In the first quarter of 2026, public companies recorded a notable increase in Bitcoin accumulation. According to the report published by Bitwise Asset Management, 5.47 percent of the total circulating Bitcoin supply is currently held on company balance sheets. This rate corresponds to 1.15 million Bitcoins. In the first three months of the year, companies added another 50,351 Bitcoins, marking 4.6 percent quarter-on-quarter growth.
In this period when the markets were very active, the conflict in Iran and fluctuations in energy supply brought a new wave of volatility in all financial products, especially Bitcoin. Most of the companies’ Bitcoin accumulation was shaped by the moves of a few important companies.
Different approaches to corporate Bitcoin strategies
Companies’ Bitcoin purchases were generally not distributed homogeneously. Aggressive purchases by one institution in particular were the main source of the total increase. Due to the impact of monetary expansion and geopolitical tensions, the importance of Bitcoin in company balance sheets is being discussed in this period.
Strategy company guided the purchases
MicrosStrategy alone acquired approximately 89,000 Bitcoins in the first quarter of 2026. Thus, as of the end of April, he increased the total amount of Bitcoin in his possession to 818,334. The average purchase cost of the company reached around 75,537 dollars.
The company’s CEO, Michael Saylor, continued to make purchases during the sharp market declines and fluctuations in oil prices in February. It stood out that Saylor continued this strategy even though Bitcoin lost more than 20 percent in value in the first quarter of the year, showing its worst performance since 2018. MicrosStrategy alone holds 66 percent of Bitcoin assets among publicly traded institutions.
Strategy continued its Bitcoin purchases steadily throughout the quarter and posted an unrealized loss of $14.46 billion at the end of the quarter.
MARA sold while Metaplanet rose
Japan-based Metaplanet added 5,075 Bitcoins to its portfolio in the first quarter of the year. The average purchase cost of the company, which spent approximately 400 million dollars for these purchases, was around 79,900 dollars. Metaplanet’s total Bitcoin assets increased to 40,177, and with this move, the company surpassed MARA Holdings and became the third largest institutional Bitcoin safe globally.
MARA, on the other hand, followed a different path in the first months of the year. The company sold approximately 15,133 Bitcoins in March, falling from 53,822 Bitcoins at the beginning of the year to 38,689. It was stated that MARA earned approximately 1.1 billion dollars thanks to these sales. Not only MARA, but all publicly traded mining companies sold more than 32,000 Bitcoins in total. This amount exceeded the total sales in 2025.
The balance between buying and selling guides the market
Not only numerical redundancies, but also fundamental strategy differences between buyers and sellers attract attention. Companies such as Strategy and Metaplanet continued to accumulate Bitcoin even during risky periods. On the other hand, mining companies tended to reduce their Bitcoin stocks due to their need for cash.
The cost of Bitcoin held by MicrosStrategy is only 4 percent below the current BTC price. In other words, possible serious declines in BTC could cause billions of dollars of leveraged losses on the company’s balance sheet. While institutional Bitcoin ownership is increasing unabated, this growth appears to be largely based on the determined approach of a single company.
