Activist investors have a new obsession: Urging companies to hold (or HODL, as crypto enthusiasts say) Bitcoin on their balance sheets to boost revenue and possibly transform their businesses by betting on the cryptocurrency’s staying power.
Last week, Strive Asset Management CEO Matt Cole revealed on X he was pushing GameStop — the beloved meme stock which has struggled to find a sustainable income stream beyond game cartridges — to invest in Bitcoin.
Cole believes that, in a decade, every major company in the stock market will follow suit. And he told NYNext he plans to advise dozens of them to buy Bitcoin this year.
“Zombie companies that have no viability to exist can prepare for the future by having Bitcoin on their balance sheets. My message: Buy Bitcoin unless you see opportunities to spend that asset in a way that will outperform Bitcoin,” Cole said. “When companies own cash, they put it in short-term treasuries or spend it on stock buybacks or dividends … but Bitcoin has actually gone up in real purchasing power over the last few years.”
Strive was co-founded by Vivek Ramaswamy in 2022 as a way to push back against ESG (environmental, social, governance) priorities. With ESG and “woke” policies on the retreat at many corporations, Cole believes the next big opportunity for his firm is persuading corporations to stock up on Bitcoin.
In his recent letter to GameStop, which holds $5 billion in cash, Cole wrote, “We believe GameStop has an incredible opportunity to transform its financial future by becoming the premier Bitcoin treasury company in the gaming sector.” He hasn’t revealed his exact stake but claims a significant share through multiple ETFs.
There’s precedent for his approach.
According to Bitcoin Treasuries, which tracks entities holding the digital coin, more than 80 public companies — including Tesla and Reddit — have been accumulating Bitcoin over the last few years to diversify their holding.
The most notable example is Michael Saylor’s software company, MicroStrategy. In 2020, it began amassing Bitcoin and, after years of stagnant share prices, stock has surged more than 2,000%, from $10 per share to nearly $300 — far outperforming its software sales.
Last month, MicroStrategy announced a rebrand: Now known simply as Strategy, the company has incorporated a Bitcoin symbol in the logo, signaling “its unique position as a Bitcoin treasury company.”
GameStop CEO Ryan Cohen recently posted a photo to X of himself with Saylor — which crypto enthusiasts interpreted as a hint that GameStop might follow in Strategy’s footsteps.
And it’s not just companies betting on crypto. Twenty US states, including Texas and Massachusetts, have introduced bills to establish their own Bitcoin reserves. Bhutan has begun mining the currency, and El Salvador made it legal tender. Earlier this week, President Trump reiterated his intent to create a US crypto reserve stocked with Bitcoin, Solana, Ethereum and other coins.
Skeptics may wonder why an investor would buy a company like Strategy instead of owning Bitcoin outright. For institutions, like large wealth managers, that can’t buy crypto because of SEC regulations, Strategy’s stock offers exposure to Bitcoin.
With relatively few proxies in the market at the moment, Cole is urging companies to act ASAP: “Now is the time to outperform.”
Whether or not that becomes a widely adopted approach remains to be seen. “Less than 5% of companies will adopt this in the next 12–18 months,” Dan Ives, Global Head of Technology Research at WedBush Securities told NYNext. “But every public company will have to strongly consider going down that path.”
Ives added: “Saylor and MicroStrategy have changed the game … there’s no public board that hasn’t studied what they’ve done.”
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