Strategy's stock plunged nearly 50% in a rough year for bitcoin
When President Trump's election victory in November 2024 sent the crypto markets surging and pushed bitcoin above $100K for the first time in its history, there seemed to be little getting in the way of its rally.
In 2025, Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) Chairman Paul Atkins ushered in a much friendlier regulatory approach to the crypto industry, and the landmark passage of the GENIUS Act gave the US its first legal framework around stablecoins.
Meanwhile, Trump signed an executive order in March that established a strategic bitcoin reserve in the United States, with an aim “to make America the bitcoin superpower of the world.”
And the mainstreaming of crypto, especially bitcoin, entered the corporate world as numerous companies launched digital asset treasury (DAT) strategies.
That sought to emulate the playbook laid out by Michael Saylor, who began aggressively buying BTC in 2020, turning his software company MicroStrategy (MSTR) into a bitcoin treasury company.
In 2021, fewer than 10 companies held bitcoin (BTC) in their treasuries, according to data from DLA Piper. Four years later, there are now 190 companies with BTC in their treasuries, with another 10 to 20 companies that have alternative digital assets on their balance sheets.
However, one lesson that can be taken away from 2025 is that despite increased regulatory clarity and despite growing support among the highest levels of government, crypto remains a highly volatile asset class.
There is perhaps no better example of these inherent risks than Saylor's own company, now called Strategy, whose shares lost nearly 50% of their value over the past year.
Questions raised about viability of DATs
Consider when bitcoin hit its record peak of $126,223 on Oct. 7, Strategy's stock closed at $359.69. On the last day of the year, MSTR shares had fallen to $151.95.
The stock fell 49.4% over the past year and 59.3% over the last six months of 2025. It was the first six-month losing streak for Strategy's shares since Saylor launched his bitcoin treasury strategy in 2020, according to CoinDesk.
This of course coincides with bitcoin's own slide, which has dropped 33.2% since its October peak.
Saylor has always maintained that volatility "is a feature, not a bug" of bitcoin, and he has not let the downturn scare him off from ramping up his BTC holdings.
In a post on x on Dec. 29, he noted that Strategy acquired 1,229 additional BTC for $108.8 million. The company was holding 672,497 BTC as of Dec. 28.
However, Strategy is expected to report a multi-billion dollar loss when it reports its fourth quarter earnings, as Bloomberg reported.
Even more concerning for investors is that the value of the company is close to falling below the value of its bitcoin stockpile, "underscoring the growing doubts about the sustainability of the corporate-treasury model," Bloomberg noted.
Not surprisingly, it was also a bad year for most of the companies that followed Saylor's lead and jumped on the DAT bandwagon in 2025, with many suffering significant losses on their holdings.
But bitcoin bulls like ARK Invest founder Cathie Wood remain undeterred, with Wood telling Fox Business last month that BTC may have hit its floor and is due for another rally.
Her confidence stems from the money that has poured into crypto from institutional investors, which she sees as stabilizing the asset class despite its recent volatility.
She noted that bitcoin "regularly dropped 75-90% in its early days," but that extreme volatility has tapered off.
“We think that the move by institutions into this new asset class is going to prevent much more of a decline,” Wood said. “We may have seen the low a couple of weeks ago.”