EMPERY DIGITAL WENT FROM 4,081 BITCOIN TO 1,018 IN 2026 — COLLATERAL CALLS AND A $56.8 MILLION REALIZED LOSS — NOW THE BUYBACKS ARE BACK
Empery Digital started 2026 with 4,081 bitcoin. On October 23 it had 1,018, according to the release it filed at 8:30 AM ET on October 26. That's 3,063 coins gone, three of every four. The same release says it's buying back stock again: 122,955 shares in the week ending October 23 at an average of $2.89, 26,363,499 shares in all, with about $50 million left on a $200 million program.
The filings show where the coins went. The buybacks ran on loans backed by bitcoin, and the second-quarter 10-Q files that debt under a note titled "Borrowings for Share Repurchases." When the price fell, lenders asked for more collateral. Empery posted 937 more coins between January 1 and March 25, and another 186 on June 3. It sold 1,167 bitcoin in the first half for $80.1 million and booked a $56.8 million realized loss. From July 1 to August 6 it sold 1,635 more for $102.2 million, and the 10-Q says bitcoin sale proceeds paid for its data center investments.
Shareholders noticed. At the October 14 annual meeting they seated one of activist ATG Capital's four nominees, Aaron T. Morris, and voted down the company's equity incentive plan, 11,798,429 against to 8,897,192 for. Director Ian Read kept his seat by 2,299,648 votes over ATG's Gabriel Gliksberg. Two days later ATG filed in Delaware to "sterilize sufficient votes held by Empery Asset Management," the hedge fund co-CEO Ryan Lane founded, and put Gliksberg in Read's chair. ATG isn't a bitcoin bull either. Its own proxy acknowledges a short position in certain bitcoin ETFs.
So who paid? People who bought a bitcoin treasury company. The October 26 release still says Empery "employs a bitcoin treasury strategy." What's behind the stock now is 1,018 bitcoin, about $70 million in cash, about $35 million in debt, and a deal to put $65 million into a 25% stake in a Midwest AI data center whose lease isn't signed yet. At the time of this writing, bitcoin was $80,175.