MicroStrategy announced on Wednesday that it bought just over $ 1 billion in additional bitcoins, just days after finalizing another convertible debt sale.
The Virginia-based business software company said it paid an average price of $ 52,765 per bitcoin, including fees and other expenses. Its acquisition of approximately 19,452 bitcoins puts MicroStrategy’s total digital token holdings at 90,531.
MicroStrategy unveiled its first bitcoin purchase in August, using the money on its balance sheet to acquire the cryptocurrency. It has since completed two convertible debt offers to raise capital to finance additional purchases. The most recent offering was completed last week, generating about $ 1.03 billion in net revenue; notes have a 0% coupon rate.
News of the MicroStrategy purchase comes with the price of bitcoin rising to more than $ 50,000 on Wednesday, although it later fell below that level. The bullish move follows the Tuesday night news from Square, which said it bought $ 170 million in cryptocurrencies.
MicroStrategy said on Wednesday that the average purchase price for all of its bitcoin purchases is $ 23,985 per digital token. She spent $ 2.171 billion on bitcoin. Based on the price of bitcoin on Wednesday morning, the company’s stock was worth nearly $ 4.5 billion.
MicroStrategy’s shares were up more than 6% at the start of Wednesday’s session. The company’s shares plunged more than 20% on Tuesday, as bitcoin’s price dropped.
Even so, MicroStrategy’s stock has been on the rise since the company announced its initial bitcoin purchase in August, up more than 400% as some investors switched to stocks to gain exposure to the cryptocurrency.
MicroStrategy CEO Michael Saylor has become one of the main advocates of bitcoin, calling on 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 trillion. As of Wednesday, bitcoin had a total market capitalization of around $ 920.85 billion, according to Coindesk.
See the full CNBC interview with Saylor on Tuesday below.