Most Influential: David Bailey

Among other things, 2025 will surely be remembered for the mania and then stunning collapse of hastily formed bitcoin treasury companies attempting to mirror the success of Michael Saylor’s Strategy. Perhaps none were higher profile than that of KindlyMD (NAKA), led by David Bailey, formerly the very successful CEO of Bitcoin Magazine and Bitcoin-whisperer to Donald Trump’s victorious presidential campaign.

This feature is a part of CoinDesk’s Most Influential 2025 list.

Then a little-known microcap healthcare company, KindlyMD in May announced a merger agreement with Bailey’s Nakamoto Holdings, backed by more than $700 million in financing, to start a bitcoin treasury company. Shares in Kindly (then with the ticker KIND, but soon changed to NAKA) soared from around $2 to more than $30 within days. That was the top.

Despite Bailey’s campaign of nearly non-stop bull posting on X, NAKA shares fell through spring and summer even as the price of bitcoin rose. With the completion of the merger in mid-August, things got really ugly. As early investors became able to sell their shares about one month later, sell they did. Bailey, in one of the more curious moves ever for a public company CEO, even encouraged it. “For those shareholders who have come looking for a trade, I encourage you to exit,” he wrote in a September letter. Exit they did.

Trading at about $0.45 this week, KindlyMD shares are down about 99% from their high and worth about 25% of what they were fetching prior to the merger agreement with Bailey’s Nakamoto Holdings.