Bitcoin’s 'permanent buyers' are starting to sell

Cryptocurrency

Bitcoin’s ‘permanent buyers’ are starting to sell – Crypto News

Published

1 month ago

April 5, 2026

Dripp

Make preferred on

In July 2025, Genius Group announced it was targeting a Bitcoin treasury of 10,000 BTC, framing it as a statement of deep strategic conviction.

This week, however, the company sold its last 84 BTC to pay off $8.5 million in debt and declared its treasury empty. The 18-month gap between those two moments is a perfect example of what’s happening to the Bitcoin treasury trade right now.

Why this matters: The Bitcoin treasury narrative has been one of the market’s strongest structural bullish arguments. If corporate and sovereign holders behave like cyclical sellers rather than long-term accumulators, institutional adoption may amplify volatility instead of stabilizing it.

Public companies, including Empery, Genius Group, and Riot, have all sold Bitcoin this week, citing debt repayment, liquidity needs, or strategic pivots into AI and high-performance computing, while sovereign selling accelerates with Bhutan offloading more holdings.

Taken individually, each of these is an easily explainable non-event. But taken together, they expose a structural problem with a trade built on the promise of permanence: for a growing number of holders, Bitcoin is now the first asset they sell when the bills arrive.

The treasury trade rests on a simple pitch. Starting around 2020 and accelerating through 2024, publicly traded companies began buying Bitcoin with corporate cash or borrowed money and presenting it to investors as a reserve asset superior to inflation-eroded cash.

A few high-profile early movers delivered spectacular returns, and the strategy spread. Public companies now hold roughly 1.165 million bitcoin worth approximately $77 billion, more than five percent of the currency’s fixed supply of 21 million coins.

The problem is that a reserve asset only functions as advertised if the holder never needs the cash back.

Bitcoin treasury trade faces a new test after Nakamoto sold $20M at a loss

The sale turns paper losses into a funding test as markets start separating stronger Bitcoin treasury plays from weaker ones.

Mar 31, 2026 · Liam ‘Akiba’ Wright

In the Bitcoin treasury trade, the debt comes first

Riot Platforms, one of the largest publicly traded Bitcoin miners in the US, sold 5,363 BTC for approximately $535.5 million in 2025, with its annual filing explicitly tying retention decisions to cash requirements for operations and expansion.

An earlier filing had already disclosed 3,300 BTC pledged as collateral against a $200 million credit facility. Riot continues to tap its treasury to fund a pivot into AI and high-performance computing, a strategy increasingly seen across the mining industry.

MARA Holdings sold 15,133 BTC for around $1.1 billion in March, using the proceeds to retire approximately $1 billion of convertible senior notes. Empery Digital sold 370 BTC for $24.7 million and used the proceeds to repay its outstanding term loan in full, freeing 1,800 BTC it had previously posted as collateral. Its shares are down 75% from their 2025 high.

The sequence is consistent across all of them: Bitcoin accumulated during optimism, pledged when capital was needed, and liquidated when the debt came due.

It’s worth noting that the largest and best-capitalized players are still adding to their positions.

Metaplanet acquired 5,075 BTC in the first quarter of 2026, making it the third-largest corporate holder, while Strategy holds over 762,000 BTC as by far the largest treasury position in existence.

This tells us that the treasury trade isn’t collapsing uniformly, but sorting into two camps: deep-pocketed accumulators who can afford to wait, and cash-pressured sellers who discover, when conditions tighten, that their strategic reserve is their most liquid asset.

The reserve asset that was always too easy to sell

The Bitcoin treasury trade gets quite a bit of weight when sovereign actors enter it.

Bhutan, a small Himalayan kingdom, built one of the world’s more unusual government Bitcoin positions by mining it using surplus hydroelectric power at near-zero cost. The country’s stack has fallen from a peak of about 13,000 BTC in late 2024 to roughly 5,400 BTC, a 58% reduction, with activity managed by its state-owned investment arm, Druk Holding and Investments.