Methodology

Data coverage & methodology

Most trackers are silent about where their numbers come from. We’re not. Every source, refresh cadence, and known limitation is documented below so you can calibrate trust and catch us if we’re wrong.

What we track

Public companies, sovereign governments, and spot Bitcoin ETFs that publicly hold Bitcoin on balance sheet. We include every entity with credibly-disclosed BTC holdings, ranked by holdings size. Private companies are included when they voluntarily disclose (earnings calls, press releases, on-chain attribution).

Sources by entity type

Public companies (SEC-registered)

  • SEC EDGAR — 8-K current reports (primary source for purchase events)
  • 10-Q quarterly reports (reconcile total holdings)
  • 10-K annual reports + proxy statements
  • Company press releases and investor communications
  • Earnings call transcripts (context + forward-looking treasury policy)
Refresh
Every 5 minutes (SEC EDGAR polling cron on Vercel Pro)
Accuracy
Highest. 8-K timestamp is legally authoritative.

Non-US public companies

  • Company press releases in English
  • Local regulatory filings (where publicly accessible)
  • On-chain attribution via known custodian addresses
Refresh
Daily — press-release crawlers + manual review
Accuracy
High, but latency can exceed 24 hours for non-English disclosures.

Spot Bitcoin ETFs

  • Issuer daily net-asset-value publications (iShares, Fidelity, etc.)
  • SEC 13F quarterly filings
  • N-CSR semi-annual reports
  • On-chain attribution via published custodian addresses
Refresh
Holdings refreshed daily; fund flows refreshed hourly where published
Accuracy
High on current holdings. Cost basis is intentionally blank — see limitations.

Sovereign governments

  • Government press releases and official statements
  • On-chain analysis of publicly-attributed treasury addresses (e.g. US DOJ, El Salvador)
  • Third-party reporting (BitcoinTreasuries.NET, Chainalysis, Arkham)
Refresh
Event-driven — updated on disclosure. No predictable schedule.
Accuracy
Medium. Governments disclose sporadically and partially.

Known limitations

ETFs have no cost basis

Spot Bitcoin ETFs accumulate holdings via continuous share creations + redemptions, not a single purchase event. There's no meaningful 'average buy price' or 'total cost' for an ETF — those fields render as em-dash (—) rather than $0 on ETF pages. Net assets are shown instead, derived from current BTC price × current holdings.

Historical gaps for older purchases

For public companies that disclosed Bitcoin holdings before we started tracking (pre-2020 for most), historical purchase-by-purchase breakdowns may be incomplete. The aggregate current holdings are verified; the granular purchase timeline may be missing entries or use approximate dates.

SEC filing parsing latency

We poll SEC EDGAR every 5 minutes. Filings are typically visible in our feed within ~5-10 minutes of publication on EDGAR. We don't parse amended filings (e.g. 8-K/A corrections) in real-time; the next EDGAR poll picks them up.

Private companies require self-disclosure

Block (Square), pre-IPO companies, and foreign private entities are only tracked when they voluntarily disclose holdings (earnings calls, press releases, CEO statements). Their data may lag reality substantially.

Conversion rates + currencies

USD values are computed against the BTC/USD price at the closest available timestamp to the purchase. Purchases denominated in non-USD currencies (JPY for Metaplanet, etc.) are converted at prevailing spot rates — these can differ from the company's own reported figures by a few percent.

Data confidence monitoring

Every day we cross-check our top-10 holders’ totals against publicly-available third-party references. Any single entity diverging by more than 5% triggers an internal alert for manual review. We publish a monthly data-quality report documenting any corrections.

Spot an error?

Data corrections are the fastest way to improve the dataset. Email us with the entity, the disputed figure, and a source link and we’ll verify within 24 hours.

Report a correction

Machine-readable access

The full dataset is publicly accessible for aggregators, LLMs, and downstream analytics. No authentication required for these feeds:

Data coverage & methodology | CorpStacking