The business intelligence firm, MicroStrategy just bought an additional $15 million worth of Bitcoin. According to the tweet by the firm’s CEO Michael Saylor, approximately 253 BTC for $15 million in cash at an average price of nearly $59,339 per Bitcoin.
With the latest purchase, MicroStrategy reportedly holds nearly 91,579 BTC that were acquired for almost $2.226 billion which was at an average cost of $24,311 per Bitcoin, as of 5th April. Since the Nasdaq-listed firm’s first bet, it has remained incredibly bullish on the crypto-asset and has made several purchases over the last few months.
Bitcoin’s meteoric rise was accompanied by an avalanche of institutional involvement and mainstream embrace which has continued even as the crypto-asset was stuck below the coveted $60,000-mark. MicroStrategy, for one, became the first publicly-traded company that, according to Saylor, made a “material investment”. Following its suit was the Jack Dorsey-led financial services and digital payments company, Square then California-based car manufacturing giant Tesla followed.
Over the course of the last financial year, several global corporations, for instance, BNY Mellon, Goldman Sachs, Visa, BlackRock, MasterCard, and PayPal have championed the cryptocurrency that was once touted as a bubble. Owing to this embrace and the rising institutional demand, Bitcoin managed to deliver an astonishing return of more than 800% during the financial year 2020-21.
Not Everyone Sides With MicroStrategy’s “Gamble” On Bitcoin
However, the latest high-profile Bitcoin buying spree by MicroStrategy did not sit well with a lot of traders who consider the foray of big players will lead to centralization. The concerns do not end there. Michael Saylor’s bid to diversify the portfolio of his company originated from the argument of a potential devaluation of the US currency.
But according to Marc Lichtenfeld, chief income strategist at The Oxford Group, the bitcoin acquisition strategy adopted by MicroStrategy is an “irresponsible” move. On that note, Lichtenfeld has earlier clarified,
“I think MicroStrategy is being completely irresponsible with shareholders’ capital by putting so much of their assets into a very speculative and volatile asset,” Lichtenfeld said in an interview with the Washington Business Journal. “I have never seen a company do this. This is beyond the excesses I have seen during the dot-com boom, and I think it makes them very, very vulnerable.”