The year 2024 was a record year regarding investments in Bitcoin made by the so-called public companies.
Furthermore, 2025 is already shaping up to be another record year.
This is what was revealed by Ryan Rasmussen, Head of Research at Bitwise Asset Management.
Investments in Bitcoin by public companies
Rasmussen shared a Bitwise chart showing the trend over time of the total BTC purchased annually by public companies.
In 2019 this figure was almost zero, while in 2020, when it started buying MicroStrategy (now Strategy), it did not exceed 100,000 BTC.
Note that at the time the price was below $20,000, so the investments needed to purchase, for example, 100,000 Bitcoin were much lower than they are now.
In 2021, thanks to the great bull run, more than 200,000 BTC were surpassed, while in 2022 due to the bear market, it fell below that figure, despite the more affordable prices.
In 2023, just over 250,000 BTC were surpassed, while in 2024 there was a real boom, even greater than that of 2021: almost 600,000 BTC purchased in a single year collectively by all the public companies monitored by Bitwise.
Rasmussen writes:
“In 2024, public companies purchased twice as many bitcoins as in all previous years combined”.
Moreover, in 2025, the 600,000 BTC purchased by public companies have already been surpassed, even though the first quarter is not even over yet. Rasmussen adds that the approximately 70 companies they monitor currently hold a combined value of 52 billion dollars in Bitcoin, equivalent to 3% of the total supply.
The public company
The term “public company” simply refers to companies with widespread shareholding, meaning those whose shares can be publicly bought and traded (on the stock exchange), and that do not have a single majority owner.
They are called public companies not because they are publicly owned (they are in all respects private companies), but because by law they must make their financial statements public.
Precisely because publicly traded companies are legally required to publicly disclose their data, it is possible to monitor, for example, their purchases and sales of Bitcoin, given that they are also obligated to make them public.
Practically all the major publicly traded companies fall into this category, including Apple, Microsoft, Nvidia, and the other magnificent seven.
Public company, private company and Bitcoin
The first public company to start investing heavily in Bitcoin was MicroStrategy in 2020.
Now the company has changed its name, it is called just Strategy and owns almost half a million BTC.
Of the 52 billion dollars mentioned by Rasmussen, 41.5 belong to Strategy, which therefore in this special ranking has a dominance of almost 79%.
On the other hand, Strategy already in 2021 alone had surpassed 100,000 BTC, while to date there does not appear to be any other public company that reaches this figure.
It should be noted, however, that among the companies not listed on the stock exchange (the private companies), there is at least one that would exceed that threshold: it is Block.one, the company behind the crypto project EOS, which should own about 164,000.
The difference between public companies and private companies is primarily the fact of being listed on the stock exchange, as private companies are not. Since they are not, they are not required to make their data public, and therefore it is more difficult to obtain information about their accounts.
Moreover, the third company in the world by number of BTC owned, after Strategy and Block.one, is also a private company. It is the famous Tether, the company behind the stablecoin USDT, which now appears to have acquired more than 83,000.
In total, the public companies appear to collectively hold approximately 658,000 BTC, while the private companies hold 424,000.
Note that those held by state institutions, such as the USA Department of Justice, amount to approximately 526,000.
The spot Bitcoin ETFs
These numbers, however, pale in comparison to the nearly 1.3 million BTC held by ETPs (including ETFs and ETNs).
However, there is a huge difference.
In fact, both the Bitcoins owned by private companies and those held by state institutions are actually their property, and therefore they can dispose of them at will, as long as they do so in compliance with the laws.
Instead, the BTC held by funds such as ETFs are not their property.
Or rather, funds like ETFs are not owned at all by those who manage them, but by the shareholders who own the shares. When it comes to ETFs collateralized in a single asset, such as BlackRock’s IBIT (collateralized only in Bitcoin), the managers cannot dispose of the underlying asset at will.
In fact, they are actually legally required to buy and sell the underlying asset depending on how many shares are introduced or withdrawn from the market. In fact, the quantity of BTC they hold varies every day, while that of many companies often remains unchanged for months.
Read the full article here
