Most Influential: David Bailey

Finance Share Share this article Copy link X icon X (Twitter) LinkedIn Facebook Email Most Influential: David Bailey Bailey’s Strategy-inspired bitcoin treasury company, KindlyMD, exemplified the struggles of many of its peers this year. By Stephen Alpher | Edited by Cheyenne Ligon Dec 12, 2025, 3:00 p.m. 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. STORY CONTINUES BELOW Don't miss another story. Subscribe to the Crypto Daybook Americas Newsletter today . See all newsletters Sign me up By signing up, you will receive emails about CoinDesk products and you agree to our terms of use and privacy policy . 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. MicroStrategy Digital Asset Treasury CoinDesk Most Influential 2025 More For You Protocol Research: GoPlus Security By CoinDesk Research Nov 14, 2025 Commissioned by GoPlus What to know : As of October 2025, GoPlus has generated $4.7M in total revenue across its product lines. The GoPlus App is the primary revenue driver, contributing $2.5M (approx. 53%), followed by the SafeToken Protocol at $1.7M. GoPlus Intelligence's Token Security API averaged 717 million monthly calls year-to-date in 2025 , with a peak of nearly 1 billion calls in February 2025. Total blockchain-level requests, including transaction simulations, averaged an additional 350 million per month. Since its January 2025 launch , the $GPS token has registered over $5B in total spot volume and $10B in derivatives volume in 2025. Monthly spot volume peaked in March 2025 at over $1.1B , while derivatives volume peaked the same month at over $4B. View Full Report More For You Most Influential: Changpeng “CZ” Zhao By Oliver Knight | Edited by Cheyenne Ligon 2 minutes ago Zhao’s exit from Binance did little to dim his prominence. Read full story Latest Crypto News Most Influential: Changpeng “CZ” Zhao 2 minutes ago Most Influential: Jesse Pollak 2 minutes ago Backed, Chainlink Unveil xBridge to Move Tokenized Stocks Between Solana and Ethereum 2 minutes ago UAE’s Largest Fuel Retailer Will Accept Stablecoin in 980 Stations in Three Countries 18 minutes ago Polish Government Urges President to Sign Crypto Bill He Already Rejected: Report 38 minutes ago Filecoin Trades Little Changed, Underperforms Wider Crypto Markets 41 minutes ago Top Stories U.S. SEC Gives Implicit Nod for Tokenized Stocks 2 hours ago YouTube Now Allows U.S. Content Creators to Get Paid in PayPal’s Stablecoin: Fortune 2 hours ago Crypto Markets Today: Bitcoin Stuck in Post-Fed Range as Altcoins Slump Deepens 3 hours ago XRP Lands on Solana, Ethereum and Others, in Boost for Ripple Ecosystem 10 hours ago Bitcoin's Volatility Meltdown: Crypto Daybook Americas 2 hours ago XRP Ledger Upgrade Lays Groundwork for Lending, Tokenization Expansion 3 hours ago