Microstrategy, a business intelligence firm based in the United States led by Bitcoin Bull Michael Saylor has announced it has purchased an additional $489 million worth of bitcoins.
Per an announcement on Monday, 21st June 2021, Microstrategy purchased 13,005 BTC at an average price of $37,617 for a combined total of about $489 million. With this recent purchase, Microstrategy extends its bitcoin balance sheet reserves to 105,085 BTC. According to data from Bitcoin Treasuries, Microstrategy’s BTC holdings is now valued at $2.74 billion at an average price of $26,000 per bitcoin. Part of its BTC reserves is held by Macrostrategy LLC, a subsidiary of Microstrategy that holds about 91.4 percent of its BTC reserves, to the tune of 96,079 BTC.
Michael Saylor earlier in June announced a $400 million debt raise to expand its Bitcoin treasury holdings which was successfully closed last week culminating in part of what triggered a market uptick, seeing bitcoin push above the $40,000 price for the first time since the massive market sell offs in May.
Microstrategy is effectively the largest publicly traded company with the highest Bitcoin reserves, a position it has constantly received criticisms with some asking if it is now an investment firm rather than a business software intelligence company.
Saylor who until Microstrategy's bitcoin purchase in the summer of 2020, was not a popular name is now one of the most popular figures actively campaigning for enterprises to adopt Bitcoin and add it to their balance sheets. He was perhaps instrumental in Tesla's $1.5 billion bitcoin purchase in February. Michael Saylor had responded to Elon Musk's tweet offering to help him out with the expertise he had garnered as Microstrategy bought bitcoins some months earlier. And during the heat of the Elon vs Bitcoin debacle, Michael Saylor and Elon Musk held a joint session with the North America Bitcoin Miners Association to discuss how they can ensure a large swathe of Bitcoin mining energy consumption goes and remains green to reduce Bitcoin mining carbon footprint.
Meanwhile, the cryptocurrency market has continued its bearish pattern with over $600 million long positions liquidated. The market has lost at least 5 percent of its total market capitalisation, currently sitting around $1.37 billion as at press time.
Blockchain and cryptocurrency intelligence firm Glassnode reports a dramatic fall in on-chain activities on the Bitcoin network. According to recent data published by Glassnode, Bitcoin active addresses have fallen by 24 percent from the generally sustained peak of 1.16M from March to early May. The current activity of 884k addresses was last seen this time last year. For on-chain USD value settlement, Bitcoin network is settling around $18.3B per day down by 63 percent compared to the recent highs set in May. Even with sustained interest in DeFi activities, Ethereum has also taken a hit as its active addresses have fallen by 30 per cent falling to around 676k addresses, while its USD on-chain settlement has dropped by close to 70 per cent.