The Hottest Business Strategy This Summer Is Buying Crypto

It’s the hottest trade of the summer.

Companies are raising tens of billions of dollars, not to invest in their businesses or hire employees, but to purchase bitcoin and more obscure cryptocurrencies.

A Japanese hotel operator, a French semiconductor manufacturer, a Florida toy maker, a nail-salon chain, an electric-bike maker—they’re all ploughing cash into tokens, helping to send all kinds of digital currencies to record levels. News that a new company plans to buy crypto is enough to send its shares flying—spurring others to consider joining the frenzy.

Since  June 1, 98 companies have announced plans to raise over $43 billion to buy bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies, according to Architect Partners, a crypto advisory firm. Nearly $86 billion has been raised for this purpose since the start of the year. That’s more than double the amount of money raised in initial public offerings in the U.S. in 2025, according to Dealogic.

Sceptics say the rush of companies buying crypto is a sign the market is overheating, noting that digital tokens, especially the obscure ones, are notoriously volatile and have uncertain futures.

They scratch their heads about why an investor would buy shares of a company purchasing cryptocurrencies when they can buy them on their own through low-cost exchange-traded funds and other vehicles.

Others note that many of these companies are worth much more than the cryptocurrencies they hold, as if investors are willing to pay $2 for a $1 bill.

That hasn’t stopped big-name bankers, investors and others from jumping in. Mutual-fund giant Capital Group, hedge fund D1 Capital Partners and investment bank Cantor Fitzgerald are among those backing recent efforts by companies to raise huge sums to purchase cryptocurrencies.

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The company, worth $26 million on June 27, the Friday before its announcement, is now worth over $2 billion after a surge of more than 800%. Thiel, the tech billionaire known for starting PayPal and Palantir, holds a 9.1% stake in the company, according to a recent filing. He declined to comment.

“If you blink, you miss a couple of these deals,” said Bob Diamond, the former Barclays chief executive.

He should know. Last week, an investment firm Diamond co-founded called Atlas Merchant Capital said it was working with Paradigm, D1, Galaxy, 683 Capital and other big investors to form an entity that will spend $305 million to buy a seven-month-old crypto token called Hype. Diamond will be chairman of the new entity, while Eric Rosengren, the former president of the Boston Fed, is expected to be on its board of directors.

“We think Hype is pretty special,” Diamond says.

The new entrants are following in the footsteps of the company once known as MicroStrategy , whose CEO, Michael Saylor , pioneered the so-called crypto-treasury strategy in 2020. Now known simply as Strategy, it has spent years selling shares and debt to buy bitcoin. It is now worth over $115 billion, up 153% in the past year and 3,371% in the past five years.

Saylor has long implored other companies to buy bitcoin with their excess cash. Most everyone ignored or scoffed at the notion. Using spare cash or raising money to buy volatile cryptocurrencies seemed a dicey proposition. Executives who run companies that sell products and services weren’t supposed to speculate on bitcoin. As of last August, just a handful of companies were using their cash to buy any crypto.

That all changed this year. President Trump has embraced crypto, vowing to make America the “crypto capital of the planet.” He has installed crypto-friendly cabinet members, and Congress has advanced legislation that could make cryptocurrencies part of the mainstream financial system. Trump Media and Technology Group, the social-media firm controlled by the president’s family, has also bought about $2 billion worth of bitcoin and related securities as part of its treasury strategy.

Lately, companies have been taking things further than even Saylor suggested—buying overlooked or unknown digital currencies, not to diversify their holdings but to make outright wagers on risky tokens. Even Saylor is unsure that’s a wise move.

“Applying a treasury strategy to other crypto assets introduces a different—and often speculative—risk profile,” Saylor said in an email. “I haven’t seen a compelling rationale for doing so.”

Some bears are wading into the frenzy, including well-known short seller Jim Chanos, to bet against some of these companies.

“In my three decades experience I have never witnessed a period where investors are willing to pay such large premiums for assets they can readily purchase on their own,” says Michael O’Rourke, chief market strategist at JonesTrading.

Big companies, including tech giants Meta and Microsoft, have resisted the idea, as have their investors. Shareholder proposals at both companies sought to add bitcoin to their balance sheets at recent annual meetings, but were overwhelmingly voted down. Meta and Microsoft’s boards of directors recommended voting against the proposals to invest in bitcoin.

The companies that are taking the plunge are being transparent about their plans to raise cash and put it all in crypto. They argue that they can do things an ETF cannot, such as “stake” tokens, or lock them up for a specified amount of time to earn a return. The companies can also borrow money to buy additional cryptocurrencies, something ETFs also can’t do.

Cryptocurrencies are volatile even in the best of times. If the price of a token plunges after a company has bet the farm, it could be left holding a worthless asset. Staking amplifies the risk, since it means an investor can’t touch the locked-up tokens if they start to fall in value. And then there’s the risk that investors sour on the strategy.

Last week, Volcon, an electric-bike maker based in Austin, Texas, raised $500 million in just seven days to initiate its bitcoin treasury strategy, according to co-CEO Ryan Lane. Shares of Volcon jumped from $9.22 to more than $44 on the day of its announcement as speculators rushed to snap up the stock. Shares have fallen every day since, closing Friday at $13.40.

Two weeks ago, French semiconductor manufacturer Sequans Communications raised $384 million from more than 40 institutional investors to buy bitcoin. The company’s stock jumped 215% that week and peaked at $5.83 a share—but it’s since fallen back down to $1.98.

“What happens in six, 12 or 18 months from now, and instead of the current bull market, we have a bear market?” said Evgeny Gaevoy, the co-founder of crypto market-making firm Wintermute. “A lot of low-effort crypto treasury companies will potentially crash and burn. And a lot of the retail investors that predominantly invested in them will be affected.”

Executives of some of the companies aren’t waiting to see if their plans work out—they’re dumping their personal shares after making the announcements, pocketing millions in the process.

On June 16, for example, SRM Entertainment, a toy-and-souvenir manufacturer in Winter Park, Fla., with a market value of $25 million the Friday before, announced plans to spend $100 million on a cryptocurrency called Tron.

The token purchase is part of a reverse merger between SRM and crypto entrepreneur Justin Sun’s company, also called Tron. SRM’s stock, which traded between 28 cents and $1.45 a share all year, shot up past $9.

Over the next several days, the company’s CEO, Richard Miller, and its chief financial officer, Douglas McKinnon, exercised previously issued stock options to buy a combined 600,000 shares at 56 cents a share, according to data from The Washington Service. They sold a combined $2 million or so of the newly acquired shares. A vice president of the company sold $941,000 worth of stock.

Executives of the company, which has changed its name to Tron Inc. and rang the Nasdaq opening bell on Thursday, declined to comment.

Lately, tiny companies are working with recognised names in finance to raise cash to buy crypto. Among them is Cantor Fitzgerald, run by Howard Lutnick before he became commerce secretary this year and passed the reins to his sons, Brandon and Kyle Lutnick.

Cantor last week said it would form a $5.3 billion bitcoin treasury company with Adam Back, an early cryptographer. It was Cantor’s second multibillion-dollar crypto-treasury SPAC deal in less than three months. The firm also facilitated several other bitcoin treasury deals and acted as an adviser to Trump Media’s plan to buy bitcoin.

For now, many investors are scoring big profits betting on these deals, which remind some of the frenzied SPAC boom of the pandemic era, when established members of the financial world jumped on the wave. Fabio Giorno, an entrepreneur who operates a tutoring business in Toronto, says he has begun to invest in Bitmine and SharpLink Gaming, another ether-focused treasury stock.

He’s done well on the stocks, but says the volatility of the shares shakes him.

“Sometimes it’s a little risky when you walk away from your computer, because you never know what’s going to happen with the news,” he said.

Former New Hampshire Gov. Chris Sununu delivered a warning to Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent during a recent visit to Washington: Already-high airfares will surge if the war in Iran doesn’t end soon.

Sununu, a Republican who represents some of the biggest airlines as president of the industry group Airlines for America, has for weeks sounded the alarm to Trump administration officials about the economic fallout from high jet fuel prices. The war, Sununu has argued, must come to a close soon, or things will get worse.

Administration officials have gotten the message.

Privately, President Trump’s advisers are increasingly worried that Republicans will pay a political price for the rising fuel costs, according to people familiar with the matter. Many of those advisers are eager to end the war, hoping prices will begin to moderate before November’s midterm elections.

The fallout from the U.S.-Israeli attack in late February has slowed traffic through the Strait of Hormuz, a vital shipping lane, triggering a sharp increase in oil, gasoline and jet-fuel prices.

That means consumers are grappling with high costs ahead of the summer travel season, as they consider vacation plans.

Sixty-three per cent of Americans said they put a great deal or a good amount of blame on Trump for the increase in gas prices, according to a new poll conducted by NPR, PBS and Marist.

More than 8 in 10 Americans said struggles at the gas pump are putting strain on their finances.

Jet-fuel prices roughly doubled in a matter of weeks after the war began, and they have remained high. Airlines have said that will add billions of dollars of additional expenses this year, squeezing profit margins.

U.S. airlines spent more than $5 billion on fuel in March—up 30% from a year earlier, according to government data.

Carriers have been raising ticket prices, hoping to pass the cost along to consumers, and they are culling flights that will no longer make money at higher price levels.

In March, the price of a U.S. domestic round-trip economy ticket rose 21% from a year earlier to $570, according to Airlines Reporting Corp., which tracks travel-agency sales.

So far, airlines have said the higher fares haven’t deterred bookings and they are hoping to recoup more of the fuel-cost increases as the year goes on.

Earlier this week, Trump said the current price of oil is “a very small price to pay for getting rid of a nuclear weapon from people that are really mentally deranged.”

Secretary of State Marco Rubio told reporters that if Iran got a nuclear weapon, the country would have more leverage to keep the strait closed and “make our gas prices like $9 a gallon or $8 a gallon.”

Trump has taken steps in recent days to bring the war to an end. Late Tuesday, the president paused a plan to help guide trapped commercial ships out of the Strait of Hormuz, expressing optimism that a deal could be reached with Iran to end the conflict.

Crude oil prices fell below $100 a barrel on Wednesday, after reports that Iran and the U.S. are working with mediators on a one-page framework to restart negotiations aimed at ending the conflict and opening the strait.

Sununu said Trump administration officials are conscious of the economic fallout from the war: “They get it…and I think that’s why they’re trying to get through the war as fast as they can.”

But he cautioned that it could take months for prices to return to prewar levels.

“Ticket prices won’t go down immediately” after the strait is fully reopened, Sununu said. “You’re looking at elevated ticket prices through the summer and fall because it takes a while for the prices to go down.”

Since the initial U.S.-Israeli attack in late February, Sununu has met in Washington with National Economic Council Director Kevin Hassett, representatives from the Transportation Department and senior White House officials.

A White House official confirmed that Hassett and Sununu have discussed the effect of increased fuel prices on the airline industry. The official said the conversation touched on how the industry can mitigate the impact of high jet fuel prices on consumers.

“The president and his entire energy team anticipated these short-term disruptions to the global energy markets from Operation Epic Fury and had a plan prepared to mitigate these disruptions,” White House spokeswoman Taylor Rogers said, pointing to the administration’s decision to waive a century-old shipping law in a bid to lower the cost of moving oil.

Rogers said the administration is working with industry representatives to “address their concerns, explore potential actions, and inform the president’s policy decisions.”

A Treasury Department spokesman pointed to Bessent’s recent comments on Fox News that the U.S. economy remains strong despite price increases. The spokesman said Treasury officials have met with airline executives, who have reaffirmed strong ticket bookings.

“We’re cognizant that this short-term move up in prices is affecting the American people, but I am also confident, on the other side of this, prices will come down very quickly,” Bessent told Fox News on Monday.

The war has already contributed to one casualty in the industry: Spirit Airlines. Company representatives have said they were forced to close the airline because the sustained surge in jet-fuel prices derailed the company’s plan to emerge from chapter 11 bankruptcy.

The Trump administration and Spirit failed to come to an agreement for the company to receive a financial lifeline of as much as $500 million from the federal government.

Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy has argued that the Iran war wasn’t the cause of Spirit’s demise, pointing to the company’s past financial struggles, as well as the Biden administration’s decision to challenge a merger with JetBlue.

Other budget airlines have also turned to the federal government for help since the U.S.-Israeli attack. A group of budget airlines last month sought $2.5 billion in financial assistance to offset higher fuel costs, and they separately wrote to lawmakers asking for relief from certain ticket taxes.

The Hottest Business Strategy This Summer Is Buying Crypto

Small companies are raising billions of dollars to buy bitcoin and other, more obscure cryptocurrencies. What could possibly go wrong?

Administration officials have spoken to the airline industry, which has voiced concerns about the rising costs.