$MSTR fell 31% in the 30 days ending June 3, 2026. IBIT, which holds Bitcoin directly and nothing else, fell 18.5% over the same window. $MARA gained 18% in that same month. $COIN dropped nearly 20%. All four carry Bitcoin exposure. None of them answered to the same set of facts.
The divergence is not random noise. It reflects a structural reality that most investors still underweight: Bitcoin-linked equities are not a category. They are four different businesses with four different dominant variables, and treating them as interchangeable Bitcoin beta causes investors to ask the wrong questions from the wrong filings.
The Benchmark That Exposes the Gap
IBIT is the cleanest reference point. It holds Bitcoin directly, charges a management fee, and reports through fund mechanics rather than operating-company filings. Its 30-day decline of 18.5% and 90-day decline of 8.4% represent the closest available proxy for raw Bitcoin price movement in equity-wrapper form. Every other ticker in this group should be measured against that baseline before drawing conclusions about Bitcoin sentiment.
$MSTR was down 31% over 30 days and down 9.5% over 90 days against IBIT's 8.4% 90-day decline. That gap is not a Bitcoin call. It is a leverage and capital-structure call. Strategy holds Bitcoin through a combination of convertible debt and equity issuance, and the equity amplifies Bitcoin price moves in both directions. When Bitcoin falls, $MSTR falls harder. When Bitcoin rises, $MSTR can rise faster. The 52-week high for $MSTR was more than three times the June 3 price level. The 52-week high for IBIT was roughly double its June 3 level. The leverage embedded in $MSTR's capital structure explains most of that difference.
The $MSTR 10-K filed February 19, 2026 showed 8 added and 2 materially changed risk-factor candidates compared to the prior year filing. The risk-factor evolution at Strategy tracks the company's capital markets activity, not its operating business, because the operating business is no longer the economic engine.
COIN Is an Operating Business With a Bitcoin Correlation Problem
Coinbase reported $1.41 billion in revenue for the latest quarter. That number matters more to $COIN's research case than Bitcoin's 30-day price move, because Coinbase earns on transaction volume, custody, and services. When Bitcoin falls and crypto sentiment collapses, trading volume falls with it, and $COIN's revenue follows. But the mechanism runs through customer behavior and product economics, not through a balance sheet marked to Bitcoin.
The crypto Fear and Greed index sat at 12 on June 5, 2026, classified as extreme fear. That reading is directly relevant to $COIN in a way it is not directly relevant to $MSTR. Extreme fear suppresses trading activity. Suppressed trading activity compresses $COIN's transaction revenue. The connection is operating, not financial. $COIN's 90-day price decline of 20.7% is steeper than IBIT's 8.4% over the same period, which suggests the market is pricing in operating pressure beyond Bitcoin price alone.
$COIN's 10-K filed February 12, 2026 showed 8 added, 8 removed, and 8 materially changed risk-factor candidates. That is the highest rate of risk-factor turnover in this group. For an operating exchange, that cadence reflects regulatory, competitive, and product risk evolution, not just Bitcoin price risk. The filing profile for $COIN demands conventional operating-company analysis alongside any Bitcoin-price overlay.
MARA Runs on Different Math
Marathon Digital's 90-day gain of roughly 59% through June 3, 2026 happened while $MSTR fell 9.5% over the same window. Bitcoin dominance sat at 56.1% during this period, indicating a Bitcoin-led tape. But $MARA and $MSTR did not move together. That divergence is the clearest evidence that miners and treasury holders are not the same trade.
Miners earn revenue by producing Bitcoin. Their economics depend on hashrate, energy cost, and the relationship between production cost and Bitcoin price. When Bitcoin price recovers from a trough, miners with low energy costs and high fleet utilization benefit disproportionately because their fixed costs are already absorbed. Treasury holders like Strategy benefit too, but through mark-to-market accounting rather than operating leverage. The two mechanisms produce different return profiles at different points in the Bitcoin cycle.
$MARA's price is up more than 55% year-to-date through June 3, while $MSTR is down roughly 19% over the same period. Both hold Bitcoin. The difference is that $MARA's equity reflects miner operating leverage on top of Bitcoin price exposure, while $MSTR's equity reflects financial leverage on top of Bitcoin price exposure. Those are different risks with different drivers.
$MARA's 10-K filed March 2, 2026 showed 8 added, 8 removed, and 8 materially changed risk-factor candidates, matching $COIN's turnover rate. For a miner, that cadence captures energy contract risk, regulatory risk around proof-of-work, and post-halving production economics. None of those risks appear in $MSTR's filing profile in the same form.
IBIT Answers a Different Question Entirely
IBIT's filing context is fund reporting, not operating-company reporting. There are no Form 4 transactions in the IBIT filing history because there are no insiders in the relevant sense. The 10-K filed February 27, 2026 showed only 1 materially changed risk-factor candidate, compared to 8 for $COIN and $MARA. That is not a sign of lower risk. It reflects a simpler product: a fund that holds Bitcoin, tracks its price, and charges a fee.
For investors who want Bitcoin price exposure without operating risk, capital-structure risk, or miner cycle risk, IBIT's 30-day realized volatility of 35.4% annualized is the relevant number. $MSTR's 30-day realized volatility was 72.7% annualized over the same period. $COIN's was 66% annualized. $MARA's was 63.4% annualized. All three operating vehicles carry meaningfully more volatility than the underlying Bitcoin exposure that IBIT delivers. That premium is the price of the operating or financial leverage each company adds on top of Bitcoin.
The Other Reading
The strongest counter-argument is that category distinctions collapse during acute Bitcoin drawdowns. When Bitcoin falls sharply and sentiment hits extreme fear, correlations across $MSTR, $COIN, $MARA, and IBIT all rise toward 1. In a true Bitcoin crisis, the operating economics of $COIN, the miner leverage of $MARA, and the capital-structure leverage of $MSTR all become secondary to the single question of where Bitcoin settles. The June 3 price data shows all four tickers in short-term uptrend but long-term downtrend, suggesting the market has not yet resolved the macro Bitcoin question.
The counter-argument has real force in the short run. But it does not hold across a full cycle. $MARA's 59% 90-day gain against $MSTR's 9.5% decline over the same window happened during a period of Bitcoin dominance above 56%, not during a Bitcoin collapse. The category distinctions showed up precisely when Bitcoin was leading the tape, not when it was crashing. Investors who treated $MSTR and $MARA as the same trade missed a 70-percentage-point performance gap in 90 days. That gap came from miner operating leverage, not from a different view on Bitcoin.
The correlation-convergence argument also understates how different the recovery dynamics are. After a drawdown, miners recover through production economics and energy cost management. Treasury holders recover through capital markets access and Bitcoin price. Exchanges recover through trading volume and product adoption. The path back is different for each, which means the entry point for each is a different analytical question.
The Filing Profiles Confirm the Split
Look at what each company's annual filing actually contains. $MSTR's material risk-factor changes center on capital markets access, convertible debt terms, and Bitcoin accounting. $COIN's 8 materially changed risk factors span regulatory exposure, competitive dynamics, and product-line evolution. $MARA's comparable turnover covers energy contracts, fleet economics, and mining regulation. IBIT's single materially changed risk factor reflects the simplicity of a fund structure.
Those are four different disclosure profiles. They require four different reading frameworks. An investor who reads $MSTR's 10-K looking for revenue trends will find nothing useful. An investor who reads $COIN's 10-K looking only for Bitcoin holdings will miss the operating story. An investor who reads $MARA's 10-K without understanding post-halving miner economics will misread the cost structure. An investor who reads IBIT's fund filing expecting operating-company disclosures will find a document that does not contain them.
The macro backdrop as of June 5, 2026 adds one more layer. Bitcoin dominance at 56.1% and realized volatility at 35.1% annualized describe a relatively calm Bitcoin tape with strong Bitcoin relative to altcoins. In that environment, the differences between these four vehicles are more visible, not less. $MARA outperforms because miner leverage works when Bitcoin is stable to rising. $MSTR underperforms IBIT because financial leverage cuts both ways and the capital-structure overhang weighs on the equity. $COIN lags because extreme fear suppresses the trading volume that drives its revenue. IBIT tracks Bitcoin and nothing else.
Four tickers. Four different answers to four different questions.
Research only. Not investment advice.