Morning Minute: Public Companies Amass $100B+ in Bitcoin

Morning Minute is a daily newsletter written by Tyler Warner. The analysis and opinions expressed are his own and do not necessarily reflect those of Decrypt. Subscribe to the Morning Minute on Substack.

GM!

Today’s top news:

• Crypto majors red again as Trump confirms trade war; Bitcoin at $111,200
• Paxos accidentally mints $300T PYUSD onchain before burning
• Erebor Bank becomes 1st crypto bank to win conditional federal banking charter
• MegaETH opens public ICO registration; Meteora drops airdrop checker
• OpenSea announces Wave 1 SZN is over, Wave 2 runs through Nov 15

🧰 Public Companies Quietly Build A Serious Bitcoin Stack

Corporations just set a major new record.

One that Bitcoin maxis will be happy to celebrate.

📌 What happened

Corporate balance sheets now hold ~1.04M BTC (~$117B), marking a fresh record.

Public-company holders jumped 40% from last quarter to 172 firms, with the cohort adding ~193,000 BTC QoQ.

MicroStrategy (rebranded “Strategy”) leads the list with ~640,031 BTC, followed by Mara (53,250 BTC) and XXI (43,514 BTC).

Tesla is holding in 11th with 11,509 BTC despite not adding for years.

Several newer entrants are joining and climbing the list, specifically Bullish (24,300 BTC) and Trump Media (15,000 BTC).

🗣️ What they’re saying

“We’re seeing a growing wave of public and private companies increasing their Bitcoin holdings… not just a hedge, but a long-term bet on digital assets as a core treasury reserve,” Bitget’s CEO Gracy Chen told Decrypt

“Their raison d’être is to acquire crypto assets… funded by security issuance in the public market,” Chung added. “As long as there is appetite for their security issuance in the public market, they will continue this effort.” – Peter Chung, Head of Research at Presto Research, commenting on DATs leading the way

🧠 Why it matters

This is how a permanent bid forms.

Public companies move by slowly and by policy.

These decisions involve boards approval mandates, treasury teams weighing in, and purchases repeat quarter after quarter.

The impacts of institutions piling into Bitcoin:

• Smoother demand (less volatility up and down)
• BTC tied more to equity-market financing (ATMs, debt raises, index flows)
• Makes ownership easier to justify for the next CFO

Point 3 is arguably the most important, but one we haven’t quite had time to see come to fruition. The more major players that buy and hold Bitcoin, the easier it is for others to follow suit.

Point 1 is also very important to internalize. It’s very possible that the days of extreme Bitcoin volatility are behind us, and it just grinds up on a steadier basis with more shallow pullbacks for the next 5-10 years.

Boring, predictable – but still offering huge growth.

I think most would take that outcome—institutional buyers included…

🌎 Macro Crypto and Memes

A few Crypto and Web3 headlines that caught my eye:

• Crypto majors are red again after Trump confirmed a trade war with China; BTC -1% at $111,100, ETH -1% at $4,040, BNB -1% at $1,170, SOL -4% at $195
• No notable top movers
• Gold is up another 1% on the day to $4,260
• CME Group launched options trading for Solana and XRP futures
• The UK moved to repay Chinese victims of a $7B Bitcoin fraud
• Paxos briefly minted an absurd $300 trillion PYUSD on Ethereum before burning it
• Coinbase added BNB to its listing roadmap after previously delisting BUSD
• Palmer Luckey and Peter Thiel’s Erebor Bank won a conditional federal bank charter, positioning as a stablecoin-era crypto bank under the new GENIUS framework
• Sony Bank applied for a national trust charter to issue USD stablecoins and offer custody
• Former TD Ameritrade exec predicted that all assets will be tokenized within 5 years
• YZi Labs led a $50M raise for Better Payment Network (stablecoins)
• Kraken bought Small Exchange for $100M, getting a license to offer derivatives trading in the US for the first time
• Compass Coffee in Washington, D.C., became the first merchant to process Bitcoin payments using Square

In Corporate Treasuries / ETFs

In Memes

• Memecoin leaders are mostly red; DOGE -2%, Shiba -2%, PEPE -4%, PENGU -4%, BONK -4%, TRUMP -3%, SPX -5%, and FARTCOIN -4%
• Launchcoin fell 23% to $78M after Pasternak announced plans to increase the token supply by 33% to 1.33B and a flywheel to buy BELIEVE
• 1 coin led new movers on Solana, up 40% to $12M; fraudcoin and meowchi also up big
• LAB, EVAA and XPIN led notable top movers on BSC

💰 Token, Airdrop & Protocol Tracker

Here’s a rundown of major token, protocol and airdrop news from the day:

🚚 What is happening in NFTs?

Here is the list of other notable headlines from the day in NFTs:

• NFT leaders were mostly flat; Punks even at 44.5 ETH, Pudgy +2% at 7.75, BAYC -1% at 7.81 ETH; Hypurr’s +1% at 1,240 HYPE
• Moonbirds (+11%) and Mythics (+17%) were top movers
• OpenSea announced that its Wave 1 is locked and Treasure Chests claimable by Oct 17 with $12.2M in prizes; Wave 2 runs Oct 15 – Nov 15 with $1M in tokens added to prize pool
• Gondi launched full HyperEVM integration, offering full lending capability, 0% fees on buys and sells and loans demoninated in HYPE and USDC
• Plush Pepe #7 sold for 25,000 TON ($55,250) on Portals marketplace in Telegram