First Mover Americas: MicroStrategy Buys More BTC and ARK Invest Buys BITO

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MicroStrategy (MSTR), the largest corporate holder of bitcoin (BTC), added more to its holdings on Wednesday, buying 14,620 BTC for around $615.7 million. The company's executive chairman, Michael Saylor, tweeted that MicroStrategy bought the bitcoin at an average price of $42,110 each. The recent purchase pushes the company's holdings to 189,150 BTC worth around $5.9 billion, which was bought at an average price of $31,168 per BTC. MicroStrategy began purchasing bitcoin in August 2020. The company's most recent purchase before Wednesday's took place last month, when it acquired 16,130 BTC worth around $608 million at the time.

ARK Invest bought 4.3 million shares of ProShares Bitcoin Strategy ETF (BITO) yesterday after dumping its remaining holdings of the Grayscale Bitcoin Trust (GBTC). The ProShares stake is valued at $9.2 million based on closing prices. Cathie Wood's investment vehicle also sold $27.6 million worth of Coinbase (COIN) stock and bought 20,000 shares of the Ark 21Shares Active Bitcoin Future Strategy ETF, according to an emailed transaction notice. The ProShares exchange-traded fund, which started trading in October 2021 as the first U.S. bitcoin-linked ETF, now accounts for 5.03% of the ARK Next Generation Internet ETF (ARKW), its sixth-largest holding.

Bitcoin remains well supported, holding above $40,000 as the clock ticks down to 2023's last quarterly options expiry. On Friday at 08:00 UTC, a staggering $7.7 billion worth of options tied to bitcoin [BTC] and $3.5 billion of options linked to ether [ETH] will expire on the crypto exchange Deribit. "The total of over $11 billion marks Deribit's largest expiry thus far, of which almost $5 billion will expire in the money, the largest amount ever as well, potentially resulting in above average hedging and trading activity," Luuk Strijers, the exchange's chief commercial officer, told CoinDesk

Chart of The Day

• The chart shows cryptocurrencies making the most noise on social media in the past 24 hours. Green portion of the bar represents bullish mentions on social media while red stands for bearish, with yellow indicating neutral bias.
• The sentiment is biased bullish for most tokens, with the retail crowd more focused on ether and smaller alternative cryptocurrencies (altcoins) compared to bitcoin.
• Traders may want to watch for extreme bullish sentiment in altcoins as it often presages interim market tops.
• Source: Santiment

- Omkar Godbole

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