Bitcoin Treasuries: The Growing Trend Among Corporations and States

President Trump's executive order on strategic digital asset reserves could soon become law.

Tennessee Congressman Tim Burchett has introduced a bill to make it official.

Meanwhile, Trump's media company Truth Social is building its own Bitcoin Treasury, announcing plans to raise up to $12 billion to fund crypto purchases.

Digital asset treasuries are gaining traction in the business world.

Last week, Japanese company Meta Planet announced a $5.4 billion plan. to buy Bitcoin, but a plant stock traded OTC jumped over 60% after the announcement.

Several other small cap companies have also seen stock spikes recently after revealing crypto treasury plans.

Joining me this morning is Sean Bill, CIO of Blockstream.

Sean, good morning.

Thank you so much for joining us.

So first and foremost, can you take us through this trend of crypto treasuries and what we're seeing?

What is your take behind all of these moves?

Yeah, I think it's super interesting.

I think that what we're seeing at the state level is actually a really, really where the story gets most interesting.

You have a grassroots movement with state treasures and state legislatures to create these bitcoin strategic reserves.

So Arizona, New Hampshire famously passed their bill.

I think Texas is up next in the deck.

You know, I think this is just a kind of an acceptance, a validation of Bitcoin as a as a store of value.

If you look at the dollar, the dollar has lost approximately 20% to 25% of its purchasing power since the pandemic.

Bitcoin has actually been appreciating steadily.

So, so we think it's actually a trend that we're going to see only expand.

We're seeing with corporates, as you mentioned in your intro, you know, metaplat.

You know, there's of course strategy which made the thing the strategy, the strategy of Bitcoin treasury a thing and you know, I think we'll just continue to see that that progress.

And at the 2025 Bitcoin conference, which took place in Vegas, BlockStream co-founder and CEO Adam Beck stated that the company is one of the first Bitcoin treasury firms, and he also said that you've been around since 2014, even back then, that you worked with investors to put Bitcoin on the balance sheet.

So tell us what you are seeing right now when it comes to institutional adoption, and are the big players still awaiting more clarity when it comes to the regulatory front?

Yeah, I think that's really one of the most interesting things about Blockstream.

You know, BlockStream is a Bitcoin first company.

Our business is driven by Bitcoin.

We've always been a technology service provider to the Bitcoin ecosystem.

We have our consumer wallets, our HSMs for institutional players.

We have Liquid Network, which has over $3 billion of total value locked on it.

So, so I think that within the institutional market we are definitely starting to see adoption.

I think there are two key pieces there.

I think that President Trump's speech at Bitcoin Nashville in 2024 combined with BlackRock launching their ETF has really opened the door for institutional investors.

I think it's given them a kind of a some validation that in fact Bitcoin does make sense on the balance sheet.

We, uh, as you may or may not know, um, VTA, where I was the pension fund CIO, was the first US pension to invest in Bitcoin, and I think back in 2019, 2021 when we were working on that project, it was a much more complicated and difficult discussion.

More recently, Adam and I were at the State Association of California Retirement Systems to provide an update on the 2022 speech I gave to Sackers on how to go about investing in Bitcoin, and it drew over 600 participants of trustees, CIOs, investment staff, consultants, etc.

I think it was probably one of the busiest and most most well received of all the different sessions at the Sackers conference.

And we did see that on this one we did get quite a few questions on the on how to go about actually investing in Bitcoin from the pension funds.

So we do think that the climate has shifted and that frankly, you know, BlackRock coming in with their ETF gives it a lot of safety for for CIOs and investment teams to actually try to take that leap into the space.

Nobody gets fired for buying BlackRock.

And finally, Sean, as we look ahead to today's calendar as well as tomorrow's calendar, the SEC crypto task Force roundtable will be taking place later on this afternoon, and the US House final Financial Services Committee hearing for markup of various measures will be taking place tomorrow.

Do you want to hear your take when it comes to Bitcoin's recent price action and your expectations moving forward in New York Morning trade, we are looking at the crypto major Bitcoin hovering right around the 107,480 level.

But what do you expect as we head into the rest of this year?

We think that the fundamental case for Bitcoin is strong.

You do have approximately 500,000 Bitcoins being accumulated by ETFs.

You have another 300,000 bitcoins being accumulated by corporate treasuries, and you know, if you look at the actual new supply of Bitcoin hitting the market through mining activity, it's about 165,000 bitcoins for the for the year.

So we do think that that the the that Bitcoin has a very strong fundamental base to move higher.

If you look at Metcalf's law, we think you can make a strong case that Bitcoin goes to probably 225, 250.

Of course, none of this is investment advice.

Everyone needs to do their own homework, but, um, but we are very positive on Bitcoin and the outlook for Bitcoin.

OK, Sean, well, we will have to leave it there, but thank you so much for joining me on this Monday morning and thank you so much for sharing all of your insights.

Thank you for having me.