Argentina-based e-commerce leader MercadoLibre has disclosed that it purchased $7.8 million worth of bitcoin earlier this year, with plans to hold the asset on its balance sheet indefinitely.
According to a regulatory filing, the company made the investment as part of its “treasury strategy.” It did not disclose how the purchase was made, how much BTC was obtained with that investment or how the company views bitcoin as a treasury asset in its future.
MercadoLibre is publicly traded and has a market capitalization of more than $76.3 billion. It operates online marketplaces and facilitates online auctions, with users in Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Mexico, Spain and other countries throughout South and Central America. As of 2016, the company had more than 174 million users in Latin America.
Without linking its bitcoin strategy specifically, the recent filing did offer a statement about MercadoLibre’s general outlook that seemed to coincide with the decentralized asset.
“Our solid quarterly performance illustrates our commitment to executing our long-term strategic priorities as we remain focused on our purpose of democratizing access to commerce and money in Latin America, recognizing the important economic role we play in the countries where we operate,” it states.
The company’s home country of Argentina is seeing a growing number of citizens flock to Bitcoin as their fiat holdings are eroded due to inflation.
“The number of user accounts for investing in ‘cryptos’ has multiplied by ten in Argentina since 2020,” the Latin American director of cryptocurrency exchange Binance told AFP recently.
By investing in bitcoin as a treasury asset, MercadoLibre joins a growing list of major companies doing the same, including Tesla, Square and MicroStrategy.