Morgan Stanley has its eyes on crypto. On New Year’s Eve, the bank bought 792,627 shares (10.9%) of MicroStrategy, a company whose CEO Michael Saylor came out asone of the most ardent advocators of Bitcoin this summer.
Saylor’s investments in Bitcoin, which now total well over a billion dollars, are widely thought to have kickstarted Bitcoin’s bull run. In his wake followed a slew of high-profile institutional investors, among them MassMutual and Anthony Scaramucci’s SkyBridge.
Since Saylor’s investments, MicroStrategy’s share performance has generally followed the price of Bitcoin. Morgan Stanley’s latest investment could thus be the bank’s attempt to profit from BTC’s high watermarks without being a HODLer.
It seems Saylor’s enthusiasm is paying off. Share prices in his company have almost doubled since last month, and with Morgan Stanley filling his sails it’s likely that MicroStrategy is going through something of a bull run itself.