Sequans sells its last 314 bitcoin: what to check if you hold a treasury stock

A company that announced in July 2025 that it intended to hold one hundred thousand bitcoin by the end of 2030 holds not a single one today. French semiconductor maker Sequans Communications said on September 24, 2026 that it had sold the last 314 bitcoin on its balance sheet, completing its retreat from its own crypto reserve. If you hold a share like this because it promised easy access to bitcoin through your usual broker, this is the moment to open your portfolio this evening.

The case is instructive because it exposes a mechanism that nobody notices in quiet markets. A treasury stock's link to bitcoin is a board decision, and decisions can be reversed. Anyone invested here is buying corporate policy along with the price exposure.

Sequans and the last 314 bitcoin: what was announced on September 24, 2026

In a statement headed "Sequans Completes Bitcoin Treasury Exit and Emerges with a Solid Financial Foundation", the New York-listed company writes that it has sold the 314 bitcoin still carried on its books as of June 30, 2026. That completes the exit, which began with the repayment of its convertible bond in May 2026. According to the company, no crypto assets remain on the balance sheet, and no liabilities beyond state-funded research projects.

Chief executive Dr Georges Karam frames the step as a return to the core business: full strategic and financial attention now goes back to the semiconductor business supplying cellular chips for connected devices. The company points to product revenue growth of more than 80 percent in the second quarter of 2026 against the same quarter a year earlier, and a six-month order backlog that it says has more than tripled.

What the statement expressly does not name is the proceeds. No figure appears in the document, either for the final 314 bitcoin or for the sales in the months before. That gap matters for any valuation, and we return to it below.

From 3,234 bitcoin to zero: the wind-down in four stages

Measured against its own ambition, the strategy was short-lived. The sequence, according to company statements and trade press reports:

• June 2025: the bitcoin reserve begins, funded by a capital raise of roughly 377 to 384 million dollars in equity and secured convertible notes.
• July 2025: the target is set, one hundred thousand bitcoin by the end of 2030. Holdings stand above 3,000 coins at this point.
• October 3, 2025: peak holdings of about 3,234 bitcoin.
• November 2025: 970 bitcoin are sold to repay half of the convertible bond.
• May 2026: the remaining convertible is redeemed and holdings fall to around 658 bitcoin.
• June 30, 2026: 314 bitcoin remain on the balance sheet.
• September 24, 2026: those last 314 bitcoin are sold and the exit is complete.

The striking element is the role of the convertible bond, which first made the purchase possible and then forced the sale. Two of the four wind-down steps are explicitly attributed to its repayment, which means the bitcoin holding was never free capital. It was the counterweight to a debt with a due date.

What a convertible bond is

A convertible bond is a loan that the creditor can exchange for shares in the company under agreed conditions. For the company it is cheaper than a conventional bank loan, because the creditor pays for that exchange option. The cost arrives when the option is used: new shares are created, and existing shareholders hold a smaller claim on profits. If the option goes unused, the money has to be repaid, on a date that takes no interest in where bitcoin trades that day.

Cost basis of 116,643 dollars against a price of 83,935 dollars: the calculation we ran ourselves

Sequans reported a net investment of roughly 377.2 million dollars for its peak holdings and an average purchase price of 116,643 dollars per bitcoin. Those figures can be set against the current market price. cryptoticker.io collected this data itself on September 25, 2026.

Method in one sentence: the bitcoin price according to CoinGecko on September 25, 2026, multiplied by the peak holdings Sequans disclosed. One object was examined, the bitcoin spot price in US dollars as an aggregate across the venues CoinGecko covers.

The price stood at 83,935 dollars at that moment, with a daily range of 83,230 to 85,208 dollars. Against the stated average cost basis of 116,643 dollars, the market price is therefore about 28 percent lower. Applied to peak holdings of 3,234 bitcoin, an acquisition value of 377.2 million dollars stands against a present market value of roughly 271.4 million dollars, a difference of some 106 million dollars.

What this calculation does not say: it says nothing about what Sequans actually realised. The sales are spread across eleven months, individual selling prices were never disclosed, and bitcoin traded both well above and well below today's level over that period. The figure is a snapshot of the gap between cost basis and current price, not a business result. Anyone looking for a result of that kind will find it only in the company's audited accounts.

Why a bitcoin treasury stock is not bitcoin: the board risk

A treasury stock is a stake in a company that, among other things, holds bitcoin. That sounds like a technicality and it is the heart of the matter. You acquire no claim on any particular quantity of bitcoin. You acquire a share of the whole company, including its debts, its operating business and its management decisions.

The Sequans case shows how that works in practice. Whoever bought the share in the summer of 2025 to gain bitcoin exposure through a familiar broker now holds a pure semiconductor company. The reasoning behind the change is commercially sound, and the decision was taken without shareholder involvement. Nobody holding bitcoin directly in their own wallet or at an exchange carries that risk.

The reverse direction applies too. A company can also add to its holdings at a point when you had no intention of adding to yours. Both directions are decisions taken by other people about the exposure you carry in your portfolio.

Dilution and maturity: how the financing feeds through to the share price

Bitcoin treasury strategies are rarely paid for out of operating cash flow. The usual route runs through new shares, through convertible bonds, or through a mixture of the two, as at Sequans with roughly 384 million dollars in June 2025. For you as a shareholder that produces two effects that sit inside the share price and nowhere in the bitcoin price.

The first is dilution. When new shares are issued, the same corporate value is spread across more of them. The second is maturity pressure. A bond has a repayment date, and if there is not enough cash on hand when that date arrives, whatever can be sold has to be sold. That is exactly what happened here twice, in November 2025 and in May 2026.

For anyone assessing a treasury stock, that leads to a sober question with no connection to the bitcoin price: which debts fall due when, and from which source are they meant to be serviced? If the answer contains the word bitcoin, the holding is tied to a calendar.

Crypto tax rules: capital gains tax on the share, Section 23 of the Income Tax Act on the coin

Here lies the distinction most often lost in debates about treasury stocks, and it hits your after-tax return directly. In Germany, two routes to the same underlying asset carry two entirely different tax regimes.

The share

Gains on the sale of shares count as investment income and fall under the flat withholding tax of 25 percent, plus the solidarity surcharge on that amount and church tax where applicable. Without church tax the combined rate comes to roughly 26.375 percent. There is no holding period after which the gain becomes tax free: hold for ten years and you pay the same tax on the gain as you would after ten days. The only exemption is the saver's allowance of 1,000 euros per person per year. With a domestic securities account the bank withholds the tax directly.

The coin

Directly held crypto assets count as other assets. A sale within one year of purchase is a private disposal under Section 23 of the German Income Tax Act, and the gain is then taxed at your personal income tax rate, which can sit above or below the flat rate. Once a year has passed, the gain is tax free regardless of its size. Inside the one-year window, total gains of less than 1,000 euros in a year remain untaxed, and that figure is a threshold rather than an allowance: reach it and the entire amount becomes taxable, not merely a part of it. Assessment runs through your own tax return, with nothing withheld automatically.

Correction (30 September 2026): An earlier version said the entire gain only becomes taxable once it exceeds 1,000 euros. Under section 23(3) sentence 5 of the German Income Tax Act, total gains from private disposals remain tax-free only if they amount to less than 1,000 euros in the calendar year; from 1,000 euros the entire gain is taxable.

In practice that means the tax treatment of the directly held coin is considerably more favourable over a long holding horizon, while the share can have the edge over very short holding periods combined with a high personal tax rate. Bear in mind that legislation on the taxation of crypto assets from 2027 is currently in progress and its outcome is open; anyone making a decision today with the one-year window in mind should follow the state of that legislation and take tax advice in case of doubt. This article is not tax advice.

Premium to holdings value: how to see what a bitcoin costs in a share wrapper

Treasury stocks frequently trade above or below the value of their crypto holdings rather than at it. The metric for this sets the company's market capitalisation against the value of the coins it holds, adjusted for debt and the operating business.

A premium means you pay more for a bitcoin in a share wrapper than you would in the market. The justification usually offered is that the company can raise capital cheaply and keep buying. A discount means the opposite. A discount typically widens when the market starts doubting whether the financing is sustainable, and it can widen without the crypto holding itself shrinking at all.

Checking this before you buy is uncomfortably simple: multiply the number of coins held by the current price, subtract net debt and compare the result with the market capitalisation. If the market capitalisation sits well above it, you are paying a premium that can disappear again without bitcoin losing a cent. At Sequans the holding is now zero, which makes the metric moot, and the share once again values the chip business.

The three routes to bitcoin compared: treasury stock, ETN and direct purchase

Anyone who wants bitcoin exposure in a portfolio has essentially three options in Germany, and they differ in access, custody, tax and risk.

The treasury stock works through any securities broker, appears in your account statement and requires no wallet of your own. In exchange it carries corporate and financing risk, depends on board decisions, and falls under the flat withholding tax with no holding period.

Exchange-traded notes on bitcoin, usually labelled ETN or ETP, also trade through a securities account. A bitcoin spot fund under European fund law is not permitted here, which is why the exchange-listed route runs through these notes; the physically backed versions place the coins with a custodian. Their tax classification depends on the specific structure and is not clear-cut in every case, which makes this route a matter for examination where the one-year window is concerned. We have set the structures, cost ratios and custodians side by side in our overview of crypto ETFs and ETNs in Germany.

The direct purchase through a trading platform gets you the coin itself, and with it the one-year window under Section 23. Since the EU Markets in Crypto-Assets Regulation, known as MiCA, providers need authorisation to serve retail clients in the EU, and that authorisation can be checked in the supervisor's public register. Which venues hold it and what they charge in fees is shown by our crypto exchange comparison. In return, custody becomes your responsibility here.

Custody on a direct purchase: exchange, hardware wallet and the question of the keys

On a direct purchase, custody decides the largest remaining risk. Leave the coins on the trading platform and the platform holds the keys, which leaves you dependent on its solvency and its security arrangements. The breach at a major trading platform this week, with damage running into the hundreds of millions, was a reminder that this risk is not theoretical.

The alternative is self-custody through a hardware wallet, where the keys never leave a device that has no internet connection. The price is personal responsibility: lose the recovery phrase and the balance is lost, with no institution able to reset it. For amounts whose loss would hurt, this is the standard recommendation, and it holds whatever the price happens to be doing.

Levels and checkpoints: how to read the situation over the coming weeks

Three things about this story can be verified concretely, without any forecast being required.

On the upside the signal would be a company launching a treasury strategy afresh, or adding to its holdings without taking on debt. That would suggest financing conditions have turned, and it could be checked against the company's own statement.

On the downside the signal would be a second complete exit within a short span, particularly one justified as this one was by the repayment of a bond. The maturity dates of the large convertible bonds are public and appear in annual reports.

On the price itself, bitcoin moved in a daily range of 83,230 to 85,208 dollars on September 25, 2026, according to our reading at 18:48 UTC. The average cost basis of 116,643 dollars reported by Sequans sits above that range, and for as long as that remains the case, other companies with late purchases from 2025 are in the same position. Anyone setting levels for their own portfolio should write them down before buying rather than after.

Open questions: proceeds, timing of the sale and the balance sheets of other treasury companies

Three points remain unresolved after the announcement and deserve to be named rather than estimated. First the proceeds: no prices are available for the final 314 bitcoin or for the earlier sales, so the accounting effect cannot be calculated. Second the timing of the sale within the reporting period, which can account for a difference of several million dollars. Third the question of whether other companies with comparable financing will follow the same pattern; nothing can be demonstrated on that today, and speculation about other companies' balance sheets has no place in an article of this kind.

Checking bitcoin treasury stocks: what to take away

1. Look at what you actually hold. Open your portfolio and check, for every position you bought because of bitcoin, whether the company still holds any coins today and how many. The figure appears in the latest quarterly report or in the announcements on the investor relations page. If you would rather track the price itself than corporate policy, you will find the authorised venues and their fees in our overview on how to buy bitcoin.
2. Factor in the tax before you reshuffle. Moving from the share to the coin is a sale subject to the flat withholding tax, after which the coin starts a fresh one-year window. Keep a complete record of purchase dates and acquisition values, otherwise the tax office will end up estimating them; which programmes handle that is shown in our crypto tax software comparison.
3. Settle custody before you buy, not afterwards. Decide in advance how much may sit on the trading platform and above which sum the coins move to a device of your own. The devices and their backup procedures are covered in our hardware wallet comparison.

The lesson from the Sequans exit is unspectacular and useful for that reason: a bitcoin on a company's balance sheet belongs to that company. Everything that follows from it for you depends on decisions taken somewhere else.

Sources: the statement from Sequans Communications dated September 24, 2026 and the reporting by Cointelegraph. The price data comes from our own reading of CoinGecko's market interface on September 25, 2026.

(As of September 25, 2026. This article is not investment advice. Prices and fee structures change; check the terms with the provider before you buy.)