Hyperliquid in Profit as Strategy, Bitmine Bleed Billions
Crypto treasuries are underwater: Strategy down $12.8B, Bitmine $10.5B. Only Hyperliquid's HYPE treasury stays green, up $1.1B on fee-funded daily buybacks.
The treasury trade cracks — with one exception
The latest leg down in crypto has exposed the weakest link in last cycle's hottest equity story: the digital asset treasury (DAT) companies that loaded Bitcoin, Ether or Solana onto their balance sheets in the Strategy mold. With BTC and ETH grinding to multi-year lows, virtually every major treasury vehicle is now deep underwater on paper — every one, that is, except the firms built around Hyperliquid.
The marquee losses
Strategy (the former MicroStrategy) is carrying more than $12.8 billion in unrealized losses. It started buying near $10,000 a coin, but years of accumulation dragged its average cost up to roughly $75,000 per bitcoin — a mark the market has now slipped well below.
The damage is heavier at Bitmine, the world's largest ether treasury. The company holds over 5.4 million ETH, worth about $8.6 billion at current prices, and is sitting on an estimated $10.5 billion paper loss, per Artemis data. Sharplink, with nearly 869,000 ETH, is staring at roughly $1.8 billion in the red.
Why Hyperliquid runs the other way
The HYPE treasuries are the lone holdouts in profit. Hyperliquid Strategies holds around 23.7 million HYPE and remains up more than $1.1 billion even after the pullback from an all-time high above $74. Smaller player Hyperion DeFi is still green to the tune of about $35 million.
That gap isn't luck — it's plumbing. Roughly 97% of Hyperliquid's protocol trading fees are routed into continuous, automated open-market purchases of HYPE every day. A December 2025 governance vote, passed by about 85% of validators, pushed the allocation toward 99% for certain fee categories and locked in permanent burns.
From tailwind to drag
Only months ago, the DATs were a marginal buyer of size: every equity raise funneled into fresh coins, every balance-sheet reserve underpinned price. Now the mechanism runs in reverse. Shares like Strategy have at times traded near or below the value of their own crypto holdings, which makes raising capital more expensive and, at the extreme, amplifies selling pressure. That reflexive loop — coins fund the stock, the stock funds more coins — works as downside leverage in a drawdown. Large Solana treasuries feel the same squeeze, though they have so far held up better than the ETH heavyweights.
The trader's takeaway
The lesson is uncomfortable for the entire treasury trade: hold passively and you're a hostage to spot. Route a live cash flow back into your own token and you bake a structural bid into the float. In a bear market, capital structure — not conviction — decides who avoids forced selling and who becomes the supply.