The Bitcoin treasury deals that dominated the early months of last year’s revival of the special purpose acquisition company market have disappeared along with the plunge in Bitcoin prices. Bitcoin peaked in October and has since fallen roughly 50 percent.
By yearend only 11 percent of the 144 SPACs that went public in 2025 were Bitcoin treasury deals, according to SPACInsider. And the two most-hyped deals — which have already sealed mergers in what is called a DeSPAC — have collapsed in value.
“I don’t think the Bitcoin treasury companies work anymore,” said Kristi Marvin, founder and CEO of SPACInsider. Such companies hold Bitcoin or other cryptocurrencies on their balance sheets, offering a way for investors to invest in crypto without doing so directly. Marvin said ETFs are offering the same thing, making the SPACs less popular.
“I guarantee you a lot [of Bitcoin treasury SPACs] were close to signing definitive agreements,” Marvin told Institutional Investor. “The deals are stalled or not happening anymore.”
During the summer, Cantor Equity Partners was the best performing SPAC, trading at multiples of its IPO price of $10. “It lit the market on fire,” said Marvin. The stock jumped all the way to $49 before Cantor inked a deal with Twenty One Capital, backed by Tether and SoftBank. The merger was completed in December, and the stock has been on a steady slide, trading Monday at under $6.00 per share.
The IPO was sponsored by Cantor Fitzgerald, which is already a big player in the crypto world as it holds Treasury securities for Tether, the world’s largest stablecoin issuer.
Crypto bull Anthony Pompliano also launched a Bitcoin treasury SPAC last year that was temporarily hot. The SPAC, ProCap Financial, jumped on the news it would merge with Columbus Circle Capital, but the stock traded Monday around $2.39, a big fall from its $10 IPO price. The merger was completed in December.
After completing their mergers, SPAC prices typically fall, as the IPO investors are able to get their money back — $10 per share with interest — and many redeem. But some deSPACs fare worse than others. Crypto deSPAC stock prices have fallen to a median stock price of $1.73, lower than real estate, finance, transportation, or renewable energy DeSPACs, according to SPACInsider.
As II previously reported, by late June, 63 SPACs had filed for IPOs for a total value of $12.8 billion, according to SPACInsider. That was triple the 31 SPAC IPOs in 2023 and far outpacing the 65 SPACs that made it to market in all of 2024.
At that time, Douglas Ellenoff, whose namesake firm was the top law firm for SPACs in 2025, said he expected that crypto SPAC deals could account for more than a third of the SPAC deals this year.
The Bitcoin treasury model was popularized by Michael Saylor’s MicroStrategy, now called Strategy, which has also had a reversal of fortune. Its stock has also collapsed along with Bitcoin, falling more than 70 percent from Strategy’s peak last July.
Now people are wary of such deals. SPACInsider’s Marvin said that Cantor — which launched six SPACS last year and a seventh in 2026 — is giving itself “a lot of wiggle room.”
Following the aforementioned Cantor Equity Partners, Cantor offered another SPAC that planned to merge with a crypto company. But its third SPAC said it would look for a fintech partner, and the fourth was for consumer staples. The next three have not defined what type of company they are looking for as a partner.
“A Bitcoin treasury SPAC doesn’t look so good now,” said Marvin. “Six months from now, I don’t know — maybe.”
She noted that one recently announced SPAC IPO did offer a twist on the theme. While not saying it will invest in a Bitcoin treasury company, the Subversive Bitcoin SPAC said that 10 percent of its trust account would be holding Bitcoin. Typically a SPAC’s trust holds Treasury securities or other cash-like instruments equal to the amount of capital raised in the IPO.
Subversive Bitcoin said it will focus on companies in the cryptocurrency and blockchain technology sectors.
