Spot the Next MSTR Before It Moons: How to Find the Purest Bitcoin Plays
Imagine spotting the next MSTR before the rocket takes off. With our system, you can.
This article explains the model fit metric—the first filter in our quantitative, agnostic, data-driven system.
What Defines a Pure Bitcoin Play?
Many companies today hold Bitcoin on their balance sheets, but few can be considered true pure-play Bitcoin treasury companies, yet. But, as their BTC stacks grow, their share prices begin to track the value of their BTC holdings per share.
We’ve engineered a dynamic, data-driven system to identify the next BTC-backed rockets before they take off. Our system employs a dynamic, quantitative, and agnostic approach to portfolio allocation, designed to diversify risk across multiple companies and countries.
Imagine being able to consistently spot companies like MSTR, MetaPlanet, ALTBG, or SWC before they went vertical!
But timing is everything. If you’re too early, your capital may be tied up in a company that the market still values based on its non-Bitcoin operations.
As a company’s valuation becomes increasingly driven by its Bitcoin holdings, it receives a higher weighting in our system.
Later, when its BTC Yield slows, the algorithm rotates capital into the next fastest horse, before mNAV (multiple of net asset value) collapses.
Repeat the cycle—and compound your edge.
How We Measure Model Fit
A true Bitcoin treasury play is one where the share price is primarily driven by Bitcoin per share:
Share Price = mNAV × BTC Price × BTC per Share
Or more simply:
Share Price = mNAV × BTC Value per Share
Since our entire model is designed to forecast BTC value per share, it’s essential to identify stocks whose prices are highly correlated with that metric.
Model Fit = RSQ(BTC Value per Share, Share Price)
For example, MSTR exhibits a strong correlation between its share price and the value of BTC per share. While it started as a software company, the market now primarily values it based on its Bitcoin holdings.
The Leaderboard: Who Tracks BTC?
The table below shows the list of companies that we’ve evaluated to date.
MSTR (since June 27, 2022) and ALTBG (since March 6, 2025) have the highest correlation with their BTC value per share. Meanwhile, Value Creation, Moon, Cango, CleanSpark, Semler, and KULR appear to be influenced by factors beyond their BTC value.
If we want to trade the BTC Treasury plays, focus on the ones at the top that best fit our model. Anything with a current model fit of less than 40% isn’t worth considering (for now).
But there’s more to the system. The model fit parameter is just the first gate that qualifies a company for initial consideration.
Our System: How We Separate the Winners from the Noise
Our quantitative system uses the following three factors:
· BTC stack,
· Forecast CAGR, and
· Days to Flippening.*
Each factor is multiplied by a weighting and then scaled by the model fit score. This means even if a company’s fundamentals look strong, it won’t get included unless its share price aligns with its Bitcoin valuation.
* Note: Days to flippening is our refined version of Days to Cover mNAV based on the projected number of days until BTC value per share exceeds the current share price. We’ll cover it in more detail in a future article.
Case Studies in Action
To illustrate how this works in practice, let’s look at a few charts.
Cango: BTC Fundamentals on Fire but Market is Still Asleep
Cango, a Chinese car finance company listed on the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE), has pivoted to Bitcoin mining.
From a bitcoin fundamentals perspective, it looks amazing—BTC per share is growing fast, and its current mNAV is just 1.2. At the current pace, its Bitcoin value per share could exceed its current price in just 14 days!
But the market hasn’t caught on. With an R² of just 2%, its price is still disconnected from its BTC value. Perhaps it's due to a lack of media hype, or its Chinese origin—but until the market values it as a BTC play, it's best left out of the portfolio.
Long-term traders might jump into Cango early, believing that more people will eventually recognise what’s going on and drive up the price.
But even if you could analyse every company in detail, there’s no way of understanding why Cango’s price hasn't moved yet.
Perhaps it’s because they are a Chinese miner without a hype club, and the CEO speaks on podcasts and at conferences, unlike the more popular BTC treasuries. But for now, it’s being valued as a miner, perhaps with some baggage from its previous life.
Until it starts to move more in line with the value of its bitcoin stack, you can ignore it and put our capital to better use in the meantime.
If you’re mindful of your opportunity cost of capital, price doesn’t lie.
Semler: A BTC-Stacking Healthcare Play with Baggage
Semler began stacking BTC around the same time as MetaPlanet. However, it's still largely viewed as a healthcare company and has faced some DOJ issues, despite its mNAV being extremely low and the BTC value per share expected to exceed the share price in approximately 85 days.
As a result, the correlation between its share price and BTC value per share is moderate (R² = 45%). While its fundamentals are solid, the model cuts its allocation in half. As the DOJ noise clears, that correlation—and its weight—may increase.
MSTR: The OG Bitcoin Proxy Still Leading the Pack
MSTR is the OG BTC proxy. While its BTC Yield has slowed (326 days to flippening), its share price is still highly correlated with its BTC value per share (R² = 98%). This makes it one of the most reliable vehicles in our model. Hence, Strategy achieves nearly a full model fit score, but then must compete based on its BTC Yield and forecast CAGR.
The Bottom Line: Follow the Data, Ride the Fastest Horse
While we’re developing a range of powerful tools to help people identify the fastest horses to pick in the Bitcoin Treasury gold rush, we don’t want you to follow our system blindly.
In this article, we’ve covered the model fit parameter, which separates the Bitcoin pure plays from the companies that happen to have Bitcoin on their balance sheet and the market values based on other factors.
In coming articles, we’ll be diving into the other parameters in our model. Stay tuned!
Ignore the hype. Trust the data. And ride the fastest horse.