Bitcoin advocate and Strategy’s founder, Michael Saylor, kicked off the trend of incorporating Bitcoin into the company’s balance sheet back in 2020, and now, it’s catching fire. This year, alongside institutional adoption and the rise of nation-state involvement, corporate Bitcoin holdings have surged dramatically. Companies have invested an estimated $25 billion in Bitcoin in just the first five months of 2025. This influx accounts for about 1.20% of Bitcoin’s total fixed supply, underscoring a supply-demand imbalance that’s fueling Bitcoin’s growing appeal as a treasury asset.

Source: 21Shares, BitcoinTreasuries, Data as of January 1, 2025.

Which companies are betting on Bitcoin?

One prominent example of corporate Bitcoin adoption is GameStop, the American video game retailer, which recently raised $1.5 billion to build its Bitcoin reserve. Known for its role as a meme stock in early 2021, when retail investors on Reddit’s WallStreetBets forum triggered a massive short squeeze, GameStop survived the saga with spare capital. This resilience allowed the company to revamp its commercial strategy, positioning it to strategically deploy capital into Bitcoin and align with the growing trend of corporate crypto adoption.

Adding to this momentum, Strive Asset Management, backed by entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy, announced plans to go public via a reverse merger with Nasdaq-listed Asset Entities, aiming to become a publicly traded Bitcoin treasury company. Strive targets up to $1 billion in capital through equity and debt offerings to accelerate its Bitcoin accumulation, with plans for equity-for-Bitcoin swaps for accredited investors, offering a novel approach to scaling corporate Bitcoin exposure.

Another notable player is MetaPlanet in Japan, which has accumulated over $700 million in Bitcoin, reflecting the broadening international interest in Bitcoin as a treasury asset. Similarly, 21 Capital is poised to become the second-largest corporate holder with 42,000 Bitcoin, while in Europe, the Blockchain Group has set an ambitious target to acquire up to 260,000 Bitcoin by 2033, aiming for $20 billion in holdings.

Michael Saylor’s Strategy is leading the institutional charge and has established itself as the benchmark for corporate Bitcoin accumulation. As of May 2025, Strategy holds 555,450 Bitcoin, representing approximately 2.6% of Bitcoin’s total fixed supply, making it the largest public holder of Bitcoin globally. Year-to-date, the company has added 109,050 Bitcoin at an average purchase price of roughly $94,000, bringing the total market value of its Bitcoin position to approximately $55 billion.

How can Strategy’s Bitcoin balance sheet change market dynamics?

At the beginning of the year, Strategy held around 386,700 Bitcoin. Now, it has increased its holdings to over 550,000 Bitcoin. This imbalance underscores increasing structural pressure on Bitcoin’s supply. As a scarce and finite asset, such aggressive accumulation by a single entity signals potential supply-side constraints, particularly as more institutions seek long-term allocations.

Figure 2: The Effect of Strategy’s Acquisitions on Bitcoin’s Supply in 2025

Source: 21Shares, BitcoinTreasuries, Data as of May 7, 2025.

Beyond the sheer size of Strategy’s Bitcoin treasury, its growth also speaks to the company’s consistency and discipline. Since August 2020, Strategy has steadily added to its holdings every quarter, signaling a long-term, methodical strategy rather than short-term opportunism.

Confident as ever, Strategy maintains that its outstanding convertible notes and preferred equity are significantly overcollateralized and is actively urging credit rating agencies to adopt a framework that recognizes Bitcoin as a viable, high-grade reserve asset. If realized, this framework could catalyze the development of a Bitcoin-native bond market, one in which corporations raise debt capital directly against Bitcoin reserves, while institutional investors gain exposure to a new, collateralized digital asset class.

More players join the Bitcoin club

Strategy’s proposal is rippling through the corporate world, hinting at the next phase of Bitcoin adoption: a Bitcoin-native financial market. Riot Capital and Coinbase have partnered to let companies use Bitcoin as collateral for working capital, turning idle reserves into active assets. Strike has rolled out Bitcoin-backed loans, while Europe’s Relai now lets users spend fiat without selling their Bitcoin. These early moves, echoing Strategy’s vision, mark a shift toward integrating Bitcoin directly into corporate finance, expanding its role as a macro asset, and attracting a new wave of institutional players.

By Maximiliaan Michielsen

Research Newsletter

Each week the 21Shares Research team will publish our data-driven insights into the crypto asset world through this newsletter. Please direct any comments, questions, and words of feedback to research@21shares.com

Disclaimer

The information provided does not constitute a prospectus or other offering material and does not contain or constitute an offer to sell or a solicitation of any offer to buy securities in any jurisdiction. Some of the information published herein may contain forward-looking statements. Readers are cautioned that any such forward-looking statements are not guarantees of future performance and involve risks and uncertainties and that actual results may differ materially from those in the forward-looking statements as a result of various factors. The information contained herein may not be considered as economic, legal, tax or other advice and users are cautioned to base investment decisions or other decisions solely on the content hereof.
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Valour Litecoin (LTC) SEK (Valour Litecoin SEK) med ISIN CH1108679072, är en börshandlad produkt (ETP) som spårar LTC, den ursprungliga kryptovalutan i Litecoin-nätverket. Litecoin är ett decentraliserat peer-to-peer-betalningssystem utformat för snabba och billiga transaktioner. Byggt som ett lättviktsalternativ till Bitcoin erbjuder det snabbare blocktider och lägre avgifter, vilket gör det idealiskt för dagliga betalningar och gränsöverskridande överföringar.

Med en säker och energieffektiv proof-of-work-konsensus säkerställer Litecoin tillförlitliga transaktioner samtidigt som decentraliseringen bibehålls. LTC-token fungerar både som ett bytesmedel och en värdebevarare, vilket stöder ett globalt, gränslöst finansiellt ekosystem.

Beskrivning

Valours certifikatproduktlinje erbjuder kompatibla börshandlade produkter, där var och en är helt säkrad av sina respektive digitala tillgångar. För att säkerställa säker kyllagring samarbetar Valour med licensierade förvaringsinstitut av högsta kvalitet, såsom Copper och Komainu. Dessa certifikat handlas på reglerade börser och MTFer och ger transparent prissättning och likviditet, vilket stärker investerarnas förtroende för säkra investeringar i digitala tillgångar. Valours grundprospekt är godkända av Finansinspektionen och uppfyller EU:s krav på fullständighet, tydlighet och konsekvens.

Produktinformation

Handla Valour Litecoin

Valour Litecoin (LTC) (Valour Litecoin SEK) är en europeisk börshandlad produkt som handlas på bland annat Spotlight Stock Market.

Det betyder att det går att handla andelar i denna ETP genom de flesta svenska banker och Internetmäklare, till exempel  Nordnet, SAVR, Levler, DEGIRO och Avanza.

Börsnoteringar

Solana is a high-performance blockchain built for speed, scale, and real-world usability, making it one of the most compelling platforms for cross-border payments and beyond.

With transaction fees as low as $0.0025 and sub-second finality, Solana enables frictionless transfers of any size, be it $1 or $100 million, at a fraction of the cost and time of traditional systems. Its performance has attracted global payment leaders like Visa, Stripe, and Shopify, all of which integrate Solana’s infrastructure to power stablecoin payments, institutional settlements, and retail checkouts.

Solana’s use cases extend far beyond payments. As we’ll explore, it’s become the builder’s chain of choice for decentralized finance (DeFi), AI agents, real-time apps, and physical infrastructure networks, underpinning a new internet where cost and speed are no longer trade-offs.

Cross-border payments

Stablecoin adoption on Solana has surged nearly 6x in under a year, skyrocketing from $2.16 billion in early 2024 to over $12 billion by early 2025. This explosive growth is fueled by Solana’s ability to process near-instant transactions at ultra-low costs, with average transaction fees hovering around $0.0025, often at a fraction of a cent, even during peak network activity. Whether moving $1 or $100 million, transaction fees remain negligible, making Solana the go-to blockchain for cross-border payments, institutional transfers, and everyday transactions.

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User-friendly experience

To complement the growing adoption across both traditional institutions and crypto-native sectors, Solana is prioritizing user experience through intuitive design and technical advancements. By making blockchain interactions as seamless as Web2 applications, Solana is eliminating barriers to entry and driving greater accessibility for new users.

For starters, Solana Blinks enables seamless blockchain transactions through QR code scans on social media, allowing users to engage effortlessly in a familiar setting, without even realizing they’re interacting with blockchain technology. Meanwhile, Solana Pay lets merchants cover transaction fees for customers, removing the need to hold SOL and making digital payments effortless. As a final example, the Solana Saga & Sleeker smartphones integrate Web3 functionality directly into handheld devices, bringing blockchain technology quite literally to users’ fingertips.

By reducing friction and enhancing usability, Solana is setting the gold standard for mainstream crypto adoption, which is clearly accelerating across the vast ecosystem it boasts, which will now be explored in more detail.

The builder’s blockchain

Solana is emerging as the top blockchain for innovative tech, with an 83% growth in developers in 2024. This growth is fueling innovation in AI and decentralized infrastructure industries that rely on fast, low-cost networks for real-time interactions. For the first time ever, Ethereum has been surpassed in new developer growth, with Solana’s developer base expanding 83% in the past year.

As of writing, the Solana network has recorded 365 billion transactions through a vibrant ecosystem composed of more than 400 applications in various sectors, mainly decentralized financial services, and crypto art and games. The use of Rust over EVM-compatible Solidity as the core programming language has been identified as one of the key constraints for developers building on Solana.

To facilitate ecosystem growth, the Solana Foundation hosts annual hackathons. For instance, the “Radar” hackathon took place in November 2024, encouraging participants to build the next breakout crypto startup. There were over 10,00 participants from over 120 countries, with 1,359 project submissions competing for a grand prize of $50,000 USDC, demonstrating the interest and strength of the growing community and continued developer support. As a result, Solana became the #1 ecosystem for new developers in 2024, overtaking Ethereum, which had occupied this place since 2016, according to Developer Report.

Rapid adoption across industries

Solana is rapidly becoming the go-to blockchain for emerging sectors, largely driven by an unprecedented talent influx and high-performance infrastructure.

This wave of builders is fueling breakthrough innovations in DePIN and AI, two sectors that demand high-speed, low-cost networks for frequent real-time interactions.

The migration of Render Network from Ethereum underscores this shift, as the project now leverages Solana’s architecture for decentralized, GPU-powered rendering services. Meanwhile, more than half of all AI agents are now launching on Solana, thanks to frameworks like Eliza and ARC, which simplify the deployment of AI-powered agents for real-time automation and decision-making.

Notably, Eliza has attracted many developers, with its open-source code on GitHub being used 4,200 times. The rapid surge in AI agents earlier this year highlights how these industries are driving significant on-chain activity, further solidifying Solana as the platform of choice for experimental and high-growth use cases. As innovation accelerates, Solana’s scalability and developer momentum are setting the foundation for the next wave of decentralized applications, which will be explored further as we break down Solana’s ecosystem.

Decentralized Physical Infrastructure Networks (DePIN) represent an emerging crypto subsector focused on outsourcing and optimizing physical resources through decentralized systems. Solana powers DePINs like Helium (broadband), Hivemapper (mapping), and Render (3D rendering), which demand high-speed, low-cost transactions at scale. Solana’s fast and efficient blockchain provides the necessary infrastructure for these applications to operate smoothly and cost-effectively.

Over the past years, Solana has garnered partnerships with legacy players like PayPal and Visa. In 2024, Solana forged integrations with Shopify and Stripe on the retail side and Franklin & Templeton and Hamilton Lane on the institutional side. Solana must address network reliability issues to deepen its integration with traditional finance, especially as its network experienced downtime once in 2024 and multiple times over the past four years. Coming soon on Solana’s mainnet, the Firedancer validator client is a solution developed by Jump Crypto, positioned to reduce outages. On testnet, Firedancer was capable of processing over 1 million TPS and is anticipated to enhance network reliability, solidifying Solana’s role as a top solution.

Research Newsletter

Each week the 21Shares Research team will publish our data-driven insights into the crypto asset world through this newsletter. Please direct any comments, questions, and words of feedback to research@21shares.com

Disclaimer

The information provided does not constitute a prospectus or other offering material and does not contain or constitute an offer to sell or a solicitation of any offer to buy securities in any jurisdiction. Some of the information published herein may contain forward-looking statements. Readers are cautioned that any such forward-looking statements are not guarantees of future performance and involve risks and uncertainties and that actual results may differ materially from those in the forward-looking statements as a result of various factors. The information contained herein may not be considered as economic, legal, tax or other advice and users are cautioned to base investment decisions or other decisions solely on the content hereof.
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