Table of Contents
Main conclusions
MicroStrategy’s filings put its Bitcoin holdings at 130,000 bitcoins, worth $2.5 billion, after this week’s latest purchase This constitutes 0.62% of the total Bitcoin supply. equivalent to 0.61% The holdings pale in comparison to the anonymous founder Satoshi Nakamoto, who owns 1 million bitcoins equivalent to approximately 5.2% of the total supply Private company Block.one, which is behind the EOS cryptocurrency, holds even more bitcoins than MicroStrategy, with 140,000 bitcoins equaling two-thirds of one percent of the total supply Tesla sold 75% of its holdings earlier this year, currently holding 10,725 coins As Bitcoin adoption steadily increased, the attention has turned to what companies are keeping on their balance sheets. Launched into the mainstream by the high-profile purchase of Tesla last year, a slow but steady stream of companies have bought Bitcoin in hopes that it will appreciate in value over the long term, as well as providing diversification benefits. We wanted to assess which public companies hold the most Bitcoin, so we got into the data.
1. Microstrategy
Search for MicroStrategy on Wikipedia and you will see the company description as “business intelligence, mobile software and cloud-based services”. In reality, they are a Bitcoin holding company. Taking its balance sheet, its revenue last year was $510 million. Meanwhile, they currently hold five times that amount – $2.5 billion – on their balance sheet in the form of Bitcoin, following yet another purchase this week of 301 bitcoins. Co-founder Michael Saylor is the man who drives the vision, and his thoughts on Bitcoin sometimes border on religious worship. “Bitcoin is a swarm of cyber wasps serving the goddess of wisdom, feeding on the fire of truth, growing exponentially smarter, faster and stronger behind a wall of encrypted energy.”
2. Galaxy Digital Holdings
Galaxy Digital Holdings is next in the rankings, though with holdings worth just $750 million, its stake is three times smaller than MicroStrategy’s. It makes sense that the financial services company has a lot of Bitcoin – it specializes in digital assets, which means that, unlike MicroStrategy, its business is connected to the world’s largest cryptocurrency.
3. Digital Voyager
In third place is Voyager Digital with $232 million worth of Bitcoin. Perhaps Voyager, more than any other, symbolizes how bad the markets have been this year for Bitcoin. The cryptocurrency lender filed for bankruptcy protection in July after the contagion crisis led to a wave of withdrawals it lacked sufficient liquidity to honor.
4. Tesla
Tesla shocked the market when it bought a large bag of Bitcoin worth $1.5 billion last year. However, they announced in quarterly filings earlier this year that they sold 75% of that amount, and their stack is currently worth just over $200 million. This only constitutes about 0.05% of the total supply, with the sell move originally being driven by environmental concerns around Bitcoin mining, which is obviously out of line with the electric vehicle maker’s purported purposes. For what it’s worth, Elon Musk said in March that he would not personally sell his Bitcoin (nor Ethereum or Doge). On the other hand, the richest man in the world says a lot of things on Twitter, I think it’s fair to say.
As a general principle, for those looking for advice from this thread, it is generally better to own physical things like a home or stock in companies you think make good products, than dollars when inflation is high. I still own & won’t sell my Bitcoin, Ethereum or Doge fwiw. — Elon Musk (@elonmusk) March 14, 2022
Some critics point to a large amount of limited Bitcoin supply being held by a small number of wallets. The concern is that these wallets could have an undue impact on the network as a result. Looking at public companies, this concern doesn’t seem significant outside of MicroStrategy’s 0.62% stake.
Block.One
Interestingly, looking at private companies, there are some great well-known portfolios. The most notorious is Mt Gox, which holds 141,686 bitcoins, which represents 0.675% of the total supply – some of which will be distributed to customers who were hacked in the infamous scandal years ago, following the conclusion of long-running court cases. However, Block.one, the company behind the EOS cryptocurrency, holds 140,000 bitcoins – larger than MicroStrategy’s holdings and just behind Mt. gox. Interestingly, there isn’t as much talk about the company’s massive reserves compared to the other whales on this list. The chart below brings together the shares of public and private companies. The impressive amount of Block.One holdings constitutes around 0.67% of the total Bitcoin supply. In conclusion, MicroStrategy is the leader in terms of Bitcoin holdings among public companies, but when compared to private companies too – it is Block.one that is leading the way. But none comes close to the more than 1 million Bitcoins and > 5% of the supply that is in Satoshi Nakamoto’s wallets.
Sources
https://buybitcoinworldwide.com/treasuries/#public
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