Bitcoin has been noting six-strong consecutive days of growth as the price surged by 11.23%, from $10,547 to $11,731. A contributing factor for the sudden increase in the value of the asset was Square’s announcement of it buying approximately 4,709 Bitcoin at an aggregate price of $50 million. Square Inc put 1% of its total assets in BTC, following Microstrategy Inc. which bought a total of 38,250 BTC earlier in September at an aggregate price of $425 million.
While these are two prominent names, nine publicly traded companies have bet on Bitcoin. According to data from Bitcoin Treasuries, Galaxy Digital, Hut 8 Mining Corp, Voyager Digital, Riot Blockchain, DigitalX, Cypherpunk Holdings, and Agro Blockchain were some other names, who were also directly in the business associated with digital assets.
Although Microstrategy has been the company with the biggest allocation in terms of Bitcoin, Grayscale was leading in terms of actual Bitcoin holdings.
Source: Ecoinometrics
Although the large chunks of BTC holdings stand out, most of them got off zero. From holding zero BTC to diving into the deep end has turned many heads. Jack Dorsey, Square’s co-founder has remained vocal about his views on Bitcoin and its use, but many private companies like Microstrategy did start from scratch.
So, what got these companies suddenly interested? As it turns out, the same factors as individual investors. Ecoinometrics highlighted that Bitcoin’s properties such as a collateral asset, liquidity, storage, hedge against inflation, and asymmetric bet, was what drew interest. Individual investors may bet a small part of their investment, but businesses just scale it higher.
Bitcoin Liquidity
The purchase by such big companies did cause a boost in sentiment but did have no much impact on BTC’s price in the market. This was interesting because investors and onlookers have always pointed at Bitcoin’s volatility as a con making it not liquid enough to absorb large transactions. However, going by Sqaure’s execution strategy, the purchase did not impact the value of BTC.
This helped them prove to other companies of BTC’s potential to absorb large scale transactions and the maturity of the asset. This could invite more companies to look at BTC as a mature asset and adopt it as a reserve asset.
