MicroStrategy: Bold Bet on Bitcoin Pays Off Big - But Will the Gains Sustain?

investing.com:

MicroStrategy (NASDAQ:MSTR) shares exploded to the upside on Wednesday, closing the regular session up 11.06%, and adding a further 1.40% in after-hours trading, taking its year-to-date gains to just under 375%.

This is one of the best performances of the entire US stock market in 2023.

Indeed, a search on the InvestingPro screener showed us that MicroStrategy is the 7th best-performing stock in the US this year if we limit the search to companies with a capitalization of over $5 billion.

Now, this surge in the stock is largely linked to the rise of Bitcoin this year, as the company has been investing heavily in the cryptocurrency for several years.

Source: InvestingPro

What's more, our research on InvestingPro has shown us that other companies whose fortunes are linked to crypto-currencies are also among this year's best-performing US stocks.

This includes exchange platform Coinbase (NASDAQ:COIN), whose stock is up 423% this year, or crypto miner Marathon Digital (NASDAQ:MARA), whose stock is up over 800%.

Remember that MicroStrategy, officially a software company, began accumulating Bitcoins in 2020, gradually accelerating the pace and going so far as to take on debt and issue shares to buy more cryptocurrency.

Indeed, yesterday's rise came in response to the announcement that the company had once again made a massive purchase of Bitcoin, for over $600 million.

Following this latest acquisition, MicroStrategy now owns over 189,000 Bitcoins purchased at an average unit price of $31,168, for a total value of.

Given that BTC is currently trading at around $43,000, the company is currently sitting on a treasure trove of over $8.1 billion worth of BTC, with a latent gain of over $2.2 billion.

It has to be said that, for