MicroStrategy, the largest corporate supporter of Bitcoin, Announces a $94 Million Investment Following a $250 Billion Cryptocurrency Market Crash
MicroStrategy, the data analytics firm led by billionaire cryptocurrency bull Michael Saylor, announced its latest significant investment in bitcoin on Thursday morning, doubling down on its staggering commitment to the world’s largest cryptocurrency as the market reels from a sell-off that has pushed prices down more than 30% from their all-time high set last month.
MicroStrategy, located in Virginia, stated in a regulatory filing on Thursday that it acquired about 1,914 bitcoins for approximately $94.2 million in cash, or $49,229 per coin, between December 9 and December 29.
According to the firm, it currently owns around 124,391 bitcoins, which were acquired for over $3.8 billion, or an average price of $30,159 per coin.
MicroStrategy’s recent purchase comes as bitcoin values struggle at a two-month bottom after a nearly 10% selloff on Tuesday. Prices are now about 17% lower than they were at the end of last month, putting bitcoin on course for its worst monthly performance since May.
To add to the price volatility, more than $6 billion in options contracts are slated to expire on Friday, thereby compelling investors to either double down on hazardous bets or unwind their holdings, according to experts at United Kingdom-based cryptocurrency broker GlobalBlock.
MicroStrategy aided in funding the acquisition with revenues from a previously publicised stock offering in June that has garnered nearly $1 billion from investors, including a batch of sales this month at a price of around $565.78 per share.
MicroStrategy’s shares, which have also utilised freshly issued debt to purchase bitcoin during the epidemic, rose roughly 1.4 percent Thursday morning and are up nearly 33% this year despite a more than 7% drop since Tuesday’s crypto sell-off.
MicroStrategy has made an astonishing turnaround since the dot-com boom halved its stock price about two decades ago, due to its rising bitcoin investment – second only to Tesla’s 42,000 coins. Since August 2020, when the firm began purchasing bitcoin, the corporation’s shares have soared about 285%. However, prices have been very vulnerable to the outsized volatility of the young crypto market. The stock has fallen more than 55% from a 21-year high reached in February, when previously rising bitcoin prices collapsed after Tesla CEO Elon Musk’s tweet that bitcoin prices were “a touch excessive.”
After reaching a value of over $3 trillion on November 10, the cryptocurrency market presently has a total market capitalization of around $2.2 trillion.
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