Feeding Frenzy: Bullish Corporate Balance Sheets Wolf Bitcoin Up in March

Who bought BTC in March alone?

Feeding Frenzy: Bullish Corporate Balance Sheets Wolf Bitcoin Up in March

In March, corporate treasuries from Virginia to Texas, California, and Japan added Bitcoin to their books as a financial strategy. This is beginning to become a trend with factorable implications for Bitcoin’s price.

Bitcoin ETFs on Wall Street flipped back to a streak of decisively positive inflows in March. These are custodial services of on-chain BTC for regulated investors.

But meanwhile, it’s not just publicly traded, SEC-regulated financial conglomerates competing with the US government and states for Bitcoin this year to sell it to their clients.

Several publicly traded non-financial corporations are now adding BTC to their corporate treasuries as a long-term financial strategy to improve their account balance by unburdening it of dollar buying power that boils off unless the team immediately adds it to a profitable expense line.

The following four examples could be the first drops in a brewing storm of corporate competition for Bitcoin, which might find that today’s price levels significantly undervalue the scarce supply of this novel Internet currency secured by commercially available military-grade public key encryption.

1. Michael Saylor’s Strategy Buys 6,911 More Bitcoin

The Virginia-based Bitcoin holding and financial company Strategy bought 6,911 BTC for $584 million from Mar. 17 – Mar. 23. That brings Strategy’s total holdings to 506,137 BTC, according to data compiled by Bitcoin Treasuries.

In Q4 of last year, the company bought a total of 218,887 bitcoins for $20.5 billion. Then in January, Strategy bought 10,107 BTC for around $1.1 billion.

In second place globally by BTC holdings is MARA Holdings, Inc., with 46,374, less than 10% of Strategy’s vault. Shockingly, the electric carmaker Tesla weighs in at 4th place, with 11,509 BTC.

The Austin-based automobile IT giant has more Bitcoin on its balance sheet than many blockchain sector companies like CleanSpark, Coinbase, and Block.

2. GameStop to Hold Corporate Bitcoin

Meanwhile, brick-and-mortar Texas retail video game chain GameStop, which became a meme stock in 2021 so the finance bros on Wall Street Bets could let off some steam amid the global pandemic, announced on March 25 that it will add BTC to its balance sheet.

Just under four months after Microsoft voted to reject a similar proposal for the Seattle computer giant, GameStop’s board of directors unanimously approved a plan to buy Bitcoin for the company.

Its stock jumped 11.7% following the news but later dumped by over 20%. GameStop has filed to raise $1.3 billion in stock-convertible corporate loans to purchase Bitcoin.

The main thrust of GameStop’s business strategy isn’t focused on acquiring Bitcoin like Strategy. Neither is it a blockchain nor even a high-tech sector company. But now BTC is part of its financial toolkit.

This is a premier example of the normalization and mainstream adoption of Bitcoin as a modern currency and financial asset because of its unique characteristics that are highly valued by key specifications of the Internet and mainstream financial economy.

3. Japan’s MetaPlanet Adds $12.6M in BTC

Across the ocean from California, MetaPlanet, a hotel chain in Japan, is shoring up its corporate finances with a big Bitcoin purchase. In March, the corporate cryptocurrency adopter bought 150 BTC for around USD $12.6 million.

That brings the company’s total holdings to 3,350 BTC, with a total market value above $172 million in March. The week before March’s top-off, the US president’s son Eric Trump joined the firm’s crypto advisory board as its first member.

At Michael Saylor’s New Year’s Eve party last year, MetaPlanet’s CEO Simon Gerovich said:

“In April for us—that’s when we decided we want to begin adopting Bitcoin. And now what we want to do is accumulate more Bitcoin over time for our shareholders.”

He also said he believes governments in Asia, including Japan’s, will be sure to follow the US in establishing national Bitcoin stockpiles. When the US begins mining or purchasing tranches of BTC to hold in a national reserve, the international “gold” rush would be apt to begin in earnest.

4. KULR Technology Buys $5 million More Bitcoin

In San Diego, California, the lithium ion battery and electronics company KULR Technology Group added to its corporate BTC stockpile in March. It bought an additional 58.3 BTC worth around $5.3 million. That brings its told holdings to 668 BTC.

KULR first established its Bitcoin treasury in December with a $21 million investment in the blockchain built to hold only 21 million BTC. KULR chairman and CEO Michael Mo said, “We believe the growing global acceptance of Bitcoin is still in its early stages.”

He reiterated BTC’s reputation as a macro hedge on inflation and geopolitical uncertainties with a strong trend of appreciating value over the long-term time scale.

The electronics company isn’t merely accepting Bitcoin as payment and waiting for a customer to push some to them. It’s actively going out and acquiring BTC to protect and improve its finances.

5. 2024 Accounting Update Paves Way for Corporate Holdings

Another reason this new trend of corporate accumulation has begun to emerge may be the Dec. 2023 update to the Financial Accounting Services Board (FASB) rules, officially adopting fair value accounting procedures for corporate BTC holdings.

The acceptance and standardization of a reasonable and simple accounting procedure for Bitcoin held by corporations lowers the complexity and cost of compliance. It also signals mainstream acceptance and support for companies’ ownership of Bitcoin.

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