American software company MicroStrategy is currently sitting on more than $1.1 billion in unrealized gains from its Bitcoin holdings, thanks to the recent surge in BTC price. The company’s co-founder, Michael Saylor, has also predicted that the demand for the world’s largest crypto asset by market capitalization could increase up to 10 times within 12 months.
MicroStrategy, the current largest corporate Bitcoin holder, nullified all its losses over the past months and saw over 25% on its cumulative Bitcoin investment as BTC crossed the $37,000 threshold for the first time in months last week.
Earlier this month, MicroStrategy’s executive chairman, Saylor, revealed that the company spent $5.3 million in October to acquire an additional 155 BTC. This increased their total Bitcoin holdings to 158,400 BTC, which is equivalent to 80% of the software company’s $7.1 billion stock market capitalization.
MicroStrategy purchased a total of 6,067 BTC for $167 million in Q3 2023, which means it spent $4.69 billion, or 29,5686 per BTC.
“We further increased our total bitcoin holdings to 158,400 bitcoins, adding 6,067 bitcoins since the end of the second quarter,” MicroStrategy’s Chief Financial Officer Andrew Kang said in a statement, adding, “Our commitment to acquire and hold Bitcoin remains strong, especially with the promising backdrop of potential increased institutional adoption.”
Meanwhile, Saylor, who was the brains behind MicroStrategy’s Bitcoin investment, predicted that the next 12 months will be huge for the crypto market, especially since he expects that the demand for Bitcoin will surge by 10 times.
“I think that this next 12 months is going to be big. Because demand [on a monthly basis] should double or triple or maybe go up by a factor of 10, anywhere from two to 10. […] and the supply available for sale will be cut in half in April,” he said.
“So, instead of a billion dollars of Bitcoin available for miners each month, it will be half a billion. It’s pretty unprecedented that you would go from a supply-and-demand balance of maybe $15 billion of organic demand and $12 billion of organic supply. What happens when one doubles and the other one cuts in half? The price is going to adjust up,” Saylor added.
Bitcoin was trading up at $36,945.53 as of 4:13 a.m. ET on Monday, with a 24-hour trading volume up by 2.73% at $13,198,978,648. This represented a 0.35% decrease in the last 24 hours and a 5.8% spike over the past seven days.
Data from CoinMarketCap revealed that Bitcoin’s total circulating supply stands at 19,541,093 BTC, with its value dipping by 0.32% at a $722,249,882,800 market cap.
