MicroStrategy disclosed a $1.11 billion bitcoin purchase

MicroStrategy disclosed on September 13, 2024 that it had acquired approximately 18,300 bitcoin for approximately $1.11 billion in cash between August 6 and September 12. The company reported an average acquisition price of approximately $60,408 per bitcoin, including fees and expenses.

The purchase lifted the reported holdings of MicroStrategy and its subsidiaries to approximately 244,800 BTC as of September 12. The company said that position had cost approximately $9.45 billion in aggregate, at an average of approximately $38,585 per bitcoin, including fees and expenses.

The development mattered because the filing connected a large bitcoin acquisition directly to public equity issuance. MicroStrategy did not attribute this purchase to software revenue or an existing cash reserve. It sold Class A common shares through an at-the-market program and used the proceeds to buy bitcoin, expanding its digital-asset position while issuing additional equity.

Equity sales supplied the cash

MicroStrategy entered an at-the-market sales agreement on August 1, 2024 that authorized up to $2 billion of Class A common-share sales through six named agents. By September 12, the company had sold 8,048,449 shares under the agreement and received approximately $1.11 billion in net proceeds after sales commissions.

The September 13 filing states that proceeds from those sales financed the bitcoin purchases. The matching $1.11 billion figures are rounded company disclosures; the filing does not provide transaction-level records connecting each share sale with an individual bitcoin execution.

An at-the-market program permits shares to be sold over time at market prices rather than through one underwritten block at a single fixed price. For existing shareholders, the mechanism increased the issued share count. For the bitcoin market, it documented a substantial source of corporate demand across the August 6–September 12 acquisition window.

The filing did not identify trading venues, counterparties, execution timestamps, custodians or individual purchase prices. It therefore cannot establish whether MicroStrategy caused any particular bitcoin price movement or how its execution compared with the wider market during that period.

What “BTC Yield” meant

MicroStrategy also reported what it called “BTC Yield” of 4.4% from July 1 through September 12 and 17.0% from January 1 through September 12. These were company-defined key performance indicators, not interest earned on bitcoin or a conventional measure of shareholder performance.

The company defined the metric as the percentage change in the ratio of bitcoin holdings to assumed diluted shares outstanding. Its denominator included outstanding common shares and additional shares that could result from convertible notes, options and equity awards under management’s assumptions.

MicroStrategy warned that the calculation was not an operating-performance, financial or liquidity measure. It could overstate or understate the effects of the capital strategy because it did not fully incorporate the source of capital used to acquire bitcoin or the associated debt and senior claims. Ownership of MSTR shares also did not represent ownership of a specified portion of the company’s bitcoin.

The institutional significance

The verified development on September 13 was that MicroStrategy had converted demand for its publicly traded shares into additional corporate bitcoin exposure at billion-dollar scale. The financing structure tied its capacity to accumulate bitcoin more closely to both equity-market conditions and the market value of its existing treasury.

That structure involved trade-offs. Continued common-share issuance could dilute existing holders, while a bitcoin decline could reduce the value of the company’s concentrated treasury. Stronger demand for MicroStrategy shares could, in contrast, improve its ability to raise additional capital. The filing established the acquisition and financing mechanism, but it did not establish future prices, shareholder outcomes or whether comparable financing terms would remain available.