Strategy marks its territory by holding 671,268 BTC

Michael Saylor’s Strategy, previously MicroStrategy, has made another weekly Bitcoin purchase worth nearly $1 billion. In total, the company has added 21,269 Bitcoins to its holdings in the first two weeks of December.

In a Form 8-K filing dated December 15, Strategy revealed that it acquired 10,645 BTC between December 8 and December 14. The Bitcoin giant spent $980.3 million at an average price of $92,098 per coin.

Strategy marks its territory by holding 671,268 BTC

The purchase was funded through proceeds raised under the firm’s at-the-market (ATM) equity and preferred stock offerings. This includes net proceeds from the STRK, STRD, and MSTR shares. It raised $600,000, $82.2 million, and $888.2 million from these stock sales, respectively.

This is the second consecutive week that Strategy has purchased over 10,000 Bitcoins, following a previous acquisition of 10,624 Bitcoins between December 1 and December 7 for approximately $962.7 million, at an average price of $90,615 per Bitcoin.

The company has now achieved a BTC yield of 24.79% year-to-date (YTD) and holds 671,268 BTC, which it acquired for $50.33 billion at an average price of $74,972 per Bitcoin. Despite the king coin’s correction in the past several weeks, Strategy’s holdings are worth just over $60 billion. The firm’s unrealized profit stands at a healthy $10 billion.

Strategy has remained a consistent buyer of BTC in recent months; most weekly purchases have been relatively small due to the company’s constraints on its ability to raise further funds.

However, for the past two weeks, Strategy has pushed aside concerns about shareholder dilution and has been an aggressive seller of common stock to fund purchases. The company has also announced that Strategy will remain a constituent of the Nasdaq 100. 

MSTR stock tanks over 24% in a month 

The new purchases come as Strategy has built a $1.44 billion reserve to cover dividend and debt interest payments in cash. This puts on hold the need to sell any of its extensive Bitcoin holdings during periods of high market volatility.

CEO Phong Le has said the company’s newly built cash reserve is designed to quell investor anxiety over its ability to withstand a sharp downturn in Bitcoin. Le said the move followed weeks of speculation about whether the firm could continue meeting its dividend and debt commitments if market conditions worsened.

“We’re very much a part of the crypto ecosystem and Bitcoin ecosystem […] Which is why we decided a couple of weeks ago to start raising capital and putting US dollars on our balance sheet to get rid of this FUD,” he stated

The reserve, funded via a stock sale, is intended to secure at least 12 months of dividend payments, with plans to stretch that buffer to 24 months.

However, these purchases come amid uncertainty over a potential MSCI exclusion due to its Bitcoin holdings in the treasury. As reported by Cryptopolitan, Saylor’s company has already requested that MSCI withdraw its proposal to exclude digital-asset treasuries that hold over 50% in crypto from its global indexes.

A potential decline in the BTC price is bearish for the MSTR stock, which shares a strong positive correlation with the flagship crypto. The stock is notably down over 24% in the last month amid Bitcoin’s decline below $100,000.

Meanwhile, TradingView data shows that the Strategy stock is currently trading flat amid the company’s announcement of its latest Bitcoin purchase. MSTR is deep in the red on a YTD scale, losing more than 41% of its value since January 1.

It has also been on a substantial decline since July this year, dropping from over $450 per share at the time to $176 as of Friday’s close. The stock is trading at almost $177 in pre-market. On the other hand, Bitcoin has declined 2.64% over the last week and is currently trading at $89,245.

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