Bitcoin treasury companies acquired 244,991 BTC in the first half of 2025: K33

Also, only three tokens have outperformed bitcoin so far this year: XMR, HYPE and SKY

article-image

Kojiz Foto/Shutterstock and Adobe modified by Blockworks

share

This is a segment from the Empire newsletter. To read full editions, subscribe.


We’re over halfway through the year, so let’s do a little recap, shall we?

I mentioned K33’s H1 report in an intro the other day, but there’s a lot of interesting data to digest.

Such as the fact that the bitcoin treasury companies acquired a whopping 244,991 bitcoin by the end of June, which marked the official transition from H1 to H2. 

Not to mention that the number of treasury companies, perhaps unsurprisingly, almost doubled by the end of the first half. At the beginning of the year, there were 70 firms with bitcoin on their balance sheet, but that quickly ballooned to 134. 

Source: K33

Companies from the US, Canada, Japan and UK are at the top of the list when it comes to companies pivoting to a bitcoin treasury strategy, but the total sum is made up of companies from 27 countries, according to K33. That gives you a rough idea of how global this is, though the US tops the chart with 41 public companies. 

But it’s not all about bitcoin treasury firms or even just bitcoin. A lot has happened this year, as both Securitize CEO Carlos Domingo and Bitwise CEO Hunter Horsley were eager to point out to us just this week. 

In the first half of the year, USDT and USDC’s circulating supply grew by $38 billion as folks flocked to the stablecoin narrative. 

Source: K33

Unfortunately, if you take stablecoins out of the mix, then only nine of the top 50 cryptos saw positive returns in H1, showing that altcoins are still struggling to find their footing in a market dominated by bitcoin and stablecoins. 

Of that nine, K33 noted that three specifically outperformed bitcoin: XMR, HYPE and SKY. 

Source: K33

So it looks like the momentum still isn’t there for an altcoin season. Looking ahead though, there may be some hope on the horizon if some of these altcoin ETFs are approved, which could happen by the end of this year, as we previously reported

K33 noted that H2 tends to be the stronger half for bitcoin seasonally, and we have other tailwinds such as more crypto IPOs to follow in Circle’s footsteps and we could get some more information on the proposed US strategic bitcoin reserve.

Not to mention the role that regulation could play, especially as lawmakers on the Hill discuss the crypto bills this week. 

So there’s still a lot of gas left in the tank — let’s see where it takes us.


Get the news in your inbox. Explore Blockworks newsletters:

Tags

Decoding crypto and the markets. Daily, with Byron Gilliam.

Upcoming Events

Old Billingsgate

Mon - Wed, October 13 - 15, 2025

Blockworks’ Digital Asset Summit (DAS) will feature conversations between the builders, allocators, and legislators who will shape the trajectory of the digital asset ecosystem in the US and abroad.

recent research

Unlocked by Template (10).png

Research

Innovations on Aptos’ technical design through Raptr, Shardines, and Zaptos approach near-optimal latency and throughput by unlocking 100% utilization of network resources, with the capacity to settle 260k transactions per second with latencies less than 800ms. The original Move language was revamped with the launch of Move 2, supporting more expressivity in smart contract logic and a scalable ability to interact with high volume datasets. The ecosystem has benefitted from strong asset inflows, now hosting over $1.3B in stablecoins, $450M in bridged BTC, and $530M in RWAs. Activity in the Aptos ecosystem has grown notably over the past year, with monthly application revenue reaching ~$835k and monthly DEX volumes growing to over $5B, both at new all time highs.

article-image

The fund group has submitted proposals in recent months for other funds that would hold litecoin, solana, XRP, HBAR, Sui and others

article-image

Momentum’s back — BTC leads, risk assets follow

article-image

Ondo Finance’s acquisition of blockchain development company Strangelove follows its buy of Oasis Pro

article-image

Cryptocurrency and stock traders alike had a lot to unpack Wednesday

article-image

The government says Storm was a money-hungry aid to criminals; the defense says it’s not his fault that people used his code for illicit activities.

article-image

EigenLayer, Lido and Taiko are buying verifiable compute