Bitcoin bull Michael Saylor nets $700 million on three-day crypto acquire

When MicroStrategy’s Michael Saylor got here on CNBC’s “Closing Bell: Overtime” in December to speak about crypto, he mentioned “the one thing we can count on is bitcoin goes forward in the year 2024, and a strategy built around bitcoin is generally a pretty safe one for institutions.”

Whereas the long-term security of bitcoin should still be up for debate, Saylor’s technique has been a vastly profitable one, significantly this week.

Shares of MicroStrategy, which derives the overwhelming majority of its worth from its bitcoin holdings, jumped 10% on Wednesday, bringing its three-day rally to 40%. Saylor is MicroStrategy’s largest investor, with a 12% stake within the firm. He additionally disclosed in 2020 private possession of 17,732 bitcoins.

Add it up and Saylor is about $700 million richer than he was on Sunday.

Between Saylor’s MicroStrategy management and his bitcoin, his holdings climbed to $2.96 billion in worth on Wednesday from $2.27 billion the beginning of the week.

A MicroStrategy spokesperson mentioned the corporate does not touch upon Saylor’s private funds.

The large catalyst this week has been bitcoin’s rally to its highest stage since November 2021. The digital foreign money rose as excessive as about $64,000 on Wednesday, up from $51,500 early Monday. It pulled again to round $60,000 later within the day after Coinbase’s app suffered glitches that led many customers to see a steadiness of zero of their accounts.

Saylor, who based MicroStrategy in 1989 and stays the corporate’s chairman, is one in every of bitcoin’s principal evangelists, co-authoring a guide in regards to the cryptocurrency in 2023 titled “What is Money?”

MicroStategy has a enterprise in enterprise software program and cloud-based companies, however its bitcoin possession successfully makes the corporate a proxy for the world’s largest cryptocurrency.

The corporate mentioned on Monday that it acquired a further 3,000 bitcoins for a complete of $155 million between Feb. 15 and Feb. 25. MicroStrategy, together with its subsidiaries, now owns about 193,000 bitcoins price near $12 billion.

MicroStrategy introduced its plan to put money into bitcoin in mid-2020, disclosing in an earnings name that it could commit $250 million over the following 12 months to “one or more alternative assets,” which may embody digital currencies like bitcoin. On the time, the corporate’s market cap was about $1.1 billion. It is now price over $16 billion.

Throughout MicroStrategy’s newest earnings name on Feb. 7, CFO Andrew King mentioned the corporate is “the largest corporate holder of bitcoin in the world, and we have remained committed to our bitcoin acquisition strategy with the highest conviction.”

MicroStrategy shares are actually up 52% for the yr after hovering 346% in 2023.

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