MicroStrategy announced Wednesday that it has bought an additional bitcoin worth more than $ 1 billion, just days after the completion of another sale of convertible debt.
The Virginia enterprise software company said it paid an average price of $ 52,765 for bitcoin, including taxes and other expenses. The acquisition of approximately 19,452 bitcoins raises the total ownership of digital chips from MicroStrategy to 90,531.
MicroStrategy unveiled its first bitcoin acquisition in August, using existing cash on its balance sheet to acquire cryptocurrency. Since then, it has completed two convertible debt offers to raise capital to finance additional acquisitions. The most recent offer was completed last week, generating net revenues of approximately $ 1.03 billion; tickets have a coupon rate of 0%.
The news of the MicroStrategy acquisition comes when the bitcoin price rose back above $ 50,000 on Wednesday, although it later fell below that level. The biggest move follows Tuesday night’s news from Square, which said it bought the $ 170 million cryptocurrency.
MicroStrategy said on Wednesday that the average purchase price of all its bitcoin purchases is $ 23,985 per digital token. He spent a cumulative $ 2.171 billion on bitcoin. Based on the bitcoin price on Wednesday morning, the company’s holdings were worth almost $ 4.5 billion.
MicroStrategy shares were up more than 6% at the start of Wednesday’s session. The company’s shares were up more than 20% on Tuesday, as the price of bitcoin fell.
Even so, MicroStrategy shares have been in tears since the announcement of the initial bitcoin acquisition in August, rising by more than 400% as some investors rallied to shares to gain exposure to the cryptocurrency.
MicroStrategy CEO Michael Saylor has become a leading advocate for bitcoin in recent months, urging other companies to buy the digital token as an investment. On Tuesday, he told CNBC that he believes Bitcoin will one day have a market value of $ 100 billion. As of Wednesday, Bitcoin has a total market cap of about $ 920.85 billion, according to Coindesk.
Watch CNBC’s full interview with Saylor below on Tuesday.