From 2,600% Gain to 86% Wipeout, Crypto’s Hottest Trade Crumpled

What began the year as one of the best trades in the stock market has, in a matter of months, turned into one of the worst.

An array of public companies thought they had found a sort of perpetual motion machine: Use your corporate cash to buy up Bitcoin or other digital tokens and presto, your share price shot up even more than the value of the tokens you bought.

It was a playbook invented by Michael Saylor, who transformed his company, Strategy Inc., into a publicly traded Bitcoin holding vehicle. And through the first half of 2025 ...