ISLAMABAD: About 12 American companies together hold over 185,000 bitcoins on their balance sheet, accounting for 87% of the aggregate number of bitcoins possed by all 34 public companies.
The share of 13 Canadian companies is much smaller, at 9.3%. The top 10 public companies that hold the most bitcoin consist of seven from the America, two from Canada and one from Germany. In addition, those from information technology sector hold the most bitcoin on their balance sheet, with a share of 66.8%, followed by companies from consumer discretionary sector (20.2%) and financial sector (11.8%). The graph below also indicates the American companies as the largest bitcoin holders in the world.
The number of bitcoins owned by the top 10 public companies with the largest bitcoin holdings totalled over 204,000. MicroStrategy is the public company that holds the most bitcoin on the balance sheets, followed by Tesla, Galaxy Digital Holdings, Voyager Digital, Square and Marathon Digital Holdings. MicroStrategy holds more than 145,000 bitcoins, worth over $6 billion. Galaxy Digital Holdings offers trading, asset management and investment banking services for institutional investors, while also making a sizeable investment in cryptocurrency with its own money. Currently, the company holds around 16,400 bitcoins.
Payments firm Square purchased approximately 4,709 bitcoins for an aggregate price of $50 million in October 2020 and acquired an additional 3,318 bitcoins for $170 million in February 2021. The average price of all its bitcoin purchases is $27,407 per token. The company announced that it has no plan to purchase more bitcoin in May 2021, while it is looking into creating a hardware bitcoin wallet for users to store their cryptos without Square’s custody.
Marathon Digital Holdings, a US bitcoin mining company, increased its bitcoin holdings to around 5,518 bitcoins as of May 2021. The company purchased approximately 4,813 bitcoins at an average price of $36,857 in January 2021. From January to May 2021, it has produced 580.5 newly minted bitcoins. Hut 8 Mining, another bitcoin mining company based in Canada, holds more self-mined bitcoin than any other bitcoin miner or public company.
MicroStrategy has allocated a large proportion of its corporate treasuries to bitcoin. Its CEO Michael Saylor has been a leading advocate of bitcoin. The company made its first investment in August 2020 and adopted bitcoin as its primary treasury reserve asset. Acquiring and holding bitcoin has become part of the company’s corporate strategy since February 2021.
MicroStrategy bought 21,454 bitcoins in August 2020, 16,796 bitcoins in September 2020, 32,220 bitcoins in December 2020, 314 bitcoins in January 2021, 19,747 bitcoins in February 2021, 795 bitcoins in March 2021, 253 bitcoins in April 2021, 500 bitcoins in May 2021 and 13,005 bitcoins in June 2021. The company disclosed that these bitcoins were bought for a total of $2.741 billion and at an average purchase price of approximately $26,080 per token.
