- Nakamoto, a listed bitcoin treasury company, owes Kraken around $165m. CoinDesk reports that is more than the company’s entire stock market value.
- About 70% of its bitcoin is pledged against that loan. The coins were bought at an average of roughly $118,000 each. Bitcoin is trading below $69,000.
- A separate $60m repayment has been pushed back to 2027, though it can be called in earlier.
A bitcoin treasury company exists to do one thing: buy bitcoin and let shareholders own it through an ordinary listed stock. Nakamoto now owes its lender more than the whole company is worth on the market, and most of its coins are already spoken for.
Treasury companies were sold to the market as patient holders, the kind of buyer who sits through a downturn and steadies the price. A holder who has borrowed against its coins is a different animal. If the lender asks for its money back, the coins go out of the door at whatever the market will pay that day, and that selling lands on everyone else who owns bitcoin.
What pledging bitcoin to an exchange means
Nakamoto did not simply buy bitcoin and sit on it. It borrowed against it. The coins were handed to Kraken as collateral, which is the same arrangement as a mortgage in one respect only: the lender holds something it can take if you stop paying.
The difference is speed. Property is valued occasionally. Bitcoin is priced every second, so these loans carry a level at which the collateral is no longer considered sufficient cover. Fall through it and the borrower is asked for more coins or more cash, usually within hours. If neither arrives, the lender sells the collateral.
That is why the timing is awkward rather than merely expensive. The moment a forced sale becomes likely is the moment the price is already falling, which is the worst available moment to be selling anything.
The arithmetic
CoinDesk puts Nakamoto’s average purchase price at roughly $118,000 per coin. Bitcoin was changing hands below $69,000 as that report went out, and The Defiant recorded it dropping under $67,000 as the wider selloff continued, with ether below $1,900 after a sixth straight session of outflows from US spot ether funds.
At those levels the treasury is worth somewhere around 40% less than it cost. Around 70% of it is pledged, so the portion the company could freely sell to raise cash is the smaller part, and selling it would shrink the asset the loan is measured against.
We could not find a company filing or statement behind the $165m figure, so the numbers here are as CoinDesk described them.
The $60m nobody is talking about
The headline debt is not the only obligation. Related filings show Nakamoto has pushed a $60m stablecoin repayment, denominated in USDT, out to 2027. That reads like breathing room, and in the short term it is. The condition attached to it matters more: the repayment can still be triggered earlier.
So the 2027 date is a ceiling rather than a schedule. It tells you the latest the money is due, not the earliest it might be asked for.
This is not one company’s problem
In the same stretch, MARA sold $1.1bn of bitcoin to repay debt, a decision we covered when it happened and which was presented as balance sheet management rather than a change of view on bitcoin. Metaplanet, the Japanese firm that built its share price on a bitcoin treasury, reported a quarterly loss of about $170m.
Three companies, three different structures, one shared position. Each bought bitcoin with money that has to be accounted for to somebody else, and each is now holding coins worth less than the price they paid. The strategy worked identically on the way up, which is why it is failing in the same shape on the way down.
None of this says anything about bitcoin’s long-run prospects. It says something narrower and more immediate about who owns a meaningful slice of it, and on what terms.
What we cannot see from outside
The number that would actually settle this is the level at which Kraken can demand more collateral or start selling. That is a private term between a lender and a borrower, and it does not appear in public filings or on the . Without it, nobody outside the two companies can say how far bitcoin would have to fall before anything is forced.
What to watch
Nakamoto’s next filing or any disclosure of a collateral top-up. A company that quietly posts more coins or cash against the loan has avoided the problem for now, and that would show up in the paperwork before it shows up anywhere else.
Beyond that, whether the pattern spreads. One treasury company under pressure is a company-specific story. Several of them selling into the same weak market is the thing that would reach ordinary holders, and it is worth keeping an eye on how much of the sector’s bitcoin is borrowed against rather than simply owned. If you hold coins yourself, the counterparty question behind all of this is covered in our guide to self-custody, and our Kraken review covers the exchange’s consumer side.