Bitwise Chief Investment Officer: Hundreds of companies will buy Bitcoin within the next year and a half
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Bitwise Chief Investment Officer: Hundreds of companies will buy Bitcoin within the next year and a half
Not just MicroStrategy—corporate Bitcoin purchases are a major trend, one powerful enough to significantly boost the Bitcoin market this year.
Navigating Web3 tides with focused insightsAuthor: Matt Hougan, Chief Investment Officer at Bitwise
Translation: Luffy, Foresight News
In this week’s memo, I want to highlight one area where I believe conventional wisdom is wrong—and that is:
MicroStrategy’s purchase of Bitcoin hasn’t received nearly enough attention.
I know what you’re thinking: “Not enough attention? This company and its founder Michael Saylor are media darlings.”
That’s true. But most investors I speak with seem to view the company as an outlier—an unusual entity with a unique founder doing something no one else would do.
They’re wrong.
Over the past few months, I’ve dug deep into the phenomenon of corporations buying and holding Bitcoin as a reserve asset, and I’ve concluded this trend is far broader than most people realize. In fact, I believe it's a genuine macro trend.
My prediction: over the next 12–18 months, hundreds of companies will begin buying Bitcoin, and their collective purchases will significantly lift the entire Bitcoin market.
Here are three reasons why this trend is more important than most imagine.
Reason 1: MicroStrategy’s impact alone is staggering
MicroStrategy isn’t an especially large company. By market cap, it currently ranks 220th globally—slightly larger than Chipotle, slightly smaller than paint maker Sherwin-Williams.
Last year, MicroStrategy purchased approximately 257,000 bitcoins. Is that a lot? Or a little?
To put that in perspective: it’s more than all the newly mined Bitcoin in 2024 (218,829 BTC).
Let me repeat that: a company the size of Chipotle bought more Bitcoin in 2024 than the entire year’s new supply.
And they’re not stopping. MicroStrategy recently announced plans to raise over $42 billion to buy even more Bitcoin. At current prices, that’s roughly equivalent to 2.6 years’ worth of new supply.
So ask yourself: what happens when truly massive companies follow suit? Meta, the metaverse platform currently considering shareholder proposals to add Bitcoin to its balance sheet, is 20 times larger than MicroStrategy.
Reason 2: The trend has long since moved beyond MicroStrategy
MicroStrategy gets all the headlines, but it’s far from alone. Today, 70 publicly traded companies hold Bitcoin on their balance sheets—and so do many private firms (Bitwise included, by the way).
The public list includes well-known crypto firms like Coinbase and Marathon Digital, as well as non-crypto companies like Block, Tesla, Semler Scientific, and Mercado Libre. These companies (excluding MicroStrategy) collectively hold 141,302 BTC.
Private companies aren’t required to report their holdings, but according to BitcoinTreasuries.com, voluntarily disclosed holdings (by firms like SpaceX and Block.one) amount to at least 368,043 BTC.
This means that even today, MicroStrategy accounts for less than 50% of corporate Bitcoin holdings. I expect its share to shrink further over time.
Reason 3: The number of Bitcoin-buying companies is about to surge
I’m writing this memo today because I believe the number of companies holding Bitcoin on their balance sheets is about to explode.
Why? Until earlier this year, two major factors held companies back from joining the trend.
The first was reputational risk. As recently as last year, a CEO at a large public company faced serious headwinds when proposing Bitcoin as a treasury asset. Negative press, shareholder lawsuits, regulatory scrutiny—the board simply wouldn’t approve it. The same institutional barriers that kept asset allocators away from Bitcoin for years also applied to corporations.
But over the past several months, reputational risk has dramatically declined. After the election, with top levels of Washington embracing crypto, holding Bitcoin has become increasingly normal and acceptable. That shift alone should double the number of companies buying Bitcoin.
But there’s a second—and even bigger—factor at play.
Starting in December last year, the Financial Accounting Standards Board (FASB), which governs how public companies report financials, implemented a new rule called ASU 2023-08, changing how Bitcoin is accounted for under Generally Accepted Accounting Principles (GAAP).
Prior to this year, under GAAP, Bitcoin was treated as an “intangible asset” subject to “impairment testing.” This meant companies had to record Bitcoin at cost upon purchase, write it down if the price fell—but were prohibited from marking it up if the price rose.
I know that sounds insane, but it was true. Now, under ASU 2023-08, that’s changed. Companies can now mark Bitcoin to market and recognize gains.
If 70 companies were willing to put Bitcoin on their balance sheets when accounting rules only allowed values to go down, just imagine how many will do so now. 200? 500? 1,000?
Conclusion: Why companies are buying Bitcoin
Many remain skeptical of this trend because they get hung up on the question of *why* companies are buying Bitcoin.
We all understand why MicroStrategy does it—it’s core to their mission. But why would a thriving medical device company like Semler Scientific participate?
I’ve asked myself this question repeatedly over the past few months. Then one day it hit me: companies are buying Bitcoin for the exact same reasons individual investors do.
Some are greedy, hoping Bitcoin on the balance sheet will boost their stock price. Some fear dollar depreciation and want to protect cash over the long term. Others want to signal alignment with Bitcoin to attract customers. Some may just be following intuition.
There are many motivations—and it doesn’t matter. As an investor, you don’t need to understand why every institution, financial advisor, or retail investor buys Bitcoin. You just need to look at the numbers and ask yourself two questions: where is this corporate demand headed? And what does that mean for the market?
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