What happened
MicroStrategy (MSTR -5.45%), a business analyst company that has tied its fortunes to Bitcoin (BTC -3.77%), is rising along with the star cryptocurrency this week. As of Thursday's close, MicroStrategy was slipstreaming to a 13% gain week to date.
So what
Many businesses pay lip service to investing in Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies; MicroStrategy really walks the walk. Recent figures show that the company has plowed nearly $3 billion into Bitcoin, amassing nearly 109,000 of the cryptocurrency.
Image source: Getty Images.
That's worth almost $6 billion; for perspective, MicroStrategy's trailing-12-month revenue figure is less than $507 million. And its market capitalization is slightly over $7.1 billion, meaning that the Bitcoin holding now forms far and away the bulk of its value.
So it's really no wonder that as Bitcoin goes, so goes MicroStrategy's stock -- with a lag, understandably, as the lead asset in such relationships tends to experience wider swings than the follower. So far this week, Bitcoin is up by almost 27%, hauling the strongly associated stock up as it rises.
Now what
MicroStrategy's founder and CEO, Michael Saylor, is not only a believer in Bitcoin, he's an evangelist.
A September 2020 tweet on his official Twitter feed is intense yet typical of the executive. He wrote that "Bitcoin is a swarm of cyber hornets serving the goddess of wisdom, feeding on the fire of truth, exponentially growing ever smarter, faster, and stronger behind a wall of encrypted energy."
So it's safe to say MicroStrategy is going to continue in its strategy of at least holding Bitcoin, if not adding continuously to its holdings, no matter how wild the cryptocurrency's price swings. While Bitcoin believers might find this appealing in the stock, they should simply buy the cryptocurrency itself. Why bother with a shadow asset?
