Beckham-backed supplements brand drops Bitcoin buying plan after $48M raise as BTC slips

Consumer brands often flirt with crypto treasury moves for narrative lift. One David Beckham-backed supplements company just reversed course, shelving its plan to buy Bitcoin shortly after raising $48 million. At the time of the announcement, bitcoin traded near $114,000; it has since fallen to roughly $88,000—about a 23% drawdown.

The interesting part isn’t the reversal itself; it’s what it reveals about how non-crypto companies should think about BTC on the balance sheet. Buying bitcoin with freshly raised capital can look like a growth hack—borrow the halo of “digital gold,” amplify brand reach, and maybe improve treasury returns. In practice, it stresses three tensions that many teams underestimate: liquidity needs, governance discipline, and stakeholder alignment.

Liquidity first. Consumer businesses with inventory cycles and marketing-heavy burn need predictable cash flows. Bitcoin is liquid, but its price path isn’t. When BTC drops 20–25% in weeks, CFOs face a trade-off: sell into weakness and lock in volatility, or hold and risk tightening working capital. Even if the allocation was small, the psychological impact of watching runway fluctuate with crypto ticks tends to be larger than spreadsheets suggest.

Governance next. Public or venture-backed firms typically establish risk limits, concentration caps, and hedging rules before touching commodities or FX. Many apply less rigor to BTC because the intent is “long-term.” Long-term is not a policy. Long-term requires position sizing, drawdown tolerances, custody standards, and board-approved playbooks for stress events. Without that scaffolding, pausing a program becomes the default when markets move.

Then signaling. Announcing a bitcoin buying strategy is a brand statement; unwinding it is, too. Stakeholders read it as a barometer of conviction and operational maturity. If the market reads the initial move as marketing-first, any reversal undercuts credibility more than a quiet, well-governed treasury pilot would have. Celebrity association raises the stakes: attention compounds both upside and scrutiny.

There’s also ethics of mandate use. If investors funded product, distribution, and hires, diverting a slice to speculative assets—however sound the macro case for BTC—can feel offside unless explicitly disclosed and consented to. That’s not anti-Bitcoin; it’s pro-alignment. Clear mandates avoid reputational risk when volatility hits.

Could this have worked? Sure—under a framework that treats BTC like a strategic commodity exposure, not a press release. A sane approach many treasuries use: - Define purpose: inflation hedge, excess cash yield, or brand strategy. One purpose, not three. - Size to zero-impact: assume a 50% drawdown and ensure operations remain untouched. - Pre-commit policy: entry pacing, max allocation, and conditions to pause—before price moves. - Separate narratives: product marketing and treasury management shouldn’t share a calendar. - Consider alternatives: customer BTC rewards or BTC-denominated loyalty can align brand with crypto without balance sheet risk.

The price context matters. A drop from roughly $114,000 to around $88,000 doesn’t indict Bitcoin’s long-term case; it exposes mismatched time horizons between volatile assets and consumer businesses. If a company can’t withstand a one-quarter crypto cycle without changing plans, it probably shouldn’t run the strategy in the first place.

Crypto-native allocators will call this a lesson in conviction. I see it as a lesson in design. Treasuries that succeed with BTC are boring by design—policy-driven, operationally insulated, and invisible until audited. The market tends to reward that kind of boring.