MicroStrategy Shareholders Clear the Way for Even More Bitcoin Buys

Bitcoin treasury company MicroStrategy is so keen to buy its favorite asset that it has a new strategy: Increasing the amount of stock it has to sell to help finance the crypto purchases. 

The software company’s shareholders voted for a 30x increase to the number of authorized Class A common shares, Bloomberg reported, citing a recording of the meeting. 

The idea is that the company will have more resources to buy the cryptocurrency. 

MicroStrategy—which almost exclusively focuses on securitizing Bitcoin—last year announced a “21/21 Plan” to raise $46 billion to buy even more Bitcoin. The plan would see the firm raise $21 billion via equity, with another $21 billion coming by selling fixed income securities.

In Tuesday’s vote, shareholders voted to increase the company’s Class A shares from 330 million to 10.3 billion. 

Company founder and chairman Michael Saylor kicked off MicroStategy’s Bitcoin buying master plan in 2020, with a $250 million investment in the cryptocurrency.

Since then, the company hasn’t stopped buying the asset, with its strategy accelerating last year. As of today, the MicroStrategy owns 461,000 Bitcoin—worth over $49 billion—after announcing its latest Bitcoin buy. 

Saylor claims that buying Bitcoin and holding it for the long-term is a way to get better returns for company shareholders and fight inevitable inflation, and has referred to the asset as “digital gold.”

And it’s apparently working: The company’s stock is up over 3,000% since the company announced its plan. 

The company in December joined the Nasdaq-100, an index of the top 100 non-financial companies on the Nasdaq stock market, alongside tech titans like Apple and Microsoft. 

Edited by Andrew Hayward