Software company MicroStrategy has bought more Bitcoin, according to a Wednesday U.S. Securities and Exchange filing and an announcement from Michael Saylor, the firm’s chairman.
The SEC filing reads that between November 30 and December 26, the Tyson, Virginia-based firm bought 14,620 BTC for approximately $616 million, at an average price of approximately $42,110 per digital coin.
MicroStrategy now has 189,150 BTC worth $8.1 billion at today’s prices. It is the largest corporate holder of the cryptocurrency.
Only last month MicroStrategy, which sells data-analyzing software to other businesses, announced that it had spent $593.3 million on 16,130 BTC.
In total, it has bought BTC at an average price of $31,168 per coin. BTC is now trading for $42,901, according to CoinGecko.
Company founder and chairman Michael Saylor kicked off MicroStategy’s Bitcoin buying masterplan on August 11, 2020, with a $250 million investment in the cryptocurrency.
The company later continued to buy the asset, with Saylor calling it “digital gold” and a better alternative to holding cash.
Saylor claims that buying BTC and holding it for the long-term is a way to get better returns for company shareholders and fight inevitable inflation. Despite the cryptocurrency’s short-term volatility, it has only increased in value since its inception in 2009.
“But we are making a 10-year investment, and if you look at Bitcoin over the course of 10 years, it’s not volatile at all—it’s just going up,” he said in 2021.
MicroStrategy stock—which trades under the MSTR ticker on Nasdaq—is up over 322% since the company invested in BTC.
Saylor argues that buying his company’s stock is a safe way for investors to get exposure to the digital asset. But there has been some speculation that if a spot Bitcoin ETF were to be approved for trading in the U.S., it would make that strategy less appealing for investors.
There aren’t many public tech companies which hold Bitcoin—other than cryptocurrency mining operations—but electric car company Tesla in February 2021 bought some.
It currently holds 9,720 BTC, worth $417 million.
Edited by Stacy Elliott.
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