As bitcoin breaches $100K, MicroStrategy holdings, Saylor’s wealth surge

MicroStrategy, the Tysons-based tech company chaired by bitcoin whale Michael Saylor, has pursued bitcoin as an investment strategy since 2020. Now, it appears to have paid off as bitcoin breached the $100,000 threshold.

Bitcoin rose above $100,000 per coin Wednesday night, after previously breaching $99,000 on Nov. 21. At 11:45 a.m. Thursday, bitcoins were trading for $101,293.94, according to Coinbase, the nation’s largest cryptocurrency exchange, although the cryptocurrency had breached $103,000 earlier in the day.

As of Dec. 1, MicroStrategy and its subsidiaries held approximately 402,100 bitcoins, which were worth $40.37 billion at 11:45 a.m. The company’s 402,100 bitcoins were purchased for approximately $23.4 billion, and at an average purchase price of $58,263 per bitcoin, including fees and expenses.

At 11:45 a.m. Thursday, MicroStrategy shares were trading for $402.78, although shares were trading for $439.60 at market open. The stock’s value has been climbing since September, up from  $114.30 on Sept. 6 and reaching a six-month high of $473.83 on Nov. 20, the first time bitcoin came near the $100,000 mark.

Now the world’s largest corporate holder of the cryptocurrency, MicroStrategy announced its first bitcoin purchase in August 2020, making it one of the first public companies to convert its cash treasury reserves into cryptocurrency as a store of value. Since 2020, MicroStrategy has bought bitcoin about 42 times, Saylor said on CNBC’s “Squawk Box” on Tuesday.

Between Nov. 25 and Dec. 1, MicroStrategy bought approximately 15,400 bitcoins for about $1.5 billion in cash, averaging about $95,976 per bitcoin, including fees and expenses.

Saylor, who has made bold pronouncements and statements about bitcoin in the past, in September told CNBC that he thought the cryptocurrency could rise as high as $13 million per bitcoin by 2045, a prediction he repeated Wednesday on Fox Business.

“Digital capital is what happens when your long-term store of value goes from a building, or goes from a portfolio of stocks, to a digital asset like bitcoin. Bitcoin represents the digital transformation of hundreds of trillions of dollars of capital in the world,” Saylor said on Fox Business.

Appearing on CNBC’s “Squawk Box” on Tuesday, Saylor said Microsoft could add up to $4 trillion to its valuation by investing in bitcoin.

As of Sept. 30, Saylor held more than 19.998 million Class A shares of MicroStrategy, 9.9% of the company’s Class A stock. As of 11:45 a.m., his shares were worth a total of $8.05 billion.

He’s also put his own money where his mouth is. In October 2020, Saylor said in a tweet that he held 17,732 bitcoins. In August, Saylor said on Bloomberg Television he owned about $1 billion worth of bitcoin and continued to buy more. On that day, bitcoin was trading around $56,000.

The bitcoin rally began with Donald Trump’s presidential election victory, and on Nov. 11, bitcoin breached $87,000 a coin. At 7 p.m. on Nov. 5, before the election outcome was known, bitcoin was trading for 69,378.53. Although Trump previously called cryptocurrencies a “scam” in 2021, he made pro-bitcoin comments and promises during his campaign, including calls to establish a national strategic bitcoin reserve.

Before bitcoin breached $100,000 on Wednesday, Trump announced he would nominate Paul Atkins, CEO of consultancy Patomak Global Partners, to chair the Securities and Exchange Commission. Atkins was an SEC commissioner from 2002 to 2008 and is a cryptocurrency advocate.

The current SEC chair, Gary Gensler, has announced he will step down on Jan. 20, when Trump is inaugurated. The crypto industry is no fan of Gensler, who has led the SEC to be aggressive in enforcement.

Saylor’s strategy hasn’t always led to fortune. He stepped down as CEO after MicroStrategy’s August 2022 earnings report, when the company disclosed that it had paid a total of $3.977 billion for its bitcoin, which at that time had fallen to a market value of about $2.451 billion. At that point, MicroStrategy also had taken on about $2.4 billion in loans and debt to acquire bitcoin. At points in 2022, the currency fell below $20,000 to prices it had not seen since 2020. Nevertheless, on Thursday, Saylor’s strategy seemed less a part of science fiction and more a result of visionary strategy, though time will tell.