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MicroStrategy Tops Up Bitcoin Holdings to $4.68B, Stock Down 0.8%

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MicroStrategy bought another 5,445 Bitcoin, taking its total holdings to approximately 158,000 BTC, new filings with the SEC revealed on Sunday. The move reinforces MicroStrategy’s position as the largest corporate holder of BTC, with its holdings worth now sitting at nearly $4.7 billion. The company’s stock fell in premarket trading.

MicroStrategy Buys 5.4K Bitcoin at $27k

SEC filings showed that MicroStrategy purchased an additional 5,445 BTC for $147.3 million at an average price of $27,053 per coin. The move brings the company’s total BTC holdings to 158,245, bought for a whopping $4.68 billion for an average price of $29,582 apiece.

Shares of MicroStrategy fell about 0.8% in the premarket trading on Monday.

The move further underlines MicroStrategy’s shift in approach, which was once primarily seen as a business intelligence and software company. However, in recent years, Michael Saylor’s company went all in on BTC, adopting it as its primary treasury reserve asset.

This Bitcoin-oriented strategy emerged in August 2020, which Saylor explained as the company’s plan to “maximize long-term value” for shareholders. Saylor has been one of the loudest proponents of the world’s biggest cryptocurrency, describing it as “a dependable store of value and an attractive investment asset with more long-term appreciation potential than holding cash.”

MicroStrategy Shares Up 120% in 2023, But Core Business Still At Risk

MicroStrategy’s Bitcoin bet has also had a significant impact on the company’s share price. Notably, the stock gained more than 120% since the start of 2023 as crypto prices rebounded from their 2022 lows.

Saylor and his firm have been unaffected by the 2022 crypto winter, and have continued accumulating BTC despite volatility. However, in contrast to its stock price, the company’s core business and operating cash flow metrics have declined. MicroStrategy became unprofitable in 2020, a trend that persisted in the following two years.

As such, whether the company will return to growth and achieve significant profitability remains to be seen. As opposed to previous years, that progress is now heavily dependent on the future performance of Bitcoin, which has been struggling to make a notable breakthrough for weeks.

Meanwhile, Bitcoin’s correlation to stocks has been downward lately, dropping to 0.02 from 0.8 in late August. Similarly, the maiden crypto asset’s correlation to gold has substantially declined.

This article originally appeared on The Tokenist

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