A company that owns $10 billion of Bitcoin does not automatically deserve a $10 billion stock-market valuation.
Bitcoin treasury companies can trade above or below the value of the BTC they hold, sometimes by a wide margin. The gap reflects what investors think the company can do with its capital structure, not simply where Bitcoin trades.
The usual shorthand is mNAV, or modified net asset value. An mNAV above 1x indicates a premium, while a figure below 1x indicates a discount.
Our mNAV explainer covers the different ways the metric is calculated.
The more useful question is why the multiple changes.
Why Investors Pay a Premium for Bitcoin Treasury Stocks
A premium can become valuable when a company is able to raise new capital at a share price substantially above the Bitcoin backing each share.
Imagine a treasury company owns $100 of Bitcoin per share but its stock trades for $150.
If it issues new shares near $150 and spends the proceeds buying Bitcoin, the transaction can potentially increase the amount of BTC backing each existing share. The company is effectively converting an expensive stock valuation into additional Bitcoin.
That feedback loop helped make Strategy the best-known example of the model.
In 2025 alone, Strategy raised $25.3 billion, making it the largest U.S. equity issuer that year, while continuing to expand its Bitcoin holdings. By July 2026, it held more than 843,000 BTC and had raised another $17.06 billion through at-the-market programs during the year.
Investors may therefore pay more than the current BTC value because they expect management to keep increasing Bitcoin per share.
Why the Premium Can Suddenly Collapse
The same mechanism becomes much weaker once the stock approaches 1x mNAV.
If a company issues shares below the value of the Bitcoin backing each share, the transaction can dilute existing investors rather than benefit them.
That is why treasury-stock premiums can collapse much faster than Bitcoin itself.
During the 2025 correction, companies including Strategy and Metaplanet saw their once-large premiums compress toward NAV. Galaxy argued that the treasury model becomes considerably harder to sustain when companies lose the ability to sell expensive equity to finance additional Bitcoin purchases. The broader premium collapse produced much larger losses in some treasury stocks than in BTC itself.
Debt also matters.
Two firms with identical Bitcoin holdings should not necessarily have identical valuations if one has billions of dollars of debt, preferred-stock obligations or expensive dividends.
Strategy itself now defines mNAV using the share price relative to Net Bitcoin Per Share, which adjusts Bitcoin backing for senior claims and U.S. dollar assets. It explicitly warns that its version of mNAV is not the same as traditional accounting NAV.
| Factor | Can support premium | Can cause discount |
|---|---|---|
| Bitcoin per share | Growing | Falling |
| Equity issuance | Accretive above NAV | Dilutive below NAV |
| Debt | Cheap, manageable funding | Heavy refinancing burden |
| Management | Strong execution | Poor capital allocation |
| BTC outlook | Bullish | Bearish |
| Liquidity | High trading demand | Thin demand |
| Preferred dividends | Easily covered | Cash-flow pressure |
A Discount Does Not Automatically Mean the Stock Is Cheap
An mNAV below 1x can look attractive: investors appear to be buying $1 of Bitcoin for less than $1.
But there may be a reason for the discount.
The market could be pricing in future dilution, debt repayments, preferred dividends, taxes, operating costs or the possibility that Bitcoin must eventually be sold.
Strategy demonstrated that risk in 2026 when it introduced a framework allowing Bitcoin sales to support reserves, interest payments and preferred dividends. Its earlier Bitcoin sale showed that treasury holdings are not necessarily untouchable.
That is the main difference between buying Bitcoin and buying a Bitcoin treasury stock.
With BTC, the investor owns exposure to the asset. With a treasury stock, the investor is also betting on management, financing, dilution, debt and future capital-market access.
A premium therefore represents confidence that the company can turn its stock into more Bitcoin per share. A discount often means investors doubt that process, or believe liabilities deserve a larger haircut.
