Prenetics Halts Bitcoin Treasury Buys, Keeps 510 BTC

Prenetics Global Limited halted its Bitcoin treasury buying program, ending daily purchases announced in June to refocus on its consumer health brand co-founded with former football player David Beckham.

According to an on Tuesday, the company paused its Bitcoin purchases on Dec. 4 and will not pursue additional BTC acquisitions, focusing instead on scaling its nutritional brand IM8, which Prenetics said surpassed $100 million in annualized recurring revenue within 11 months of launch.

The company will keep 510 Bitcoin () on its balance sheets, along with more than $70 million in cash and cash equivalents. IM8, a subsidiary of Prenetics, sells an all-in-one daily nutrition supplement marketed as a replacement for multiple standalone products.

In June, company , investing $20 million to acquire about 187 Bitcoin at an average price of $106,712 per coin. Bitcoin was trading at $88,198 at time of writing, implying an unrealized of about 17%, or about $3.4 million on the position.

Prenetics’ shares fell 3.32% in Tuesday trading on Nasdaq, while still up nearly 170% on the year, according to Google Finance .

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According to from BitcoinTreasuries.NET, 192 publicly traded companies now hold Bitcoin on their balance sheets, collectively accounting for nearly 1.1 million BTC. 

A large share of that total is concentrated in Strategy, the Michael Saylor-led company laid the blueprint for corporate Bitcoin treasury companies. Following Strategy’s, the company holds 672,497 Bitcoin.

Strategy chief financial officer Andrew Kang Tuesday on a podcast that the company continues to buy and hold Bitcoin, citing expectations of further upside. He said:

We know it’s [Bitcoin] going to go from where it is today back to 125k, up to 200k, up to a million, and up to 21,000,000 one day. That all still is going to happen. It just is going to happen over a period of time […] And so for us, why we keep doing it [buying] with that principle in mind.”

Managing director of GoMining Institutional, Fakhul Miah, that he feared “copycat” companies that are “trying to create Bitcoin banks without proper safeguards or risk management.”

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