MicroStrategy announced on Wednesday that it had bought just over $ 1 billion worth of additional bitcoin, just days after another sale of convertible debt was finalized.
The Virginia-based enterprise software company said they pay an average price of $ 52,765 per bitcoin, including fees and other expenses. The acquisition of approximately 19,452 bitcoins puts MicroStrategy’s total ownership of the digital token at 90,531.
MicroStrategy announced its first bitcoin purchase in August, using the existing cash on its balance sheet to acquire the cryptocurrency. It has since completed two convertible debt offerings to raise capital to finance additional purchases. The most recent offering was completed last week, with a net return of approximately $ 1.03 billion; the notes carry a rate of 0%.
The news about the purchase of MicroStrategy comes as the price of bitcoin rose more than $ 50,000 on Wednesday, although it later fell below the level. The move higher follows news Tuesday night from Square, which said it had bought $ 170 million from the cryptocurrency.
MicroStrategy said on Wednesday that the average purchase price of all its bitcoin purchases is $ 23,985 per digital sign. It spent a cumulative $ 2.171 billion on bitcoin. Based on the price of bitcoin on Wednesday morning, the firm’s stake was worth nearly $ 4.5 billion.
Shares in MicroStrategy were up more than 7% in market trading. The company’s share fell more than 20% on Tuesday as the price of bitcoin fell.
Nevertheless, the share of MicroStrategy has been tearing up since the bitcoin purchase in August, by more than 400% as some investors flocked to the shares to gain exposure to the cryptocurrency.
Michael Saylor, CEO of MicroStrategy, has become a leading advocate for bitcoin over the past few months, urging other companies to buy the digital token as an investment. On Tuesday, he told CNBC he believes bitcoin will one day have a market value of $ 100 billion. According to Coindesk, as of Wednesday, bitcoin has a total market capitalization of about $ 920.85 billion.
Watch CNBC’s full interview with Saylor below.