Strategy Bought Nearly $1B in Bitcoin Last Week as Saylor's Company Returns to Big Purchases

Strategy (MSTR), the largest publicly traded company holding bitcoin, returned for at least one week to making notably large purchases of bitcoin BTC$91,640.56.

The company added 10,624 bitcoin last week for $962.7 million, or an average price of $90,615 each.

The acquisition was funded mostly by the sale of $928.1 million in common stock; there was also the sale of STRD preferred stock raising $34.9 million.

Total bitcoin holdings now stand oat 660,624 coins acquired for $49.35 billion, or an average cost of $74,696 each.

Bitcoin was higher by 3% over the past 24 hours to $94,000.

MSTR reached a low of about $155 on Dec. 1 amid a panicky sell off in all things crypto late last weekend and into Monday. The stock bounced from those levels for the remainder of the week. Shares are higher by 2.1% to $182.74 in premarket trading on Monday, but still lower by more than 50% over the past six months.

While Strategy has continued buying bitcoin nearly every week in recent months, the purchases generally had been rather small, thanks to worsening market conditions constraining the company’s ability to raise cash. Despite a sharply weakening stock price, though, Strategy has been an aggressive seller of its stock of late, raising nearly $2 billion two weeks ago to fund a cash reserve to pay preferred dividends, and now raising another $1 billion in this last week for additional BTC buys.

Executive Chairman Michael Saylor, currently speaking at the BTC Conference in Abu Dhabi, said he has been in the Middle East this week meeting with sovereign wealth funds, banks, family offices and hedge funds.