Guide

Bitcoin treasury management, from first question to ongoing control

The flagship guide for companies evaluating or already holding bitcoin.

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Why a company would hold bitcoin

Companies hold reserves to meet future obligations and to keep options open. A board considering bitcoin is deciding whether a scarce, portable asset belongs alongside cash and short-term instruments in that reserve.

The honest case includes the costs: price volatility that must not threaten operating cash, accounting and tax treatment your advisers must settle, and controls a cash account gives you for free that bitcoin does not.

Evaluate

Liquidity before allocation

The first number is not a price target. It is the cash the company must be able to reach after a severe fall, with payroll, tax, and suppliers still paid.

Work through that arithmetic in the treasury instrument, then take the board summary and the board pack to your own advisers.

Evaluate

What companies have actually done

A short, sourced record. What each board decided, what happened next, and what the public record cannot tell you. Figures are as reported at the time; none of this is a reason, by itself, for your company to do anything.

Aug 2020Strategy buys 21,454 BTC for $250m; its board adopts a Treasury Reserve Policy the following month
Jan 2021Tesla invests $1.5bn; Block completes $220m of purchases; Mercado Libre buys $7.8m
Mid 2022Tesla converts about 75% of its purchases back to cash
Apr 2024Block publishes its treasury Blueprint and starts monthly purchases from bitcoin-product profit
Dec 2024Microsoft shareholders vote 0.55% in favour of assessing a bitcoin allocation

Strategy (then MicroStrategy)

Decided: August 2020: bought 21,454 bitcoin for $250 million. September 2020: the board adopted a written Treasury Reserve Policy, bitcoin as the primary reserve asset, cash above working-capital needs retained.
What happened next: The policy held. What changed was everything around it (see the boundary below). Under fair-value accounting it reported a $5.9 billion unrealised loss in one quarter of 2025.
What we can’t know: Whether the concentration was prudent. Its own filing listed volatility, accounting, and custodian-breach risks from day one; it was not presented as safe, even by Strategy.

SEC filing, August 2020 What a treasury policy has to settle

Tesla

Decided: January 2021: invested $1.5 billion. No treasury policy was published.
What happened next: Recorded $101 million of impairments in 2021, converted about 75% of its purchases back to cash in mid-2022 to maximise its cash position, and still held 11,509 bitcoin at the end of 2024.
What we can’t know: How its keys were governed, and whether the 2022 sale was discipline or necessity. The lesson is narrower: an allocation is tested by operating cash needs, not by conviction.

Tesla Form 10-K, 2021 Test your own reserves against a severe fall

Block

Decided: 2020–21: bought $220 million of bitcoin. April 2024: published its full treasury documentation and began monthly purchases funded by 10% of gross profit from its bitcoin products.
What happened next: Held 8,038 bitcoin at March 2024 and open-sourced its execution, custody, insurance, and accounting process for other companies to copy.
What we can’t know: A neutral lesson for an ordinary company. Bitcoin is Block's business, so its funding and conviction are not yours. It is the best-documented example, not the most comparable one.

Block's Bitcoin Blueprint How signing controls are implemented

Mercado Libre

Decided: Early 2021: bought $7.8 million of bitcoin as part of its treasury strategy, held with a third-party custodian.
What happened next: Very little, publicly. It still held the bitcoin at the end of 2024: a small allocation inside a large operating business that simply persisted.
What we can’t know: Almost everything else. The company never published its reasoning, which is the point: even a well-disclosed holding reveals little about the quality of the governance behind it.

Mercado Libre Form 10-Q, 2021 The questions your auditor will ask

One boundary matters. Strategy did not stop at holding bitcoin from its reserves: from 2021 it issued debt and shares to buy more, and by 2024 was running a $42 billion capital-raising plan with its own bitcoin-per-share targets. That is a different business, a company whose product has become its treasury strategy, with leverage and market risks an operating company does not need. Companies that have restructured themselves around that model are not templates for a board weighing a treasury allocation. What that model involves, and what a board takes on with it, is set out in what becoming a bitcoin treasury company means. Recommending it, or arranging the capital, is outside what we do.

Notice what none of these filings can tell you: whether any company’s private keys were well governed. Only Block published meaningful process documentation, and even Block does not disclose its signing arrangements. Holdings are public. Control quality is not. That gap is the part of the decision a board has to build for itself, and it is what implementation is for.

Evaluate

Every claimed benefit is a decision

Not arguments for and against. Each benefit a board hears about arrives with a counterweight, and together they name the decision your board, your CFO, and your advisers actually have to make.

Preserving purchasing power over the long term

Bitcoin can fall severely and stay down for a long time. Under fair-value accounting, Strategy reported a $5.9 billion unrealised loss in a single quarter of 2025.

The decision: What portion of reserves can remain untouched through a downturn?

Liquidity and transferability

A liquid market does not remove price, banking, or execution risk under stress. Block's published answer was deliberate, staged trade execution, not assumed liquidity.

The decision: How would the company fund operations during market stress, and how would it actually transact?

Balance-sheet optionality

Accounting, tax, and governance complexity. The accounting treatment itself changed under holders mid-course, with nine-figure swings in reported results.

The decision: Who approves changes to the treasury policy, and what does the board see reported each period?

Signalling long-term conviction

Shareholder, lender, and reputational consequences. Microsoft's shareholders voted 0.55% in favour of even assessing a bitcoin allocation in December 2024, after hearing the strongest version of the case.

The decision: Is bitcoin consistent with the company's stated objectives, and who has actually authorised the signal?

If your company is considering a first allocation, those decisions run through treasury policy, reserves, and operating constraints. If you already hold bitcoin, they run through governance, signing authority, internal controls, and continuity. Either way, the next step is to test your own position rather than read more about other companies.

Explore your treasury readiness

Implement

Policy, signing controls, and continuity

A treasury policy names who may approve a purchase, a transfer, and a change to the signing arrangement. Collaborative security then makes that policy real: more than one authorised holder must act, and no single person can move funds alone.

Continuity is part of the same design. An executive leaving, a signer being unavailable, or a lost device are planned events, rehearsed before they happen. See how implementation works.