The top five companies with the largest Bitcoin portfolios.
For a long time, the idea that publicly traded corporations might embrace Bitcoin as a reserve currency was considered laughable.
The top cryptocurrency was considered too volatile and too fringe for any serious business to adopt it.
That taboo has long been broken, with major institutional investors purchasing bitcoin over the past two years.
The market is unstable at the moment, but in the wake of the Bitcoin crash, the list of the top five companies with the largest Bitcoin portfolios has been shaken up.
Some firms are selling off part of their stash in order to protect against any sudden changes in the market.
Some investors are hesitant to buy Bitcoin themselves, and instead, choose to invest in publicly-traded companies that have bought Bitcoin.
Elon Musk Tesla Reveals: The Company Tesla Still Holds A Large Amount Of Bitcoin $2.18M
Some experts have speculated that MicroStrategy’s significant Bitcoin purchases have made it a de facto Bitcoin ETF.
Here are the top five companies with the largest Bitcoin portfolios.
MicroStrategy
MicroStrategy, a leading business analytics provider, has adopted Bitcoin as its primary reserve asset.
The firm, which produces mobile software and cloud-based services, has made a habit of aggressively pursuing its Bitcoin buying spree through 2021 and 2022.
In July 2022, it was sitting on 129,699 BTC in reserve–equivalent to just under $2.8 billion.
However, the crypto crash of her year had wiped billions of dollars in value from its cryptocurrency stash.
One thousand dollars in Bitcoin was being purchased every second by MicroStrategy CEO Michael Saylor.
Data from BitInfoCharts indicates that this gives Saylor about 1% of the entire Bitcoin supply, meaning it is most likely accumulated in a single address. This is in stark contrast to what Saylor said in 2013, when he claimed Bitcoin days were numbered.
Galaxy Digital Holdings
Bitcoin, the most valuable cryptocurrency, has attracted significant interest from investors worldwide.
One of the largest holders, Galaxy Digital Holdings, owns 16,400 BTC and is directly involved with crypto businesses. With current prices for Bitcoin at $357 million, it’s clear that Bitcoin is an asset worth exploring.
Michael Novogratz founded Galaxy Digital in January 2018, and it has partnered with companies like Block. One, BlockFi, and Ripple. Michael is a big advocate for Bitcoin, and he notes that stimulus measures announced in response to the coronavirus pandemic are driving more people to bitcoin.
He argued on April 2020 that “money doesn’t grow on trees” and cryptocurrency investments are driving some of the economic recoveries.
At one point, Novogratz stated that Bitcoin performed better than gold. He also said that people should hold less Bitcoin since it can be very volatile.
This proved to be good advice, since, after the 2022 crypto crash, Novogratz emphasized that cryptocurrency was not going away and said the sector had taken “a complete and total old-school ass-beating.”
In September 2021, Galaxy Digital proposed a joint spot Bitcoin ETF to the United States Securities and Exchange Commission; so far, they have only approved Bitcoin futures ETFs.
Marathon Digital Holdings
Marathon Digital, a mining company that specializes in mining Bitcoin, has quite a few Bitcoin of its own. It holds 10,055 BTC (worth about $218 million) in its corporate treasury.
The company originated as a patent holding firm (sometimes called a patent troll) before it got involved in crypto mining.
Marathon Digital has a goal of having over 199,000 Bitcoin miners running by 2023, which is a 600% increase in the number from December 2021. That month, the company placed an order for 78,000 mining machines from Bitmain that will be delivered throughout 2022.
Despite the sluggish price of Bitcoin and rising electricity costs, Marathon is committed to mining cryptocurrency.
As of 2021, the company is well-insulated and well-positioned because of low operational costs and fixed pricing for power, which enables it to mine Bitcoin for around $6,200 a coin.
Voyager Digital
Crypto brokerage Voyager Digital has 12,260 BTC according to bitcointreasuries.org, worth about $267 million at current prices.
The firm aims to provide traders with a one-stop shop for digital assets and reported quarterly revenue of $60.4 million in May 2021, which is 16x higher than the previous quarter.
“We saw exponential adoption of cryptocurrencies as a recognized and investable asset class,” said CEO Steven Ehrlich at the time.
Voyager Digital filed for bankruptcy in 2022 after the crypto crash, and experienced losses of $661 million. The company had an outstanding balance with Three Arrows Capital, in Bitcoin and USDC, prompting it to halt trading on its platform.
Tesla
Tesla, an electric car manufacturer, joined the ranks of companies holding Bitcoin in December 2020. An SEC filing revealed that Tesla had invested an aggregate of $1.50 billion in Bitcoin.
In the first quarter of 2021, Tesla sold 10% of its Bitcoin holdings to demonstrate the liquidity of the cryptocurrency.
The company took an interest in Bitcoin following months of speculation and discussion on Twitter, led by CEO Elon Musk. In late 2020, he reached out to MicroStrategy’s Saylor to discuss Bitcoin as a potential investment.
After debating the way that cryptocurrencies have increased Tesla share prices, Saylor agreed to share his “playbook” with Musk.
Musk, CEO of Tesla and maker of the falcon wing doors, has had an on-again, off-again relationship with Bitcoin. After announcing that Tesla would accept payments in cryptocurrency back in March, he just announced that they would no longer be accepting Bitcoin for payments.
