MicroStrategy Now Owns Almost $3 Bln Worth Bitcoins

(RTTNews) - MicroStrategy Inc. (MSTR) on Monday announced that it has invested nearly half a billion dollars on bitcoins. However, shares of the technology company tanked over 10%, as the price of bitcoin slipped hurt by China's decision to start cracking down on cryptocurrencies.

MSTR is currently trading at $579.68, down $66.78 or 10.33%, on the Nasdaq.

Microstartegy, the business analytics firm that now owns more bitcoin than any other company in the world, revealed that it purchased an additional 13,005 bitcoins for around $489 million in cash at an average price of about $37,617 per bitcoin.

The company, as of June 21, holds around 105,085 bitcoins, which were acquired at a purchase price of around $2.741 billion and an average purchase price of about $26,080 per bitcoin.

Last week, MicroStrategy CEO Michael Saylor told CNBC that he sees a bright future for a range of cryptocurrencies, not just bitcoin.

"The world is waking up to the fact that Bitcoin is digital property on an open monetary network. And that's pretty profound because it's going to spread to billions of people around the planet. It's digital gold on a big tech network," Saylor said.

Meanwhile, Bitcoin slipped nearly 8% and in the morning trade the cryptocurrency even dropped below $32,000 for the first time since June 8. According to Coindesk, Bitcoin is currently trading at $32,436.50, down 8.84% from last day.

Meanwhile, China has announced a strong crackdown on cryptocurrency mining. The People's Bank of China said Monday it had urged Alipay and some major banks to crack down on crypto trading.