MicroStrategy Snaps Up More Bitcoin. Why the Company Decided to Rebrand. — Barrons.com

By Mackenzie TatananniMicroStrategy, the Bitcoin investment company now doing business as Strategy, said Monday that it had snapped up more of the tokens, bringing its total holdings to nearly 480,000.A Form 8-K filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission revealed that MicroStrategy acquired 7,633 Bitcoins between Feb. 3 and Sunday for roughly $742.4 million in cash, or $97,255 per Bitcoin.The latest purchase brought the company's total holdings to 478,740 Bitcoins acquired for approximately $31.1 billion, or an average purchase price of $65,033 per Bitcoin.MicroStrategy was founded as an enterprise software company in 1989. It became the first major publicly traded corporation to make the digital currency its primary reserve asset in 2020.The company said Feb. 5 that it was rebranding and adjusting its logo to include a Bitcoin symbol, representing "the company's Bitcoin strategy and its unique position as a Bitcoin treasury company."As the largest corporate holder of Bitcoin, MicroStrategy has increasingly been viewed as a leveraged play on the cryptocurrency.Before Monday's announcement, its most recent purchase was at the end of January for 10,107 Bitcoins, bringing its total holdings to around 471,107 units of the digital currency.On Feb. 3, MicroStrategy disclosed that it had gone a week without purchasing any Bitcoin for the first time since early November. The news came as fears of President Donald Trump's tariffs on Canada, Mexico, and China rocked the market and sent crypto-related stocks spiraling.The stock rose 2.2% to $334.63 on Monday. Bitcoin was up 1.1% over the last 24 hours to $97,398.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.