Semler Scientific Boosts Bitcoin Stash to $314M as Chairman Says Doubters Can Sell Stock

A Nasdaq-listed healthcare company has said it won't sell its Bitcoin—even if shareholders offload their stock. 

Semler Scientific's Chairman Eric Semler made the comments one day before the company announced another Bitcoin buy on Friday morning.

Medical device manufacturer Semler Scientific said Friday that it had bought another 111 BTC for $10 million. The company now owns 3,303 BTC, worth nearly $314 million at today's price.  

"You can sell or stop if you don't like what we've done with Bitcoin," Semler said during an interview Thursday at Bitwise's Bitcoin Standard Corporation Investor Day event in New York. 

He added: "We're a public company. You have that right to sell or stop. If we lose money by Bitcoin, it's not gonna force us to sell."

Santa Clara, California-based Semler Scientific—which trades under the ticker SMLR—first started buying Bitcoin last year with a $40 million transaction to acquire 581 BTC. It has continued to scoop up the asset, copying the model of software company Strategy (formerly MicroStrategy), the largest corporate holder of Bitcoin. 

Strategy began buying Bitcoin in 2020 as a way to get better returns for shareholders in the face of rising inflation brought on by the COVID-19 pandemic. The company has aggressively bought Bitcoin since, and now works to securitize the asset: Investors can buy shares of the firm to get exposure to Bitcoin’s price.

The 10 Public Companies With the Biggest Bitcoin Portfolios

For many years, the idea that publicly traded corporations might buy Bitcoin for their reserves was considered laughable. The top cryptocurrency was considered too volatile, too fringe to be embraced by any serious business. That taboo has been well and truly broken, with a number of major institutional investors buying up Bitcoin in recent years. The floodgates first opened when cloud software company Strategy (formerly MicroStrategy) bought $425 million worth of Bitcoin in August and September...

The company now owns 538,000 BTC—or $51 billion worth of the cryptocurrency. 

Other companies on the Nasdaq are following suit, such as Cosmos Health and auto firm Worksport.

Semler Scientific stock is currently up nearly 3% on Friday, trading for $35.40 a share. Bitcoin is up nearly 2% on the day, cracking the $95,000 mark for the first time in two months.

Additional reporting by Liz Napolitano

Edited by Andrew Hayward