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Software company MicroStrategy’s stock is booming as the publicly listed firm continues to snap up Bitcoin at a rapid rate.
MicroStrategy—which trades on the Nasdaq under the ticker MSTR—was trading for as much as $1,610 per share on Monday. That represented a rise of nearly 14% over the previous 24 hours. Even though it has since settled to $1,484 as of this writing—a more modest 4% one-day gain—the stock is still up 106% for the month.
More impressively, since the company started its Bitcoin strategy by putting the biggest cryptocurrency on its balance sheet back in 2020, its price has shot up by over 912%. The highest it’s ever been was back in 2000 when it was trading for $3,130.
The spike came as the company announced today that it had bought even more Bitcoin and now holds more than any publicly traded company. At today's prices, its “digital gold” holdings stand at over $14.8 billion.
The acquisition leapfrogs MicroStrategy back over BlackRock's spot Bitcoin ETF, which holds 195,985 Bitcoin, with the firm's BTC stash exceeding 200,000.
Bitcoin hit another all-time high today: the price of Bitcoin is now $72,201 per coin, per CoinGecko data.
MicroStrategy co-founder and chairman Michael Saylor today told CNBC that Bitcoin’s market cap would eventually “eat gold” and that buying the company’s stock was a good way to get exposure to the asset. He added that the company was now a “Bitcoin development company.”
“Bitcoin is a superior investment to gold, equities, bonds and real estate because it’s digital,” he said today. “Most other assets only trade for less than 20% of the time—Bitcoin’s trading 168 hours a week.”
The company, which analyzes data, first bought BTC in August 2020. According to Saylor, the idea was that shareholders would get better returns if the company held the digital coins instead of cash.
Since then, it has continued to buy the asset in bulk. Other companies—most notably electric car giant Tesla—have since followed suit.
Edited by Ryan Ozawa.