Unraveling a High-Stakes Investment Strategy

Recently, an announcement made by microstrategy microstrategy Business Intelligence executive chairman michael saylor michael saylor Micheal J Saylor is the greatest visionary in the Information Systems industry. An enthusiastic blockchain influencer and a splendid leader. He believes that prudent institutional investors should only consider trusting a crypto-asset network after it has operated reliably for at least ten years without a hard fork.
  He is an American entrepreneur and business executive,  who co-founded  Microstrategy, a company that provides business intelligence, mobile software, and cloud-based services, under his leadership Microstrategy has grown at a tremendous rate and made a mark in the BI industry, and he is chairman and CEO of the same Microstrategy.  He is a vocal advocate of bitcoin. He is highly skilled in enterprise software, and also has a rich knowledge of numerous fields including analytics, data warehouse, leadership, SaaS, management, cloud computing, startups, professional services, enterprise architecture, mobile devices, and many more.  
In 1983, he matriculated at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) on an air force ROTC scholarship. And then, he joined the Theta delta chi fraternity, through which he met the future co-founder of Microstrategy, Sanju K Bansal. He graduated from MIT in 1987 with a double major in aeronautics, science, technology, and society. He is volunteering at Saylor Academy as a Trustee, which provides free college education to all students worldwide.
  The way he expertizes himself in Bitcoin, people started calling him the Bitcoin bull, he is the most optimistic person when it comes to Bitcoin. He expects the entrepreneur to keep buying Bitcoin every time it dips. The bitcoin community has begun to rise to the fact that his company might own too much bitcoin. Owning too large a portion of bitcoin could be harmful to the cryptocurrency’s decentralized culture that Bitcoin has so rigorously built over the years. He is still expected to be a principal BTC champion throughout the year. Instructing businesses about Bitcoin potentially through his powerful podcasts and learning courses.   [email protected] EntrepreneurCrypto and Blockchain ExpertAuthor about his $1 billion worth of Bitcoin personal investment created headlines. It brought back the topic of Bitcoin Holdings to our discussion tables. MicoStrategy’s obsession towards Bitcoin is not a new thing. Since 2019, this public company has been consistently increasing its Bitcoin holdings.

In this article, we will explore all the major data sets compatible to explain the current Bitcoin Holding scenario in the world. This will primarily focus on the top public companies by bitcoin holdings. Naturally, MicroStrategy is going to be the central point of this, as it is a company that holds nearly 68.45% of the total bitcoins held by the public companies category. This is expected to be a memorable journey. Please join!    

Bitcoin Holdings by Category 

Can we start with an attempt to understand how much bitcoin each category at present holds? Of the 21 million bitcoins (which is the maximum supply cap of Bitcoin), at least 2,609,343 is held by ETFs, Countries, Public Companies, Private Companies, BTC Mining Companies and DeFis  

The category of ETFs holds over 1,057,839BTC, which is nearly 5.037% of the maximum supply cap of BTC. Thus, this category tops the list in terms of Bitcoin Holdings by Category. The category of countries follows with 2.58% (539,182BTC), and the category of private companies sits in the third position in the list above the category of private companies, with 2.502% (525,474BTC. The category of public companies only holds 330,862BTC, which is just 1.576%. DeFis and BTC Mining Companies show as low as 0.743% and 0.256% Bitcoin Holdings, respectively. 

By now, we have learned that the category of public companies do hold a considerable amount of BTC, though not as much as the top three categories like ETFs, countries and private companies. 

Top Public Companies by Bitcoin Holdings 

Here is the interesting part. Nearly 68.45% of the total bitcoins held by the category of public companies is held by MicroStrategy, which is at least 226,500BTC out of 330,862BTC. This is why we need to analyse MicoStrategy separately.  

When the category of public companies holds around 1.576% of the total BTC supply cap, Microstrategy alone holds at least 1.079%. The second top in the list of the top public companies by bitcoin holdings, Marathon Digital Holdings Inc only has 20,818BTC (0.099%). Tesla Inc, Hut 8 Corp and Riot Platforms Inc are the other top companies in the list. Tesla Inc and Hust 8 Corp show 9,720BTC and 9,109BTC respectively, and Riot Platforms Inc display 9,084BTC. Coinbase Global Inc and Galaxy Digital Holdings are also in the list with 0.043% and 0.039% Bitcoin Holdings percentage respectively. The BTC Holdings percentages of other major players like Block Inc, CleanSpark Inc and Bitcoin Group range between 0.038% and 0.018%. 

As said earlier, MicroStrategy clearly dominates the category of public companies with 68.45%, that is this public company holds nearly 226,500BTC out of 330,862BTC (which is what the entire category holds). Marathon Digital Holdings Inc, though is a second topmost in the list, only has 6.29% share in the category total BTC holdings. Even poorer is the share of Tesla INC and the others. None of the others in the top ten list cross the mark of 3%. Tesla Inc and Hunt 8 Corp show 2.93% and 2.75% respectively.  

MicroStrategy Bitcoin Holdings: An Overview 

Are you wondering how MicroStrategy has become such a big player in the public companies category in terms of bitcoin holdings? Let’s understand the path through which it has reached such a staggering peak of 226,500. On March 5th, 2021, the bitcoin holdings of MicroStrategy was just 91,064BTC. In June the same year, it crossed the mark of 100,000BTC. On June 21st, 2021, it was nearly 105,085BTC. By the end of that year, it reached 124,051BTC. In 2022, the growth was slow. On December 24, 2022, it was just around 132,500 BTC.

The year 2023 was different and positive in every way for MicroStrategy’s Bitcoin Holdings. The number of BTC holdings grew from nearly 138,955BTC (on March 23, 2023) to 189,150BTC (on December 27, 2023). In 2024, it crossed another milestone, when it surpassed the mark of 200,000BTC in March. On March 11, 2024, it touched 205,000BTC. From that point, the growth was steady. On June 20, 2024, it recorded 226,331BTC. Now it stands at a peak of 226,500BTC. At present, we see nothing to assume that this range is likely to decrease any time in the near future. There are many who expect that the crossing of the 300,000BTC mark by MicoStrategy. Is it possible? 

The question can be answered better if we can go through MicroStrategy’s BTC purchase history. Did MicoStrategy make any significant BTC purchases in the recent past? 

MicroStrategy Bitcoin Purchase History 

Let’s do an analysis of MicroStrategy’s purchase history, and understand what it conveys about the company’s holding strategy. 

It was on 11th August 2020 that MicoStrategy made its first Bitcoin purchase. On that day, it made a heavy purchase of 21,454. In that year itself, it made at least two more heavy purchases: the 16,796BTC purchase on 14th Sep and the 29,646BTc purchase on 21sth Dec, 2020. What it indicated was that from the beginning stage itself the public company had a strategy to consistently boost its BTC holdings. 

This year, 2024, so far, the company has purchased around 37,359 BTC. The highest purchase was made on 11th March. Days before, the BTC price touched an all-time peak of $73,000. Another purchase of similar intensity was made a couple of days after the peak day. On 19th March, nearly 9,245 BTC was purchased. Recently, on 20th June, around 11,931 BTC were purchased. 

It was in the year 2020 that the most number of BTC purchases occurred. In that year, over 70,470 BTC purchases took place. The year of 2022 was not a good year in terms of MicoStrategy’s BTC Purchases. In that year, the company made no purchase more than 8,813 BTC. It was the only time a negative purchase happened. On 22nd December, 2022, a negative purchase of -704 was reported. 

The year of 2021 and 2023 were identical. In both these years, not less than 50,000 BTC were purchased. Interestingly, the nature of purchase in each year was different. In 2021, it was a mix of small and large purchases. The smallest of those purchases was the purchase of 205 BTC, reported on 5th March 2021, and the largest was the purchase of 19,452 BTC, reported on 24th Feb, 2021. In 2023, at least three big purchases were reported: the 14,620 BTC purchase on 27th Dec, the 16,130 BTC purchase on 30th Nov, and the 12,333 BTC purchase between 29th April and 27th June. 

Top Private Companies by Bitcoin Holdings 

Before going to the conclusion part, we can go through the nature of the BTC holdings of the private companies category and understand how it is different from the public companies category.  

Here, we can clearly see that unlike the public companies category there is no domination of the top player. The difference between the number of Bitcoins held by the topmost in the list of the top private companies by Bitcoin Holding and the second topmost is just 60,000 BTC. Mt.Gox, the top most company in the list, holds around 200,000 BTC, and Block.one , the runner-up in the list, has 140,000 BTC. Tether Holdings LTD, Xapo Bank and BitMEX are the other important companies in the list. Tether Holdings LTD has around 75,354 BTC, and Xapo Bank and BitMEX have 38,931 BTC and 36,794 BTC, respectively.     

Endnote 

The data reveals that MicroStrategy is a vital player in the public companies category. In the year 2020, in when it first started acquiring Bitcoins itself, the company was very confident and aggressive about their plan. Though in 2022, it slightly slowed down the pace of acquiring. But in 2023, it regained its momentum. This year, it has made several high volume purchases. At present, we don’t see any reason to believe that the company will bring down its BTC holdings in the near future. It is yet to be seen whether this year’s number of BTC purchases of the company will surpass the record purchase score of 2020. 

Also Read: Case Studies of Countries with Significant Crypto Adoption