Bitcoin has long faced criticism and skepticism from corporations, where even the thought of a publicly traded company buying Bitcoin for their reserves was considered a joke. Many so-called “financial experts” believed that the cryptocurrency was too volatile, and too fringe to be embraced as a serious investment asset or store of value.
Well, the good news is that the taboo has been well and truly broken as several major institutional investors are putting their money in the world’s largest cryptocurrency by market capitalization. The floodgates were first opened in August 2020 when business intelligence firm MicroStrategy purchased $425 million worth of BTC. Since then, many major corporations, including EV manufacturer Tesla, have bet their money on Bitcoin.
According to data from BitcoinTreasuries, publicly traded companies holding Bitcoin now account for nearly 1.5% of the total supply of 21 million BTC that will ever exist.
Let’s take a look at some of the most prominent companies holding Bitcoin under their balance sheet:
1. MicroStrategy
MicroStrategy, the popular Bitcoin development and business intelligence firm, was the first publicly traded company to adopt Bitcoin as its primary reserve asset. The company producing mobile software and offering cloud-based services has scooped up billions of dollars worth of BTC since 2020.
As of September 2024, MicroStrategy holds 244,800 BTC, which is valued at approximately $14.6 billion. This is more than 1% of the total number of bitcoins that will ever be issued, cementing its palace as the largest corporate owner of the apex cryptocurrency.
The company’s founder and chairman Michael Saylor claimed that they are buying $1,000 worth of BTC every second. During MicroStrategy’s Q2 2024 earnings call, Saylor said the firm’s Bitcoin accumulation strategy has enabled it to deliver 10x to 30x the performance of its Silicon Valley counterparts.
2. Marathon Digital Holdings
Bitcoin mining company Marathon Digital is the second-largest corporate holder of Bitcoin. As of August 2024, the firm possesses 25,000 BTC, worth approximately $1.751 billion.
Marathon plans to build the largest Bitcoin mining facility in North America that will deliver the highest efficiency at the lowest energy costs. The company operates around 240,000 mining machines that are capable of producing 29.9 EH/s, with an average operational hash rate of 21.1 EH/s.
Following the 2024 Bitcoin halving event, Marathon Digital announced growth plans to mitigate the impact of the quadrennial block reward halving event, adding that it hopes to double the scale of its mining operations next year.
3. Tesla
Electric vehicle manufacturer Tesla joined the frenzy of holding Bitcoin as a strategic reserve asset early on. A filing with the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) from December 2020 revealed that the EV-maker invested an aggregated $1.50 billion in BTC.
Tesla sold 10% of its Bitcoin holdings in Q1 2021, which CEO Elon Musk stated was to prove the liquidity of Bitcoin as an alternative to holding cash on the balance sheet. However, Tesla has had an on-and-off relationship with the flagship cryptocurrency. In March 2021, Tesla announced that it would be accepting payments in BTC for its products and services, only for Musk to backtrack and announce that the company would no longer accept the cryptocurrency for payments, citing environmental concerns surrounding the use of fossil fuels for mining Bitcoin.
In July 2022, Tesla revealed in its Q2 2022 earnings report that it had sold approximately 75% of its Bitcoin holdings. Musk clarified to analysts that the move was done in order to shore up its cash position in the face of economic uncertainty around COVID lockdowns. As of May 2024, Tesla holds 9,270 BTC, valued at approximately $700 million.
If Tesla had maintained its entire original Bitcoin investment, it would now be worth over $3 billion, placing the automaker as the company with the second-largest Bitcoin reserves in the world.
4. Hut 8 Mining Corporation
As of September 2024, Bitcoin mining firm Hut 8 Mining holds a total of 9,366 BTC, worth around $644 million, in its treasury reserves. This also includes 7,269 BTC that are unencumbered, meaning they are not subject to any loans or obligations.
The company has maintained a strategy of accumulating the Bitcoin it mines without selling during periods of decline in mining volumes. It is common for Bitcoin miners to sell their share of BTC when mining expenses are higher and the price of the cryptocurrency is dropping, which is done to raise capital to continue operations.
Hut 8 Mining also generates fiat income by leveraging self-mined and held Bitcoin through arrangements with leading digital asset prime brokerages. Last November, the company merged with fellow Bitcoin miner US Bitcoin to expand its mining operations across the US and Canada.
5. Coinbase
As of May 2024, the Coinbase exchange held 267,000 BTC, worth approximately $18.7 billion, under its reserves. However, this is a significant decrease from its holdings earlier in the year, which was revealed to be 418,000 BTC.
This decline reflected a broader trend of Bitcoin outflows from major exchanges following the cryptocurrency’s rally to an all-time high and investors exiting their positions for profit-making or moving funds into the spot Bitcoin ETFs.
Coinbase first went public in April 2021, when it was revealed that it held $230 million worth of Bitcoin under its balance sheet. As of June 2024, the exchange holds 9,000 BTC, worth $630 million.
Conclusion
Bitcoin once used to be a taboo topic in the financial world, with many established experts and companies in the industry calling it a speculative asset and a tool used by criminals to launder money and evade authorities. However, things have changed drastically since 2020, after BTC cemented its position as a digital hard asset that grew 1,000 times more than gold over the past decade.
Today, a growing number of companies hold Bitcoin in their reserves as a means of sourcing liquid capital in times of need. Corporate giants like BlackRock, Fidelity, Tesla, and Coinbase have significant amounts of BTC in their balance sheets, which is a testament to the apex cryptocurrency’s prowess.
Bitcoin is largely speculated to become a global trade currency before 2020, further underlying how important it will be for the world economy.
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