MicroStrategy rises 6% to hit highest share price since March

Shares of MicroStrategy extended Tuesday’s gains near $200. The Virginia firm holds about $16 billion worth of Bitcoin, making the company a proxy for the cryptocurrency.

Bitcoin prices and MicroStrategy stock often move in tandem. In this case, however, the company’s growth did not coincide with an increase in Bitcoin prices. As the NASDAQ and S&P 500 fell 1% on Monday, so did Bitcoin. Within an hour, Bitcoin fell from $64,000 to $62,800, ending the day at around $63,300. On Tuesday, the coin hovered around $62,000, while MicroStrategy reached $198.

The company continued to acquire Bitcoin. In March, the last time MicroStrategy hit $190, its shares rose a few weeks after the company announced the purchase of 12,000 Bitcoins. This time, the increase comes almost a month after US Securities and Exchange Commission filings revealed that the company purchased an additional 18,300 Bitcoins between August and September, the largest amount of tokens purchased since 2021.

MicroStrategy

In 2020, Michael Saylor, MicroStrategy’s former CEO and current executive chairman, made the decision to pivot the company’s business strategy toward investing in large amounts of Bitcoin, a currency he had once been skeptical of, to protect the company’s reserves from inflation. Since then, the company has amassed 252,220 bitcoins, roughly 43% of the company’s market capitalization and 1% of Bitcoin in existence. Despite the negatives, Saylor’s business plan paid off big.

After facing the downsides of owning such a volatile currency, MicroStrategy shares rose 300% in 2023, rising from $14 to $63 by the end of the year. In 2024, the company continued to see gains as traditional financial institutions moved into the crypto space with the approval of Bitcoin exchange-traded funds, pushing the stock price to a high in March.

MicroStrategy has outperformed Bitcoin for most of the year. The coin is up 42% since January, compared to MicroStrategy, which exploded 207%. However, investing in Bitcoin through MicroStrategy comes with a premium, and some analysts don’t think the benefits outweigh the costs.