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U.Today - Bitcoin has skyrocketed 700% since Strategy cofounder and chairman Michael Saylor initiated his bold Bitcoin accumulation bet. Bitcoin historian Pete Rizzo shared this fun fact in a recent X post.
In August 2020, Strategy, previously MicroStrategy, disclosed its first Bitcoin purchase; at the time, Bitcoin was trading at around $11,000.
Fast forward to today, and BTC has increased by over 700%, currently trading at $87,923. Strategy’s common shares also increased by around 2,500% after Saylor began investing the company’s funds in Bitcoin as an inflation hedge in 2020.
Saylor’s aggressive Bitcoin accumulation paved the groundwork for a wave of institutional adoption, inspiring corporations, hedge funds and even governments to explore BTC as an asset.
In the most recent acquisition, Strategy bought $584.1 million of Bitcoin after raising more than $700 million last week through the sale of so-called perpetual strife preferred stock.
The purchase, the latest in a string of almost weekly acquisitions since late October, brought the dot-com-era software-manufacturer-turned-leveraged-Bitcoin-proxy’s cryptocurrency holdings to roughly $44.3 billion.
Bitcoin buying has gained traction as the price of Bitcoin has skyrocketed over the last year, with the U.S. creating its own strategic Bitcoin reserve.
Bitcoin institutional interest grows
New additions to the crypto landscape are taking cues from Saylor, with a variety of companies inspired by Strategy’s rise.Several Bitcoin mining businesses, including MARA Holdings and Riot Platforms, as well as the cryptocurrency exchange Coinbase Global (NASDAQ:COIN), have also served as Bitcoin proxies on that market.
GameStop, the video-game store that became the darling of retail traders during the meme stock mania in 2021, said that its board has authorized a plan to add Bitcoin as a treasury reserve asset.
The Grapevine, a Texas-based company, is joining a growing list of public corporations exploring the use of corporate cash or borrowed funds to purchase the digital asset in an attempt to capitalize on Bitcoin’s price surge.