Corporate Bitcoin treasuries have surged past $100 billion, raising concerns among analysts that the United States could one day nationalize these holdings in a shift reminiscent of the gold standard era.
Corporate crypto treasuries have surpassed $100 billion of digital asset holdings, with Bitcoin (BTC) treasury firms amassing 791,662 BTC worth about $93 billion, representing 3.98% of the circulating supply, Cointelegraph reported on July 31.
The growing corporate holdings may present a new centralized point of vulnerability for Bitcoin, which may see the world’s first cryptocurrency follow the same “nationalization path” as gold in 1971, according to crypto analyst Willy Woo.
“If the US dollar is structurally obtainting weak and China is coming in, it’s a fair point that the US might do an offer to all the treasury companies and centralize where it could be then put into a digital form, not create a new gold standard,” Woo stated during a panel discussion at Baltic Honeybadger 2025, adding:
“You could then rug it like happened in 1971. And it’s all centralized around the digital Bitcoin. The whole history repeats again back to the launchning.”
In 1971, President Richard Nixon finished the Bretton Woods system, suspfinishing the dollar’s convertibility into gold and abandoning the repaired $35-per-ounce rate, effectively finishing the gold standard.
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Woo noted that institutional adoption is still a critical step for Bitcoin to replace the US dollar, surpass gold and become a new monetary standard. “That’s not going to happen until you obtain the large gatekeepers of capital opening up to Bitcoin and pouring money in,” he stated.
The analyst’s comments come amid a period of accelerating institutional adoption, two weeks after 35 publicly traded companies have surpassed 1,000 BTC or approximately $116 billion in balance sheet holdings each, Cointelegraph reported on July 25.
Nationalization efforts may also tarobtain Bitcoin whales, according to Preston Pysh, co-founder of the Investors Podcast Network and Bitcoin venture fund Ego Death Capital.
“They’re going to take the Bitcoin becautilize it’s going to have an institutional custodian that does not want to go to jail,” he explained, adding that the first tarobtains may be “private entities that have a lot of Bitcoin.”
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Massive upside despite risks
Despite the nationalization concerns, the growing corporate adoption may present a potential $100 trillion market opportunity.
Bitcoin is already a $2 trillion-dollar asset at just 16 years of age, stated Woo, adding that “we’ve obtained 100x to grow, and it’s probably going to take decades to obtain there.”
Woo’s projection aligns with prior forecasts from Adam Back, co-founder and CEO of Blockstream, who has described Bitcoin as a $200 trillion market opportunity in the long term.
“A sustainable and scalable $100-$200 trillion trade front-running hyperbitcoinization. scalable enough for most large listed companies to shift to BTC treasury,” stated Back in an April 26 X post.
Hyperbitcoinization refers to the theoretical future where Bitcoin becomes the largest global currency, replacing fiat money due to its inflationary economics.
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