Michael Saylor’s business intelligence firm MicroStrategy has become one of the largest bitcoin holders after accumulating more than $1 billion worth of BTC in less than six months. Interestingly, the company’s stock price has surged by roughly 200% in the same timeframe.
MicroStrategy is a Nasdaq-listed company providing business intelligence, mobile software, and cloud-based solutions. Founded in 1989 by Michael Saylor, the firm’s internally developed software helps other organizations make “better business decisions” by analyzing internal and external data.
Before mid-2020, the company and its founder weren’t too fond of bitcoin. In one of the few registered public opinions, Michael Saylor said in 2013 that BTC’s days were numbered.
However, the economic events that transpired this year prompted by the COVID-19 pandemic changed Saylor’s opinion on the primary cryptocurrency, as he recently explained.
As a result, MicroStrategy began accumulating BTC. The company announced the purchase of its first massive batch on August 11th, 2020. Less than a month later, the business intelligence giant doubled-down on its bitcoin investment, and Saylor revealed that he owns a sizeable stack as well.
Despite already allocating $425 million in BTC, MicroStrategy didn’t stop there as two more purchases followed. The second one was particularly interesting. The company raised $650 million via senior convertible notes offering and used all funds to buy bitcoin.
Ultimately, MicroStrategy has allocated $1.125 billion in BTC at an average price of $15,964. Consequently, the firm now owns 0.335% of all bitcoins ever to exist.
On the day MicroStrategy announced the first BTC purchase (August 11th), the company’s stocks (MSTR) traded around $135. Thus, the firm’s shares were down by more than 7% on a yearly basis.
However, it seems that the bitcoin buys have had a massive positive impact. Less than five months later, MSTR has skyrocketed to $390 as of closing price yesterday and up to $403 pre-market today.
This represents an increase of roughly 200% since declaring to the public the initial bitcoin purchase. For comparison, the price of the cryptocurrency has increased by “only” 150% since August 11th.
