Vivek Ramaswamy's bitcoin treasury firm now holds 13,741 BTC purchased at an average cost well above current market prices, raising questions about the sustainability of the corporate bitcoin accumulation model beyond Strategy's dominance.
Strive, the investment firm co-founded by Vivek Ramaswamy in 2022 and trading on NYSE American under the ticker ASST, disclosed on Sunday that it had acquired another 113 bitcoin for approximately $7.75 million at an average price of $68,584 per coin. The purchase — its sixth of 2026 — brings total holdings to 13,741 BTC, making Strive one of the largest publicly traded bitcoin treasury companies outside of Michael Saylor's Strategy.
The headline number obscures a more uncomfortable one. With bitcoin trading around $69,000 as of Tuesday morning, Strive's aggregate cost basis — understood to sit near $105,850 per bitcoin from earlier, larger purchases at significantly higher prices — implies unrealised losses exceeding $500 million on its cryptocurrency position alone. The company's stock has fallen more than 37 per cent from its peaks, tracking the decline in its primary asset rather than any operational deterioration.
Strive is not alone in this predicament. A Galaxy Digital report last week warned that at least five publicly traded bitcoin treasury firms face potential asset sales or outright closure as net asset value discounts widen. The corporate bitcoin treasury thesis — buy bitcoin with equity or debt, let the stock trade as a leveraged proxy — works spectacularly in rising markets. In flat or declining ones, the leverage cuts both ways; shareholders absorb the full downside of bitcoin's price movements plus the carrying cost of whatever financing structure the company used to acquire the coins.
Strategy, the undisputed heavyweight of the model, reported its own unrealised losses in the first quarter despite holding approximately 766,970 BTC worth an estimated $53 billion. But Strategy's sheer scale affords it advantages that smaller imitators lack: deeper capital markets access, lower borrowing costs, and a stock that has become — for better or worse — the de facto institutional bitcoin proxy. Strategy added another 4,871 bitcoin for $329.9 million between 1 and 5 April, funded through at-the-market equity programmes that dilute existing shareholders but keep the accumulation machine running.
The contrast with Strive is instructive. Where Strategy can issue shares into a liquid market with daily trading volumes that comfortably absorb hundreds of millions in supply, Strive operates with a fraction of that liquidity. Its latest purchase of 113 BTC — roughly $7.75 million — is dwarfed by Strategy's weekly buying. The risk is that smaller treasury firms become trapped: too invested in bitcoin to pivot, too small to access the financing structures that make continuous accumulation viable.
Ramaswamy, who left the presidential campaign trail in early 2024 and briefly led the Department of Government Efficiency before departing in February 2025, has positioned Strive as an ideological bet as much as a financial one. The firm's broader strategy includes a proposed bitcoin credit ETF tied to Strategy's STRC preferred shares — a derivative of a derivative, layering exposure upon exposure in a way that would have drawn sharp regulatory scrutiny a few years ago.
The broader collapse in corporate bitcoin demand outside Strategy was already visible in March data. Strategy accounted for more than 90 per cent of all publicly reported corporate bitcoin purchases in the first quarter, a concentration that suggests the treasury model has not spawned an industry so much as a single dominant player and a collection of much smaller imitators carrying disproportionate risk.
For Strive's shareholders, the calculus is stark. At current prices, every dollar of their equity is backed by bitcoin purchased at a substantial premium. The company needs bitcoin to recover above $100,000 — roughly 45 per cent above current levels — before the treasury position breaks even. That is not impossible; bitcoin has delivered moves of that magnitude before. But it is a bet on direction and magnitude, not a business strategy in any traditional sense.
The 113 BTC added last week barely registers against the scale of the position. What it does signal is that Strive's management intends to keep buying regardless of the loss, a commitment that only makes sense if you believe the destination justifies the journey. That may prove prescient. For now, it looks like conviction outrunning arithmetic.
