With the addition of $5 million in Bitcoin (BTC) to its balance sheet, Townsquare Media, a New York-based digital marketing and radio station firm, has become the latest enterprise to support the first cryptocurrency.
Townsquare’s acquisition of BTC was originally revealed in a filing with the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), which was discovered by Macroscope, a Twitter account that focuses on institutional trading.
The corporation “spent an aggregate of $5 million into Bitcoin” during the first quarter of 2021, according to the filing, and offered an explanation for why it picked crypto:
“The Company believes in the long-term potential of digital assets as an investment. The Company may increase or decrease its holdings of digital assets at any time based on our view of market conditions.”
The firm bitcoin adoption increase
While the price of BTC at the time of acquisition was not disclosed, Townsquare reported a $400,000 impairment loss due to “changes in the fair value” of its digital asset holdings throughout the quarter.
The alleged loss appears to be the result of the peculiar reporting requirements for crypto ownership. Townsquare further alleged that it could have sold its BTC for a total of $6.2 million on March 31, when the price of BTC was about $45,500. Because it is so easy to convert BTC to cash through a crypto exchange, the corporation considers its BTC investment to be liquid.
While the acquisition pales in contrast to MicroStrategy’s roughly $3 billion Bitcoin stockpile, Townsquare Media is towards the middle of the list in terms of publicly-traded corporations’ Bitcoin holdings.
According to Bitcoin Treasures, a website that tracks BTC holdings by corporations, Townsquare would be halfway between Cleanspark Inc., which has roughly $4.3 million in BTC, and Cathedra Bitcoin Inc., which has just over $5 million.
Other corporations with large investments in the world’s first cryptocurrency have acknowledged losses owing to having the asset on their balance sheet as the price of Bitcoin has fallen this year and recently touched 10-month lows.
