In one sentence: mNAV compares what the market values a crypto treasury company at with the value of the crypto it holds - above 1 the company trades at a premium to its coins, below 1 at a discount. The catch is that "mNAV" is not one number. There are at least three versions in common use, and the same company can sit below 1 on one of them and above 1 on another on the same day. So "mNAV below 1" means little until you know which version is being quoted.
This page builds on our explainer What Is a Bitcoin Treasury Company?, which covers the business model and the premium flywheel. Here the focus is the metric itself: how to calculate each version, what the threshold of 1 actually tests, and what treasury companies did in 2026 once they crossed it.
How to calculate mNAV: three versions
All three share one input: crypto NAV, the number of coins held multiplied by the current coin price.
- Basic mNAV = market capitalisation / crypto NAV. Market capitalisation is the share price times shares outstanding; Strategy's own presentation uses fully diluted shares [1].
- Enterprise mNAV = enterprise value / crypto NAV. Enterprise value adds the company's debt and preferred stock to its equity value; Strategy's description of its older metric says it "measures if the enterprise (debt and pref at notional) trades at a premium to its BTC" [1]. Conventions differ on whether cash is subtracted, so check the footnote.
- Net mNAV = market capitalisation / net reserve. The net reserve is the crypto value left for common shareholders once senior claims are netted out. Strategy's updated metric "measures if the common equity trades at a premium to its residual bitcoin value" [1], and Benchmark said Strategy's new metrics "better capture what common shareholders own after netting out senior claims" [2].
One company, three answers
Take a hypothetical treasury company holding 10,000 BTC at $60,000, so its crypto NAV is $600 million. It owes $100 million of debt, has $200 million of preferred stock outstanding, and holds no cash. It has 10 million shares trading at $50, a market capitalisation of $500 million.
| Version | Calculation | Result |
|---|---|---|
| Basic mNAV | 500 / 600 | 0.83 |
| Enterprise mNAV | (500 + 100 + 200) / 600 | 1.33 |
| Net mNAV | 500 / (600 - 300) | 1.67 |
On the basic version the stock trades at a discount. On the other two it trades at a premium. None of the three is a calculation error; they answer different questions. Basic asks whether the equity is worth the gross coins. Enterprise asks whether the whole capital structure is. Net asks whether the common stock is worth what would be left for it.
In this simplified case, with no cash, the versions also nest: if enterprise mNAV is below 1, basic and net mNAV must be below 1 too. An enterprise figure under 1 is the strongest form of the discount.
What "1" actually tests
The threshold matters because of a single financing question: does selling new shares to buy coins increase the coins behind each existing share?
Selling shares adds coins per share only when each new share brings in more crypto than an existing share already carries. That works out to market capitalisation above crypto NAV - basic mNAV above 1. In the example, selling 1 million new shares at $50 raises $50 million and buys about 833 BTC. Gross BTC per share falls from 0.001000 to about 0.000985. The raise is dilutive.
Measured against net holdings, the same raise is accretive. The company's net position is 5,000 BTC after senior claims, or 0.000500 per share; after the raise it is about 5,833 BTC across 11 million shares, roughly 0.000530 per share. The common was priced above its residual claim, so issuing it added to that claim.
That is the substance of the methodology change shown in a Strategy infographic that circulated in July. It described the older enterprise-value metric as a "dynamic threshold for BPS accretion, rising above 1.0x as the preferred stack increases," and the updated metric as a "static threshold for Net BPS accretion, remaining at 1.0x" [1]. The example shows why. With $300 million of senior claims against $600 million of coins, enterprise mNAV has to reach 1.5 before gross BTC per share stops being diluted - and the more preferred stock a company issues, the higher that break-even climbs.
Not everyone received the change the same way. Trader Mayne, sharing the infographic, wrote: "When the math ain't mathing you just make up new math." [1]
The same infographic carries a footnote worth reading before any mNAV argument: ownership of the company's class A common stock "does not represent an ownership interest in, or any claim on or redemption right with respect to, the Company's bitcoin, which is subject to all of the Company's liabilities and to the senior rights of its preferred stockholders" [1]. A share cannot be exchanged for the coins behind it, which is one reason a discount to NAV need not close on its own.
mNAV below 1: what companies actually did in 2026
Headlines rarely say which version they mean. The Block's June 26 report said Strategy "loses its bitcoin premium as enterprise mNAV dips below 1" [3] - on the simplified definitions above, the strongest of the three readings. What happened around and after it is a dated public record of how a premium-funded company behaves once the premium is gone.
1. Purchases paused. Coin Bureau dated Strategy's last bitcoin purchase to June 22 [4]. Two days later CryptoQuant warned that Strategy needed to stop buying bitcoin and rebuild cash reserves, pointing to a 38% fall in cash reserves and dividend coverage down from more than seven years to roughly 14 months [5].
2. Rules written for the discount. Coin Bureau described a June 29 filing as setting a USD reserve floor equal to 12 months of preferred dividends and debt interest, a bitcoin monetization program capped at $1.25 billion, $2 billion of buyback authority split between preferred and common stock, and an STRC dividend increase up to 12% a year [4]. Coin Bureau separately described Metaplanet, at around 0.72 on basic mNAV, as having adopted a policy of not issuing common stock below one times NAV [6], which it called "the threshold rule written into corporate policy."
3. Dollar reserves and buybacks. By July 27 Strategy had gone five weeks without a bitcoin purchase, holding 843,775 BTC, with its USD reserve raised to $3.75 billion and 5.4 million MSTR shares sold for $544.5 million [7]. It repurchased STRC preferred at an average of $86.52, said it intended to remain a buyer below $100, and wrote that repurchases "will be funded outside the USD Reserve, including through MSTR and BTC sales, based on market conditions" [8]. In mid-August it sold 3.46 million MSTR shares for $333.7 million and neither bought nor sold bitcoin, using the proceeds for preferred dividends, repurchases and a USD reserve that reached $4.8 billion [9]. The same week BitMine added 9,926 ETH while repurchasing 1.7 million of its own shares, bringing cumulative buybacks since July 1 to more than 20.8 million [9]. Our July 27 market pulse and August 17 market pulse covered both weeks.
4. Coin sales. Coin Bureau described a Strategy disclosure of 1,638 BTC sold at just under $64,000 for about $105 million, roughly half going to preferred dividends and half to buying back STRC, and counted about 5,258 BTC sold year to date [6]. Strategy's own post put its bitcoin reserve at 840,447 BTC as of August 9 [10], below the 843,775 of late July. Our August 10 market pulse set the company's figures beside that account.
5. A changed measure. The updated mNAV described above [1].
6. Exits. Coin Bureau cited Satsuma in London liquidating all 668 of its coins after a July shareholder vote, and a proposal attributed to VanEck's Matthew Sigel that treasury companies write a "living will" into their prospectus, forcing management to unwind and return cash if the stock trades below NAV for long enough [6].
The category-level picture from the same Coin Bureau video: roughly 200 public companies holding over 1.2 million bitcoin between them, and a Bloomberg-tracked basket of digital asset treasury stocks down a median 43% this year while bitcoin fell around 27% [6].
And back
The record also shows the move in the other direction. In an update dated as of August 30, Strategy reported acquiring 4,603 BTC for $370 million, taking its holdings to 845,050, alongside a $152 million STRC repurchase and a USD Reserve of $5.10 billion; the credit model in the same post assumed a bitcoin price of $77,558 [11]. As of September 7 it reported 845,050 BTC, $6.5 billion of USD assets, and a Digital Credit Securities repurchase program doubled from $1.0 billion to $2.0 billion [12].
The sequence is the useful part. A company that cannot issue accretively still has moves available - cash reserves, buybacks, coin sales - and the 2026 record shows each of them in use before purchases resumed. mNAV is less a scoreboard than a reading of which financing moves add coins per share at a given price.
Reading an mNAV figure: a checklist
- Which version? Basic, enterprise or net - the example company above prints 0.83, 1.33 and 1.67 at once.
- Which inputs? Basic or fully diluted shares; preferred stock at notional or market value; cash subtracted or not.
- Which coin price, stamped when?
- What is the company doing at that reading? Issuing, buying back or selling coins shows which tools it is using.
Glossary
- mNAV - multiple of net asset value; a company's market value divided by the value of its crypto holdings.
- Crypto NAV - coins held multiplied by the current coin price.
- Enterprise value - equity value plus debt and preferred stock, with conventions differing on cash.
- Net reserve - crypto value left after netting out senior claims (debt and preferred stock, which rank ahead of common shareholders).
- BTC per share (BPS) - coins held divided by shares outstanding; accretion means it rises.
- Accretive / dilutive - a financing that raises / lowers coins per existing share.
Every company figure on this page is cited to a dated item in MoonWire's corpus; the worked example is hypothetical. These are descriptive records of what was disclosed or reported on the date shown. Nothing here is investment advice, and none of it is a recommendation to transact in any security or asset.
