Crypto treasury firms pivot to AI to regain investor interest, and it’s not working

Over 200 public companies adopted digital asset treasury strategies during 2025, riding the wave of enthusiasm that MicroStrategy had surfed for years. The idea was simple enough: buy crypto, hold it on the balance sheet, and watch your stock trade at a premium to the underlying token value. When token prices corrected, these stocks didn’t just follow crypto down. They cratered, with declines ranging from 80% to 95%. Aggregate market-cap losses across the digital asset treasury sector exceeded $60 billion. Perhaps the most telling detail: many of these stocks sank below the value of the tokens they actually held. The AI rebrand shuffle ALT5 Sigma rebranded as AI Financial Corporation, trading under the ticker AIFC, in April 2026. It launched a dedicated AI business unit while still maintaining a large treasury position in World Liberty Financial tokens. Eightco Holdings, trading on NASDAQ under the ticker ORBS, reported a treasury worth approximately $406 million as of mid-July 2026. The treasury includes an indirect stake in OpenAI, roughly 283 million Worldcoin tokens, and more than 16,000 Ethereum. K Wave Media saw its shares drop 71% following its strategic reboot toward AI. Al...