US-based enterprise software company, MicroStrategy Inc, has purchased approximately 253 bitcoins for $15 million in cash at an average price of around $59,339 apiece, the company’s founder and CEO Michael Saylor announced on Monday.
As of 5 April, the company holds approximately 91,579 bitcoins that were acquired at an aggregate purchase price of $2.226 billion and an average purchase price of around $24,311 per bitcoin, inclusive of fees and expenses.
At the current price, the total worth of MicroStrategy’s bitcoin holding stands at around $5.31 billion. At 6.45pm IST, bitcoin was trading flat at $57,976.64, after moving in the $56,929.20-58,413.08 range over the past 24 hours, as per CoinGecko. The digital asset commands a market capitalization of around $1.1 trillion.
MicroStrategy is among one of the earliest corporate backers of the world’s oldest as well as the biggest cryptocurrency. The company in August 2020 had said that it was using existing cash on its balance sheet to acquire the cryptocurrency.
Moreover, Tesla in February had announced that it has invested $1.5 billion in the digital currency. It is by far the biggest company yet to back the cryptocurrency platform.
During the last financial year, major global corporations such as Goldman Sachs, BNY Mellon, BlackRock, MasterCard, PayPal, and Visa have backed the cryptocurrency.
Thanks to the institutional demand, bitcoin delivered a return of over 800% during the financial year 2020-21. From the $6,641 level on 1 April 2020, the price of the digital currency zoomed to an all-time high of $61,711.87 (hit on 13 March 2021) during the year.
“Last week we saw major payment providers like PayPal and Visa offer new crypto services to their millions of users. Visa announced settling transactions in USDC — an ethereum-based cryptocurrency backed by US dollars, for their partners. PayPal introduced checkout options in four different cryptocurrencies — bitcoin, ethereum, litecoin, and bitcoin Cash. These gateways are easier for many users than having to use crypto addresses. When companies use cryptocurrencies to improve products and services, that’s a more powerful use case than just trading and speculating on the price,” said Vikram Rangala, chief marketing officer, ZebPay.