Strive and Strategy Buy $513M in Bitcoin as Cronos Halts After $75M Exploit

Crypto markets saw significant corporate activity and a major security incident on Monday, as two public companies added hundreds of millions of dollars in Bitcoin to their treasuries while the Cronos blockchain was forced to halt operations following a $75 million exploit. Asset manager Strive became the fifth-largest publicly traded corporate Bitcoin holder after purchasing 1,800 BTC for roughly $143 million, while Michael Saylor's Strategy resumed its Bitcoin accumulation with a $370 million acquisition after a two-month pause.

Strive, an asset manager and Bitcoin treasury company, acquired the 1,800 BTC at an average price of $79,431 per coin including fees and expenses, bringing its total holdings to 23,156 BTC. The purchase lifted Strive past crypto exchange Bullish in the rankings of corporate Bitcoin holders and increased its holdings by roughly 8.4% in five business days, according to company filings. The buying spree comes as Bitcoin rebounds from its recent downturn, climbing more than 23% to above $81,000 after the US Treasury Department announced it would increase certain long-term bond buybacks, before slipping back below $79,000 on Monday.

Strategy, the largest corporate Bitcoin holder, acquired 4,603 BTC at an average price of $80,318, pushing its total holdings to 845,050 BTC acquired for approximately $63.3 billion at an average cost basis of $75,413, according to a Monday 8-K filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission. The purchase was backed by net proceeds from a 602 million MSTR common stock sale, with the company also allocating $30 million to boost its USD cash reserve and $151.8 million to repurchase its preferred STRC stock. The acquisition marks Strategy's first corporate Bitcoin buy since mid-June, when it acquired 1,587 BTC for roughly $100 million.

Cronos was forced to halt its blockchain on Sunday after an exploit targeting decentralized lending protocol Tectonic resulted in an estimated $75 million in losses, most of which remained on the Cronos network at the time of writing. The Cronos team identified the incident and paused network operations to prevent further damage, underscoring ongoing security vulnerabilities in DeFi protocols as total value locked across the sector continues to grow.