MicroStrategy buys $623M more bitcoin in March

Tysons-based tech company MicroStrategy continues to grow its cryptocurrency collection, acquiring more than 9,200 more bitcoins in one week in March.

From March 11 to March 18, MicroStrategy acquired approximately 9,245 bitcoins for approximately $623 million in cash, according to the company’s Tuesday filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. On Monday, MicroStrategy completed a private offering of convertible senior notes, gaining about $592.3 million in net proceeds, which it used in its most recent bitcoin acquisitions.

As of March 18, MicroStrategy and its subsidiaries — believed to be the largest corporate bitcoin holders in the world — owned approximately 214,246 bitcoins, purchased for about $7.53 billion total. The average purchase price per bitcoin was about $35,160, including fees and expenses. As of 4:05 p.m. Tuesday, bitcoins were selling for $64,006.92, according to CoinMarketCap, valuing MicroStrategy’s total bitcoin holdings at about $13.7 billion, or about 45% more than the amount MicroStrategy has paid for the cryptocurrency since 2020.

In the morning on March 5, bitcoin hit a record high of $69,324.58 per coin, valuing MicroStrategy’s holdings at the time at $13.38 billion. By 4:30 p.m. that day, though, bitcoin values had dropped, and coins were selling for $64,045.35 on cryptocurrency exchange Coinbase.

Bitcoin fell to about $62,400 around 10:30 a.m. Tuesday. On cryptocurrency exchange BitMEX, bitcoin briefly crashed to $8,900 Monday night, potentially “due to a large number of sell orders totaling $55.5 million,” according to a Bespoke Investment Group blog post. BitMEX is now “investigating potential misconduct by traders on our Bitcoin-USDT Spot market,” the company said in a post on X. As of 4:23 p.m., Bitcoin was selling for $63,601 on the exchange.

MicroStrategy shares were trading for $1,417.50 at market close Tuesday, but dropped in after hours trading to $1,389 as of 4:26 p.m.

MicroStrategy announced its first bitcoin purchase in August 2020, saying it had converted $250 million from its cash holdings to more than 21,000 bitcoins, making it one of the first public companies to convert its cash treasury reserves into cryptocurrency as a store of value.

The investment strategy was led by Executive Chairman Michael Saylor, who stepped down as CEO after the company’s August 2022 earnings report. In the report, 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. 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.