Shares of bitcoin-bull enterprise trading firm MicroStrategy (NASDAQ: MSTR ) closed comfortably above $500 on Black Friday, a high water mark not seen since December 2021, and amassed a market value of $7.33 billion, according to New York-based tech-heavy Exchange based.
Microstrategy's long-term cryptocurrency holdings proved to be a winner. Despite starting the year with quarterly losses, the stock price doubled within a month. The company is one of the largest institutional holders of Bitcoin, where founder and chairman Michael Saylor began buying hedges in August 2020 to hedge against inflation.
“That's why we're all going to be fairly bullish over the next 12 months,” Salor told CNBC.
The news got better from there. In April, MicroStrategy's bitcoin holdings were in the green, the price of bitcoin rose above $30,000, and it bought 1,045 more bitcoins – increasing its total holdings to 140,000 bitcoins – an average purchase price of more than $4 billion in the digital asset. It fell to $29,803 per cent.
The second quarter earnings report brought a $24 million bitcoin impairment charge, but MicroStrategy was profitable again as a company, and the largest publicly traded company with bitcoin on its balance sheet continued to buy BTC, raising 152,800 coins for nearly $4.4 billion.
At this point, although Bitcoin was coming back, the stock of companies with exposure to Bitcoin performed even better than the cryptocurrency itself: which has already increased by 87% this year.
In its latest quarterly report, released in early November, the company posted a net loss of $143.4 million — a deeper shade of red than the $27 million loss it posted in the same period last year. And yet, MicroStrategy continues to buy Bitcoin: another 6,067 Bitcoin It was bought for $167 million.
The company now holds approximately 0.75% of Bitcoin's total circulating supply.
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