MicroStrategy Buys Even More Bitcoin. The Stock Is Down.
By Mackenzie TatananniMicroStrategy revealed on Monday that it had purchased even more Bitcoin, bringing its total holdings to more than 550,000 units of the digital currency.A Form 8-K filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission shows that the company, which does business under the name Strategy, snapped up 15,355 Bitcoins from April 21 to Sunday for $1.42 billion, or roughly $92,737 each.The latest purchase brings the company's total holdings to 553,555 Bitcoins with an aggregate purchase price of $37.9 billion, or $68,459 per Bitcoin. Last week, MicroStrategy said it had purchased 6,556 digital tokens for around $555.8 million in cash.The software company has increasingly leaned into its reputation as a leveraged play on the cryptocurrency. After adopting Bitcoin as its primary reserve asset in 2020, MicroStrategy has become the world's largest corporate holder of the tokens.TD Cowen analysts said Monday that the company had issued four million shares of common stock for net proceeds of $1.4 billion, which it used to fund the latest purchase.The brokerage said last week that MicroStrategy's treasury operations had little to no impact on the price of Bitcoin, either in the long or short term.Rather, the cryptocurrency moves in accordance with investor sentiment and volatility in the broader market.The S&P 500 and tech-heavy Nasdaq Composite fell 0.9% and 1.3%, respectively, on Monday. The price of Bitcoin was down 0.7% over the past 24 hours at $93,814, according to CoinDesk data.MicroStrategy stock followed the broader market and the cryptocurrency lower, declining 2.7% to $358.84.Bitcoin soared to a record high of $109,225, on Jan. 20, the day of President Donald Trump's inauguration, on hopes the new administration would soften regulations on the crypto industry.Trump signed an executive order in March that directed the creation of a Bitcoin reserve and "digital asset stockpile." The price of the currency fell after that news, at least partly because the order didn't include a government plan to buy any of the digital currency.Write to Mackenzie Tatananni at [email protected] content was created by Barron's, which is operated by Dow Jones & Co. Barron's is published independently from Dow Jones Newswires and The Wall Street Journal.