sell Bitcoin. Its stock has also been the weakest performer among the main DAT names. Moving from euphoria to discipline is rarely painless.
STRC has spawned imitators
The newest tool behind that discipline is STRC, the perpetual preferred stock Strategy introduced in July 2025. It is tied to a $100 par value and pays a dividend that resets monthly. The pitch is straightforward: offer roughly 12% annualized income to investors looking for yield, then use the money to buy Bitcoin. By the end of the second quarter this year, STRC had grown from a notional size of $2.8 billion at the start of the year to $10.5 billion. Institutional ownership rose from $1.1 billion to $3.1 billion, lifting its share to 29%.
The copycats have already arrived. Strive raised SATA's dividend yield to 13% and, on June 16, became the first U.S.-listed security to pay dividends every business day. By early August it had made 44 consecutive payments and kept trading near par, while also using the structure to pay off all debt. Bitmine issued BMNP in June, a perpetual preferred stock with a 9.5% dividend, raising $274 million. Metaplanet's MERCURY preferred shares have raised 21.2 billion yen. Its MARS line was delayed because of Japanese dividend preferences, but in August the company pivoted to BitBonds, a bond plan offering more than 4% annual interest and aimed at building a local version of digital credit.
Sharplink is the only one of the five that did not follow that path. Instead, it has staked nearly 890,000 Ether, using native staking yield and on-chain funds to scale its position, including an on-chain yield fund with Galaxy and $125 million in committed capital. That still fits the same goal: increasing the amount of crypto behind each share.
Premiums are fading, but the model is not going away
The other side of a return to discipline is the disappearance of premium. Strategy's enterprise-value-to-net-asset-value ratio briefly fell below 1x in June. Sharplink's market value is still below the value of its Ether holdings. Metaplanet has been forced to scale back fundraising because of its discount. The premium that DAT stocks once traded at relative to their crypto holdings is drifting lower, and that looks hard to reverse.
Even if a bull market returns tomorrow, the market may not be willing to lose its head again.
That does not mean the model is dead. It means the model is visible. Once the narrative is stripped away, DATs are basically actively managed thematic funds with financing tools attached. They make money through long-term compounding in per-share exposure. There is a buyer for that product. According to 13F filings, 13 of the 15 largest institutional holders of MSTR added shares during the first quarter as the stock fell, increasing holdings by $4.6 billion in total; Capital International alone added $1.92 billion. Jane Street expanded its MSTR position by 473% in the fourth quarter last year. Bitmine is backed by Founders Fund and ARK, and Sharplink's institutional ownership rose from 6% to 46% over the past year.
A quarterly loss of $10 billion did not kill DATs. It pushed them out of mania and back into business. Once falling coin prices no longer scare shareholders away, and companies start counting every fraction of a coin behind each share, the sector has finally grown up.