What was considered one of the best trades in the stock market at the beginning of the year has turned into one of the worst investments in just a few months.

Many publicly traded companies believed they had discovered a perpetual money-making machine: using corporate cash to buy Bitcoin or other digital tokens would send their stock prices soaring—sometimes even beyond the value of the tokens themselves.

This strategy was pioneered by Michael Saylor, who transformed his company, Strategy Inc., into a publicly traded Bitcoin holding platform. In the first half of 2025, over a hundred companies that followed Saylor’s lead reaped the benefits.

Dubbed "digital asset treasuries" (DATs), these firms became one of the hottest trends in public markets, attracting everyone from Peter Thiel to the Trump family as their share prices skyrocketed.

SharpLink Gaming Inc. saw its stock surge over 2600% in just days after announcing it would pivot from its gambling business, raise capital through share sales, and buy large amounts of Ethereum tokens. Its chairman happened to be one of Ethereum’s co-founders.

However, the argument that tokens should inherently gain value simply because they were held by public companies never held up. The derailed train initially slowed before accelerating out of control.

In SharpLink’s case, its stock has plunged 86% from its peak, leaving its total market capitalization below the value of its digital token holdings. The company’s current share price is just 0.9 times the value of its Ethereum stash. At least it avoided the fate of Greenlane Holdings, which, despite holding around $48 million worth of BERA tokens, has seen its stock crash over 99% this year.

Fedor Shabalin, an analyst at B.Riley Securities, noted in an interview, "Investors realized that holding these assets wasn’t yielding returns comparable to cash, so they started selling."

According to compiled data, the median stock price of U.S. and Canadian companies that converted to DATs has fallen 43% this year. In contrast, Bitcoin is down only about 6% since January.

Some luckier DATs still have market caps exceeding the value of their underlying assets, but for investors who bought near the peak, most are sitting on losses. Estimates suggest 70% of these DATs will end the year below their starting prices.

The worst performers were those that shunned Bitcoin in favor of smaller, more volatile tokens.