(June 5): Bitcoin’s slide this week is adding fresh pressure to one of the most ambitious financial experiments to emerge from the recent crypto boom: publicly traded companies created to accumulate digital assets on behalf of investors.

Shares of dozens of these digital-asset treasury companies have continued to sink alongside the broader market downturn, extending losses that in many cases far exceed those of the cryptocurrencies they were built to own. The combined market value of fully diluted bitcoin treasury company stocks has fallen to about US$72 billion from nearly US$134 billion at its most recent peak in early October, according to Artemis data, erasing US$62 billion and underscoring how a once-hot crypto trade continues…