While everyone was selling off their share of bitcoin in the last few months, thinking it was the start of a bear cycle, many corporates and well-known institutions capitalized on the low prices and added a substantial number of bitcoins to their balance sheet. Some companies started accumulating bitcoin when it was only $19-20k, and many of them sold a small percentage of their holdings to help with the liquidity.
Tesla and Microstrategy are obviously the big players in the game, but many others are showing constant support to this current bitcoin revolution. Even though bitcoin dropped 48% in value, most of these companies have better than 50% return since the start of the year. If we consider the last 12 months, then it has risen by almost 270%. So, let us see some major companies having the most exposure to bitcoin:
Grayscale Bitcoin Trust
Grayscale Investments is by far the largest digital currency management group in the industry, and its early adoption in 2013 created multiple opportunities for them to deep dive into several cryptocurrencies. The number of bitcoins owned under this trust is a little over 650k, equating to more than $24 billion with the current market climate.
On the other hand, the company shares dropped to $29, which is the lowest closing price. This will eventually go up once bitcoin reaches its previous levels and exceeds all of our expectations.
Tesla
The day Elon added #bitcoin to his Twitter bio is when it all started. His company, Tesla, later announced that they bought $1.5 billion worth of bitcoin, which amounted to 43,000 BTC. Elon Musk continued to shower his support towards digital currency until he tweeted about the environmental concerns about bitcoin mining. When one of his followers pointed out how Tesla pumped and dumped the value of bitcoin, Elon himself tweeted to clarify that Tesla has only sold 10% of its bitcoin holdings and that too for liquidity purposes.
On 31st of March, Tesla sold nearly 4,730 bitcoin and at that time, it was trading around $58-$59k. The amount made from this single trade is more than $101 million and the company’s current holdings have a value of $1.3 billion.
Microstrategy
Michael Saylor is probably the biggest supporter and believer of bitcoin, and that is why his business intelligence company, Microstrategy, has done so well in bitcoin asset management. He mentions that entities under his management own more than 110k bitcoins and Microstrategy own 92,079 bitcoins in one of his recent tweets.
The company made its first big purchase in late August by putting in almost $250 million, and at that time, the price of bitcoin was just above the $10k mark. From then on, Microstrategy went on to accumulate more and more bitcoins at extremely low prices. In 2020 alone, they accumulated 70,469 bitcoins with an average price of $15k. In January, the company purchased an additional 314 bitcoins at $10 million with an average purchase price of $31,808.
Square
Square is one of the most popular fintech companies worldwide, and its Cash App has so many users benefiting from its peer-to-peer platform. The CEO and Co-founder of the company, Jack Dorsey, has always been a fan of bitcoin and supported the idea of adding a substantial amount of bitcoin to Square’s balance sheet.
The initial purchase was for $50 million in October, which is now worth well over $180 million. It currently holds more than 8,000 bitcoins which carry a value of $302 million. The company has made close 40 per cent profits and gained almost $100 million from their initial investment.
Marathon Digital Holdings
Being one of the largest bitcoin mining companies in North America, Marathon holdings acquired more than 5,000 bitcoins with a carrying value of $300 million. The company is well known for its efforts in making bitcoin mining carbon neutral and also, its expansion in the United States.
The CEO of the company, Fred Thiel made some comments on the recent bitcoin mining activity and he showed great support for miners all across the world. The company also recently announced that they are enabling taproot for its miners and even updated the latest bitcoin core software.
Final Thoughts
While these are some significant players in the crypto market, many others from the publicly listed companies, including Galaxy and Galaxy Digital holdings. It is just a matter of time for giant market players like Apple and Google to take part in this revolution, but it will happen. After analyzing this data, we can see that many whales can manipulate asset prices. Therefore, we have to be cautious of any whale activity that can drive the price up or down and take the necessary steps forward.
Born and brought up in India, Karthikeya Gutta is a crypto journalist and freelance contributor for ItsBlockchain. He covers various aspects of the industry with in-depth analysis and research. His passion towards blockchain and crypto ecosystem is mainly because he believes it can really change the world and help millions of people.
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