Struggling token buyers repurchase their own shares to prop up valuations, signaling fatigue in 2025’s digital‑asset treasury boom

The hot trade of 2025—rebranding sleepy small caps and niche industrials as “digital‑asset treasuries”—is running into a wall. After months of raising cash to scoop up bitcoin, ether and a grab bag of altcoins, a growing cohort of publicly listed companies is deploying a different tool from the corporate finance playbook: the share buyback. Their message to investors is blunt: if you won’t pay up for our tokens, we’ll shrink the share count and try to force the multiple to rise.

This pivot caps a whiplash year. The so‑called “crypto treasury” model rewarded early movers as bitcoin notched fresh highs, drawing in dozens of companies that sold stock or issued convertibles to fund token purchases they promised to hold like crown jewels on the balance sheet. Now that enthusiasm has cooled, market values for several of these “DATs”—digital‑asset treasury companies—have slipped below the mark‑to‑market value of their coins, a reversal that undermines the original pitch. Analysts say the buyback wave is the surest sign yet that the strategy’s center of gravity is shifting from growth to damage control.

The shift has become visible across mining, fintech and a medley of corporate pivots. In July, Canadian miner Bitfarms authorized a normal course issuer bid to repurchase up to 10% of its public float over the next year—an explicit attempt to signal confidence after the post‑halving squeeze and a bruising boardroom fight. The announcement briefly popped the stock, but it also framed a tougher conversation about what investors are buying: operating cash flow from mining and high‑performance computing, or exposure to a corporate bitcoin hoard.

Meanwhile, a broader reckoning is underway. Through early September, shares in several high‑profile bitcoin buyers sank even as the coin itself held firm, stoking worries that the trade’s incremental demand is fading. “The market is saturated,” as one prominent digital‑asset executive put it in August, predicting fewer new entrants to the treasury strategy even if incumbents soldier on. That cooling is forcing boards to use old‑school capital returns to keep generalist investors engaged.

Buybacks can make sense—on paper. If a company’s market cap slips below the fair value of its token pile net of debt, every dollar used to retire stock theoretically buys more than a dollar of intrinsic value. But for many 2025 pivots, that arithmetic glosses over thorny realities. First, not all tokens are created equal. Bitcoin’s narrative as “pristine collateral” gained institutional ground this year; altcoins remain cyclical, thinly traded and bound up with venture unlocks and ecosystem incentives. Second, liquidity and tax frictions matter. The steeper the haircut to realize coin proceeds, the less compelling the repurchase math. Third, governance and disclosure vary widely, and investors have learned the hard way that crypto treasury plays without clear risk controls tend to trade at chronic discounts.

Consider the recent deal‑making rush. In September, one high‑profile acquirer said it would add thousands of bitcoins via an all‑stock transaction that also folds in a non‑crypto operating business—a reminder that M&A is now a conduit to bulk up treasuries as much as a path to industrial synergies. Those headlines thrilled crypto‑native investors, but they also highlighted the fault line in equity markets: the more a company becomes a pass‑through vehicle for tokens, the more its multiple is chained to coin prices—and the less patience generalists have for operating misses.

For miners, the calculus is especially delicate. Post‑halving economics compressed gross margins just as energy and equipment costs rose, pushing management teams to diversify into AI‑adjacent data‑center services. Authorizing buybacks in that context is a bet that the market underestimates both the emergent infrastructure business and the embedded option on coin appreciation. Yet it also diverts cash that might otherwise secure power contracts, prepay rigs or build out capacity—investments with clearer return pathways than hoping a shrinking float will close a valuation gap.

Outside mining, the picture is messier. An oddball parade of micro‑caps—from medical diagnostics to recreational vehicles—spent early 2025 buying tokens to re‑rate their shares. Some succeeded spectacularly for a time; many now nurse drawdowns that dwarf crypto’s own pullbacks. Several of these companies have announced buyback programs financed with fresh debt or by reallocating proceeds initially raised to purchase tokens. The optics aren’t flattering: boards that leaned on equity dilution to buy coins are now leaning on leverage to retire the same shares at higher prices.

The investment case for buybacks comes down to three questions. First, what is the “true” discount to net asset value after haircuts for liquidity and tax? Crypto treasuries can look rich on paper but be costly to liquidate or rebalance. Second, is there an operating engine that can compound capital independent of token prices? Without it, the equity behaves like a closed‑end fund—perennially vulnerable to discounts and activist pressure. Third, is management willing to run counter‑cyclical? The only time buybacks add real value is when boards repurchase aggressively into weakness and slow or stop when euphoria returns.

Investors are already distinguishing between models. Companies with long‑lived infrastructure, steady cash generation and conservative token policies still find demand for their stock. Those that pivoted primarily to harvest a narrative premium are discovering that narrative has a half‑life. The result is a split market: one camp using buybacks as part of a balanced capital return framework, the other using them as life support.

There are, of course, notable exceptions and experiments. Avalanche’s ecosystem has pushed for institutional‑style digital‑asset treasury programs, and some firms continue to raise sizable war chests to accumulate specific tokens as a strategic asset. Elsewhere, entrepreneurial financiers are stitching together roll‑ups and reverse mergers designed to super‑size crypto treasuries overnight. These moves keep the dream alive for true believers and ensure a steady stream of headlines. Yet they also raise a fresh round of questions about shareholder protections, conflicts of interest and the boundary between public‑company disclosure and crypto‑native opacity.

The lesson from 2025’s pivot is not that crypto on corporate balance sheets is dead. It is that capital markets eventually demand clarity: are you a business that happens to own crypto, or a levered bet on tokens masquerading as an operating company? Share buybacks can’t answer that question; they can only buy time. For firms in the first camp, time may be all that’s needed for strategy to play out. For the rest, time is a luxury they can’t afford.

What to watch next: earnings season and buyback execution. Boards that trumpet large authorizations but nibble in the market will get little credit. Companies that disclose a rules‑based framework—buybacks triggered when discounts to net assets breach defined thresholds, for instance—will be rewarded with lower uncertainty premia. And if bitcoin keeps grinding while the “treasury trade” loses incremental zeal, expect greater pressure for consolidation, conversions into fund‑like structures, or even liquidations that distribute tokens directly to shareholders.

2025 may be remembered as the year crypto finance and corporate finance truly met—sometimes elegantly, often awkwardly. The buyback boom is the awkward part. Whether it matures into something more disciplined will determine if this crop of crypto‑hoarding issuers becomes a durable asset class or a cautionary footnote to yet another exuberant cycle.