Bitcoin numbers for March are impossible to ignore and are deceptively bullish. A total of 47,435 companies were added, including listed and private companies. $BTC Last month, money worth about $3.2 billion at month-end prices was delivered to the Treasury, but things changed dramatically when one name was removed from the ledger.
Almost all of these coins were purchased by Michael Saylor’s strategy. Other companies are generally regressing, according to a March report from bitcointreasuries.net. Bitcoin Magazine.
This divergence is shaping up to be the defining story for enterprise Bitcoin adoption in 2026. Number of strategic purchases 44,377 $BTC March alone included 22,337 purchases, one of the largest ever in a single week $BTC was disclosed on March 16 and was funded by $1.57 billion in ATM sales from STRC preferred stock and MSTR common stock.
The company currently controls two-thirds of all Bitcoin held by public companies, amounting to approximately 762,000 bits. $BTC Although aggressive, the path to 1 million is plausible.
STRC is helping Strategy build the accumulation machine
To understand how Strategy continues to buy at this scale in what BitcoinTreasuries.net describes as a “bear market,” you need to understand STRC, the company’s variable rate perpetual preferred stock product.
STRC is targeting a price near $100 and currently yields approximately 11.5% per year with monthly resets. It sits above public shareholders in Strategy’s capital structure, offering more predictable returns than MSTR stock, yet anchored by the underlying Bitcoin treasury.
March was a turning point for the instrument. STRC hit its highest single-day trading volume of $746 million on March 12th, followed by its second-highest daily trading volume of $522 million on March 31st. Weekly trading volume reached $2.27 billion from March 9th to March 13th alone. The demand wasn’t just record-setting; That provided the funds to buy Bitcoin.
For the week of March 9-15, Strategy’s 8-K reported $1.2 billion in STRC ATM revenue and $396 million in MSTR revenue, for a total of 22,337 financings. $BTC purchase.
Now Strategy applied for a new $42 billion ATM program, split evenly between STRC and MSTR, with an additional $2.1 billion added to STRK. According to BitcoinTreasuries.net’s modeling, if revenue reaches a pace of about $2.3 billion per month over 19 months and Bitcoin hovers around $75,000, the strategy could reach $1 million. $BTC By November 2026.
A more conservative forecast using Strategy’s average monthly purchase rate of 21,000. $BTC After January 2025, that date will be postponed to March 2027.
Freefall Bitcoin Leaderboard
March also sparked a massive leaderboard reshuffle that reflects how different the playbook looks outside of Saylor’s orbit. MARA Holdings, once the second-largest Bitcoin treasury, sold 15,133 coins. $BTCwill repurchase approximately $1.1 billion worth of convertible debt. The sale wiped out nearly 28% of its previous holdings.
Tyler Rowe of BitcoinTreasuries.net said: “MARA borrowed aggressively to build up capital during the bull market, and is now selling Bitcoin at a loss to pay off that debt. This is the exact scenario that critics of the debt-fueled Treasury strategy have been warning about.”
This opens the door for Jack Mallards’ Twenty One Capital (XXI) to move into second place, currently holding 43,514. $BTC — However, it is worth noting that XXI has not purchased Bitcoin since August. Its rise is purely a function of MARA’s decline. Metaplanet is a Japanese company that has become one of the most active Bitcoin accumulators outside the United States, acquiring 5,075 Bitcoins in early April. $BTC until it reaches 40,177 $BTCjumped over MARA and took 3rd place.
The GameStop story is perhaps the most unusual. The retailer-turned-cryptocurrency treasury has pledged $4,709 $BTC Leave only one as collateral for covered call strategy with Coinbase Credit $BTC Directly held.
The counterparty retains the right to sell or re-pledge the pledged Bitcoin, but GameStop retains the contractual right to receive the same amount back. The move dropped the company from the 21st-ranked Bitcoin holder to nearly 190th on the leaderboard.
Bitcoin accumulation by listed companies is stagnant
Beyond the leaderboard drama, the March report revealed a quieter but more important trend. Outside of strategy, corporate confidence in Bitcoin has cooled sharply. Listed companies other than Strategy actively added to their holdings last summer, but net buying decreased and outright buying accelerated from October onwards.
The number of monthly buyers has steadily declined since September, reaching just 16 in March.
Ryan Strauss of Bitcoin Consulting Group put it bluntly in his report: “What stands out to me is how structurally strategy-dependent the growth of headline holdings is. When you remove that, the underlying signal reverses from strength to clear slowdown. The decline in both net accumulation and participation suggests that this is more than just noise, and that corporate belief is broadly cooling following last summer’s aggressive positioning.
Among the sellers was Exodus Movement, whose Bitcoin holdings decreased by an estimated $1,084. $BTC To finance the acquisition of W3C Corp. Fold Inc., down 178 $BTC; and Cango Inc., down 331.3 $BTC After mining update.
A new financial ecosystem formed around STRC
The most important thing about March is that an ecosystem of financial products is being built around STRC itself, rather than buying and selling. At least five companies have disclosed allocations to or acquisition plans for STRC. Strive, an asset management company led by CEO Matt Cole, has committed $50 million to STRC, which is described as “an alternative to U.S. dollar reserves comprised primarily of cash from low-yield money market funds,” and is contributing more than a third of the bonds.
DeFi protocol Apyx, which bills itself as the first dividend-backed stablecoin, held approximately 450,000 STRC shares worth $45 million as of early April, and was using the yield to back its apxUSD stablecoin.
Meanwhile, mutual funds and ETFs currently hold over $2 billion worth of digital credit products, with STRC alone accounting for $591 million across data sets including Capital Group, BlackRock, Fidelity, and VanEck.
BitcoinTreasuries.net notes that this institutional introduction is particularly timely amidst the private credit crisis, where some issuers have restricted retail fund withdrawals or placed caps on redemptions. The report argues that this system is structurally opaque, putting it at a disadvantage compared to Bitcoin-backed digital credits, where collateral is on-chain and pricing is publicly visible.
Overall, the broad conclusion from March 2026 is that corporate Bitcoin adoption is not slowing, but is concentrating. Strategies are becoming more than just the biggest players, they are becoming the market itself, with an expanding financial architecture designed to keep accumulating regardless of price movements.
In this post, Strategy’s (MSTR) Bitcoin ambitions are reshaping corporate finance. Everyone Else Is Falling Behind was first published in Bitcoin Magazine and written by Micah Zimmerman.
