MicroStrategy is bad at timing the market

Bitcoin treasury company Strategy accounted for as much as 97.5% of all bitcoin purchases in January made by public companies, “single‑handedly bringing sector‑wide buying back to levels last seen in late summer,” according to a Thursday research report from data analytics firm Bitcoin Treasuries.

Strategy ended last month with 712,647 BTC on its balance sheet, or $47.9 billion, buying 40,150 BTC in January.

MSTR, Strategy’s class A common stock, is trading under the $122 level, while the price of bitcoin sits at the $67,800 mark, both down around 20% since the start of the year.

Meanwhile, asset manager Geode Capital Management boosted its exposure to Strategy and also bought into Trump-backed American Bitcoin, a 13F SEC filing on Monday shows. 

The investment firm, which has over $1 trillion in assets under management, added 175,343 shares of Strategy’s class A common stock since the previous quarter, bringing its total MSTR share count to 3.9 million, worth $477.4 million.

Geode also acquired 1.6 million shares of American Bitcoin, worth $1.8 million, a change from last quarter when the firm didn’t have a stake in the Trump-backed bitcoin treasury firm.

Crypto lending and trading platform BlockFills has halted customer withdrawals amid the current market downturn, according to The Wall Street Journal, a development that recalls the broader meltdown of the 2022 crypto bear market, albeit on a much smaller scale.

This morning, bitcoin dipped below $67,000, and it was hovering around that level midafternoon, struggling to recover from last week’s bloodbath.

“BlockFills is working tirelessly to bring this matter to a conclusion and will continue to regularly update our clients as developments warrant,” a spokesperson told the WSJ.

The Chicago-based, Susquehanna-backed company’s “suspension was put in place last week but remains in effect,” the Financial Times reported Wednesday.

The company, which serves institutional clients, handled $60 billion in trading volume in 2025, per the FT. 

Ethan Buchman, CEO of Cycles, told Sherwood News that BlockFills halting withdrawals is a harsh reminder that, despite changes since the panic of 2022, the crypto industry still has a long way to go in developing off-chain risk infrastructure with stronger standards for underwriting, clearing, and settlement.

Holders of spot ethereum ETFs are in more pain than bitcoin investors. 

The price of ethereum stands around $1,940 as of Wednesday morning, representing about a 45% drop from $3,500, the average cost basis of spot ethereum ETF holders, according to Bloomberg ETF analyst James Seyffart. 

The losses of ethereum ETF holders are larger than bitcoin fund investors based on available data. Bitcoin is trading at $68,822, representing an 18% slide from the the cost basis for all its ETFs of $83,983, data from Glassnode shows. 

While facing larger losses than their bitcoin ETF peers, the vast majority of ethereum ETF buyers have stayed put. “The net inflows into the ETH ETFs have gone from about $15 billion down below $12 billion. This is a much worse selloff than the Bitcoin ETFs on a relative basis, but still fairly decent diamond hands in grand scheme (for now),” Seyffart said on Tuesday on X.