French Crypto Startup Drops Bitcoin Treasury Plan as Funding Conditions Tighten
French crypto startup The Bitcoin Society, or TBSO, has dropped its plan to build a Bitcoin treasury after funding became harder to secure. Bloomberg reported that weaker market conditions made fundraising tougher for TBSO, which is backed by former NBA player Tony Parker and Ledger co-founder Eric Larcheveque. My take: this is less about one company losing nerve and more about a funding trade running into daylight.
The reversal came fast. Very fast. The company had announced the strategy only months earlier. Bloomberg said Larcheveque described the plan as relying on repeated capital raises so TBSO could keep buying Bitcoin. That sounded workable while risk appetite held up. It looked much less workable after Bitcoin fell more than 20% in the first quarter of 2026.
TBSO is not alone here. Bloomberg reported that almost 130 publicly traded digital asset treasury companies have fallen by a median of about 48% over the past year. That is not a tiny wobble. It makes TBSO’s pullback look less like an isolated execution miss and more like a warning label for the whole DAT setup.
A funding model under pressure
A Bitcoin treasury model looks simple enough: raise money, buy Bitcoin, hold it on the balance sheet, then raise more. TBSO’s case shows the weak spot. Smaller companies need investors to keep saying yes again and again. Skip that assumption, and the model stops looking simple.
Most guides frame Bitcoin treasury strategies as a balance-sheet decision. That’s only half right. When Bitcoin is rising and investors want risk, the pitch can sound tidy. When Bitcoin drops, the tone changes quickly. Fundraising windows close. Investors push harder. What sounded like a strategy starts to look like a bet on timing.
In its April disclosure, TBSO said Bitcoin allocation had become a potential “non-core” activity. The company also said it holds no Bitcoin now. I’ll be honest: that is a sharp turn from the treasury plan it had been selling, and the wording matters because “non-core” is not how companies usually describe a conviction trade.
For traders, the message goes beyond one French crypto startup stepping back from Bitcoin. Why does this matter? Because the digital asset treasury trade looks more dependent on market liquidity than buyers were willing to admit when prices were moving up.
Analysis: Bitcoin treasury vehicles are usually judged by whether they can keep adding Bitcoin exposure over time. If that depends on raising fresh money every few months, a bad market can kill the plan before it gets big enough to matter. Yes, that sounds obvious after the fact. It was much easier to ignore when Bitcoin was still bid.
Broader DAT weakness
Digital asset treasury weakness means these crypto-holding companies are losing market value, even while the Bitcoin story still has buyers. Bloomberg’s numbers point to a broad selloff: nearly 130 publicly traded DAT companies are down by a median of about 48% over the past year. That figure does the work here.
That matters because these companies are often valued on more than their operating businesses. Investors are also paying for a chain of assumptions: raise money, buy crypto, wait for higher prices, then repeat the cycle. We keep coming back to the same issue: the operating company is only part of the bet.
Counter to the usual advice, a lower Bitcoin price is not always a clean buying opportunity for a treasury vehicle. It can cool investor demand. It can make financing harder. It can leave accumulation plans stranded halfway through. Is this overkill? For a company that needs repeated capital raises, no.
Bloomberg said Larcheveque’s comments pointed to the basic problem. TBSO needed frequent capital raises to buy Bitcoin. Bitcoin’s more than 20% drop in the first quarter of 2026 made that much harder to do. We tried to read this as company-specific, but the nearly 130-company DAT drawdown makes that too neat.
Analysis: Investors may start separating larger treasury firms with deeper financing options from smaller vehicles that depend on good market sentiment. Bloomberg did not say whether TBSO might return to the plan later. For now, it has walked away. That says plenty.
Why it matters
TBSO’s decision shows how quickly a Bitcoin accumulation plan can fall apart when markets turn and new funding dries up. My read: treasury plays carry more than Bitcoin risk. They also carry stock market risk, financing risk, dilution risk, and the risk that investors simply stop showing up.