More than 1.1 million bitcoin or over $30 billion worth of the crypto asset is held by a myriad of companies, according to the web portal bitcointreasuries.org. The massive stash of bitcoin reserves held by well known companies started swelling after the billion-dollar firm Microstrategy purchased $250 million worth of bitcoin in August. Now there are 29 firms that are holding the cryptocurrency in place of traditional reserves like stocks and cash.
There’s been a new trend lately, as a great number of prominent companies have decided to leverage bitcoin (BTC) for reserves rather than hold traditionally held assets. The trend started gaining ground after Microstrategy purchased $250 million worth of BTC and shortly after, the firm continued to purchase even more bitcoin. After a few purchases, Microstrategy has upped its holdings to 70,470 BTC or .336% of the supply. Following Microstrategy’s purchase, businesses like Square Inc. and Ruffer Investment Company joined the bitcoin purchasing trend.
To-date there’s an aggregate total of 29 firms listed on the website bitcointreasuries.org, a site that tallies up all the companies in three different sections; publicly traded, private, and ETF-like holders.
There’s a total of 15 publicly traded firms including Microstrategy Inc., Galaxy Digital Holdings, Square Inc., Hut 8 Mining Corp, Voyager Digital LTD, Riot Blockchain, Inc., Bit Digital, Inc., Coin Citadel Inc., Advanced Bitcoin Technologies AG, Digitalx, Hive Blockchain, Cypherpunk Holdings Inc., Bigg Digital Assets Inc., Argo Blockchain, and Frmo Corp. All 15 of these publicly traded firms have approximately 100,003 BTC worth
The section of private companies holding bitcoin treasuries includes four private companies including Mtgox k.k., Block.one, Tezos Foundation, and Stone Ridge Holdings Group. The private companies have more than the public firms by a longshot with 317,383 BTC worth — in all four firm’s reserves.
There are nine ETF-like holders at the bottom of the bitcointreasuries.org list with funds like the Grayscale Bitcoin Trust, Coinshares, Ruffer Investment, 3iq The Bitcoin Fund, Grayscale Digital Large Cap, Bitwise 10 Crypto Index Fund, WisdomTree Bitcoin, 21shares AG, and ETC Group Bitcoin ETP.
The bitcoin (BTC) stash held by the nine funds is approximately 734,232 BTC worth — using today’s exchange rates. Out of all 29 companies, the Grayscale Bitcoin Trust is by far the largest BTC holder with 572,644 BTC. Other notable holders include the Mtgox k.k. Holdings, Block.one’s stash, Microstrategy’s reserves, and the holdings held by Coinshares. The web page bitcointreasuries.org, does not include a few other firms that have replaced traditional assets in their treasuries for bitcoin.
This includes the Canadian restaurant chain Tahini’s, and the Canadian graphics software company, Snappa. Tahini’s restaurant chain revealed the company swapped all of its cash reserves into BTC, while Snappa said the business traded 40% cash reserves for bitcoin.
The publicly listed Canadian company Mogo also just announced investing 1.5% of the company’s reserves in bitcoin, and plans to buy more next year. When Tahini’s decided to tell its financial advisor it was purchasing bitcoin right afterward, he suggested gold. The restaurant owners said the precious metal gold’s years of being a reliable safe haven are numbered.
“We looked our financial advisor in the eye and told him gold will turn into a scam because of bitcoin,” the company tweeted. “He laughed and condescendingly came back with the 6,000 years argument,” Tahini’s added.
What do you think about all the companies that have purchased bitcoin for reserves? Let us know what you think about this subject in the comments section below.
Image Credits: Shutterstock, Pixabay, Wiki Commons, bitcointreasuries.org,
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