Corporate Bitcoin buying slowed sharply in the third quarter, but analysts say a sustained price rally could revive corporate treasury purchases in late 2026 and into 2027 — with investors expected to be far more selective about which treasury companies they fund.

The pullback marks a stark reversal from the aggressive accumulation that characterized the 2025 corporate treasury boom, when a wave of companies added Bitcoin to their balance sheets.

Bitwise head of research Ryan Rasmussen told Cointelegraph that Bitcoin treasury buying slowed across the board in the third quarter. According to company filings, Strategy's Bitcoin holdings rose by a net 1,666 BTC in Q3, a steep decline from the 83,901 BTC the company added in the second quarter. Other public companies added a net 5,617 BTC in the third quarter, according to figures compiled by Rasmussen, down from 45,725 BTC in the previous quarter.

Despite the slowdown, Rasmussen said he expects corporate purchases to start picking up again as early as this year. The company filings behind those quarterly figures are where any renewed buying would first become visible.

Investors Now Focus on Discipline

Jag Kooner, head of derivatives at Bitfinex, said new buying could follow if treasury companies regain premiums over the value of their Bitcoin holdings. Premiums are the engine of that model: when a company's shares trade above the value of its Bitcoin, it can issue new stock and buy more coins, lifting the amount of Bitcoin behind each share. When the premium disappears, that funding loop shuts down. But he noted that investors have become considerably more discerning since the 2025 treasury boom.

“Shareholders have seen premiums collapse and some companies sell into weakness. Investors are now pricing these businesses on funding costs, balance-sheet discipline and bitcoin per share,” Kooner said.

He added that a rally could restart buying, especially among companies with solid financing plans in place. Even so, “a return to last year’s indiscriminate capital raising looks unlikely,” he said.

Bitwise’s October market report also showed that the total number of Bitcoin treasury companies fell in the third quarter, with smaller firms that abandoned the strategy driving the decline. Rasmussen said a dozen companies that joined during the 2025 boom sold all of their Bitcoin. Most did so to repay debt or return cash to shareholders after their stock premiums disappeared. The departures mark a notable contraction for a sector that expanded rapidly during last year’s fundraising surge.

Established Players Expected to Lead

If buying returns, Kooner said capital would likely flow first to larger, established companies. These firms have the scale, the trading liquidity in their shares and the track record that investors now want before committing funds.

Rasmussen noted that most of the biggest corporate buyers outside Strategy, which pioneered the corporate Bitcoin treasury model with its first purchase in 2020, are operating businesses. These companies purchase Bitcoin with cash generated from their operations instead of selling new stock — a pattern he described as “a smaller source of demand but a healthier one.”

Kooner cautioned that a large wave of new treasury companies would likely appear only late in a rally. “A broad wave of new listings would most likely arrive late in a rally, once premiums have widened and that timing is itself a warning sign,” he said.

ETF Demand Could Support a Recovery, With Caveats

Rasmussen said Bitcoin could recover even without another corporate buying boom, pointing to $6.4 billion in net inflows to spot Bitcoin exchange-traded funds in the third quarter. “Corporate purchases are one source of demand for bitcoin, but not the only source,” he said.

Kooner agreed that ETF demand could support a recovery for a time, but warned that some of that activity comes from basis trades — in which investors buy spot Bitcoin or ETF shares and sell futures against them to capture the price spread — a type of positioning that can unwind quickly. “Without corporate buying, the market loses a price-insensitive bid and becomes more dependent on allocators who rebalance with macro conditions,” he said.

Recent data shows how quickly ETF demand can reverse. US spot Bitcoin ETFs saw about $229 million in net outflows last week, the second straight week of withdrawals, according to SoSoValue.