Are bitcoin treasuries mirroring the 1929 investment trust collapse?
As the bitcoin (BTC) treasury company bubble of spring 2025 deflates into summer doldrums, historians of public trusts are already starting to contextualize what happened. At their peak in May, shares of David Bailey’s BTC treasury traded at 23 times the value of its treasury. Even altcoin treasury stocks rallied to double-digit multiples of their Net Asset Value (‘mNAV’). Fast forward to today, and the majority of BTC treasury companies that went public in 2025 have fallen by half or worse. The collapse is similar to the investment trust crash of the late 1920s. During this exuberant environment for speculation, US financiers redesigned and added leverage to London-style investment trusts. The pitch, at the time, was to sell shares of trusts holding ostensibly scarce assets via public stock exchanges. As the Roaring ‘20s peaked in 1929, Goldman Sachs Trading Corporation had become the MicroStrategy of its day. Yale economist Irving Fisher once comically declared that ...