Why is Bitcoin so popular in this round of US stocks?
Bitcoin has skyrocketed and is about to break the $100,000 mark, but strangely, the cryptocurrency trading circle is unusually quiet. After Trump's election, everyone is hoping for funds to flow in, but the result is that aside from the hype around those trendy coins driven by Binance, other niche coins have been left far behind by Bitcoin. Why is that? When Bitcoin rises, niche coins fall; when Bitcoin falls, niche coins still fall. What's going on?
The answer might be found in the US stock MSTR.
The news of MicroStrategy buying Bitcoin is not new in the crypto circle; it has been seen as a barometer for Bitcoin in US stocks. But this September, MSTR has become hot again. Why? Because it started rising before Bitcoin's price increase, and it has maintained a premium over Bitcoin since then.
Speaking of which, this premium is quite related to MicroStrategy's stock issuance activities. Every time MSTR issues more shares, the premium coefficient rises. Now, this premium has reached around 3.3.
So, everyone starts to ponder, why does MSTR have a premium? It turns out that MicroStrategy has quietly adopted a new method of buying Bitcoin since last year, called "premium issuance."
In simple terms, MicroStrategy used to raise money by issuing bonds to buy Bitcoin, meaning each share of MSTR corresponded to a certain amount of Bitcoin. But now this "premium issuance" is more direct: when Bitcoin rises, the company's market value increases, and MSTR's exchange rate to Bitcoin has a premium. At this time, when the company issues more MSTR shares, it can use the premium to buy more Bitcoin, leading to more Bitcoin corresponding to each share of MSTR, thus increasing the company's market value and MSTR's value. Then, this cycle continues, and MSTR becomes more and more valuable.
So what does this have to do with the Bitcoin bull market? Aside from the 5% Bitcoin circulation that MicroStrategy holds, it seems that US stocks are undergoing significant changes. MicroStrategy's CEO Michael Saylor has been saying that more and more US companies will follow MSTR's lead. At first, people didn't take it seriously, but recently, large companies like Microsoft have started researching Bitcoin finance, and you can feel that things are changing.