Saylor Stacks, Everyone Else Bails: A Tale of One Bitcoin Buyer and Many Quitters

March painted a stark picture of corporate Bitcoin conviction: public and private companies collectively added 47,435 $BTC to their treasuries last month, worth roughly $3.2 billion at month-end prices. Strip away one name, however, and the narrative flips entirely. Nearly every single satoshi was purchased by Michael Saylor's Strategy. Everyone else? Collectively in retreat, according to bitcointreasuries.net's March report shared with Bitcoin Magazine. This divergence is quickly becoming the defining saga of corporate Bitcoin adoption in 2026 — starring one protagonist and a cast of extras who've already left the building.

Strategy purchased a jaw-dropping 44,377 $BTC in March alone, including one of its largest-ever single-week purchases — 22,337 $BTC disclosed on March 16, funded by $1.57 billion in ATM sales from its STRC preferred shares and MSTR common stock. The company now controls a dominating two-thirds of all Bitcoin held by public companies, sitting at approximately 762,000 $BTC with a plausible, if aggressive, path to 1 million. At this point, calling it a "treasury strategy" feels generous — it's more like a Bitcoin speedrun, and Saylor is the only player who remembered to actually press the button.

To understand how Strategy keeps accumulating at this scale in what BitcoinTreasuries.net describes as "a bear market," you need to understand STRC — the company's variable-rate perpetual preferred share product. STRC targets a price near $100 and currently yields approximately 11.5% annually, reset monthly. It sits above common shareholders in Strategy's capital structure, offering more predictable returns than MSTR stock while still being anchored to the Bitcoin treasury underneath. Think of it as the middle child of the Strategy family: less volatile than its wild MSTR sibling, but with enough Bitcoin DNA to keep yield farmers interested.

March was a watershed moment for the instrument. STRC recorded its highest-ever single-day trading volume on March 12 — $746 million — followed by its second-highest on March 31, at $522 million. Weekly volumes hit $2.27 billion from March 9–13 alone. That demand didn't just set records; it funded Bitcoin buying. Strategy's 8-K for the week of March 9–15 reported $1.2 billion in STRC ATM proceeds and $396 million in MSTR proceeds, together financing that record 22,337 $BTC purchase. The machine was humming so loud you could almost hear retail traders asking "wait, there's preferred shares I can buy too?"

Now Strategy has filed for a new $42 billion ATM program, split evenly between STRC and MSTR, plus an additional $2.1 billion in STRK. According to BitcoinTreasuries.net modeling, if proceeds arrive at a rate of roughly $2.3 billion monthly over 19 months — and Bitcoin hovers near $75,000 — Strategy could reach 1 million $BTC by November 2026. A more conservative projection using Strategy's average monthly buy rate of 21,000 $BTC since January 2025 pushes that date to March 2027. The math is almost aggressive enough to make you forget that "1 million BTC" is roughly 4.7% of the entire supply, but who's counting? (Everyone. Everyone is counting.)

March also triggered a major leaderboard reshuffle that highlights just how different things look outside of Saylor's orbit. MARA Holdings — once the second-largest public Bitcoin treasury — sold 15,133 $BTC, worth roughly $1.1 billion, to repurchase convertible senior notes. The sale wiped nearly 28% of its previous holdings. In sports terms, MARA went from "promising prospect" to "might not make the cut this season" in a single quarter.

As BitcoinTreasuries.net's Tyler Rowe put it: "MARA borrowed aggressively to stack sats during the bull run and is now selling Bitcoin at a loss to service that debt. This is the precise scenario critics of debt-fueled treasury strategies have warned about." The quote practically writes itself — "borrow high, stack sats, pray," has never been a viable long-term strategy, and MARA just published the receipts.

That opened the door for Jack Mallers' Twenty One Capital (XXI) to move into second place, currently holding 43,514 $BTC — though notably, XXI hasn't purchased Bitcoin since August. Its rise is purely a function of MARA's decline. Sometimes you don't have to run faster than the bear, just faster than the guy next to you. XXI is basically winning the silver medal in a race where the gold winner has lapped everyone multiple times.

Metaplanet, the Japanese firm that has become one of the most aggressive Bitcoin accumulators outside the U.S., followed in early April by acquiring 5,075 $BTC to reach 40,177 $BTC, leapfrogging MARA for third place. Metaplanet has been so consistently aggressive that watching its leaderboard climb feels like a nature documentary: "Here we observe the Japanese corporate, once a mild-mannered holding company, now transforming into a Bitcoin maxi in its natural habitat."

GameStop's situation is perhaps the most unusual. The retailer-turned-crypto-treasury pledged 4,709 $BTC as collateral in a covered call strategy with Coinbase Credit, leaving just 1 $BTC in direct holdings. The counterparty holds rights to sell or rehypothecate the pledged Bitcoin, though GameStop maintains a contractual right to receive an equivalent amount back. The move dropped the company from the 21st-largest Bitcoin holder to near position 190 on the leaderboard. GameStop: where meme stock energy meets "technically we still hold one Bitcoin, so we're still in the game."

Beyond the leaderboard drama, the March report surfaced a quieter but more important trend: excluding Strategy, corporate Bitcoin conviction is cooling sharply. Public companies other than Strategy aggressively accumulated last summer, but net buying has declined and outright sales have accelerated since October. The number of monthly buyers has fallen steadily since September, reaching just 16 in March. Remember when "adding Bitcoin to the treasury" was the hottest corporate fashion statement? Turns out trends have a half-life, even in crypto.

Ryan Strauss of the Bitcoin Consulting Group didn't sugarcoat it: "What stands out to me is just how structurally dependent headline holdings growth is on Strategy — once you remove it, the underlying signal flips from strength to clear deceleration. The pullback in both net accumulation and participant count suggests this isn't just noise, but a broad cooling in corporate conviction following last summer's aggressive positioning." Translation: the headline number looks great until you realize one guy is doing all the lifting while everyone else quietly exits stage left.

Among the sellers: Exodus Movement, whose Bitcoin holdings fell by an estimated 1,084 $BTC as it funds its acquisition of W3C Corp; Fold Inc., down 178 $BTC; and Cango Inc., down 331.3 $BTC following a mining update. The corporate Bitcoin graveyard is getting crowded, but at least these exits are happening for recognizable reasons — unlike some that just quietly vanish from filings and never explain themselves.

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