Michael Saylor, the founder and former CEO of enterprise software firm MicroStrategy, is selling $216 million worth of MSTR stock from his personal holdings.

In contrast, the Bitcoin supporter has not informed that he will be disposing of any of his BTC stash.

Stock Value Nearly Quadrupled YoY

Microstrategy has famously bought Bitcoin whenever possible, on principle, due to Saylor’s belief that the original cryptocurrency is overall less susceptible than cash reserves when it comes to dealing with the loss of asset value.

“Ultimately, it’s not easy to see what better strategy there might be. We found by simply acquiring and holding Bitcoin we can outperform our peers in the enterprise software business. The regulatory environment for Bitcoin is improving. As capital flows out of the crypto industry, it flows into Bitcoin.”

The last Bitcoin purchase of the year was announced on the 27th of December.

MicroStrategy has acquired an additional 14,620 BTC for ~$615.7 million at an average price of $42,110 per #bitcoin. As of 12/26/23, @MicroStrategy now hodls 189,150 $BTC acquired for ~$5.9 billion at an average price of $31,168 per bitcoin. $MSTR https://t.co/PKfYY59sTW

— Michael Saylor⚡️ (@saylor) December 27, 2023

The above figure – which also makes MicroStrategy the largest corporate holder of BTC – was behind MSTR’s recent rally, which jumped to over $685.

The stock marked a 372% increase since the beginning of 2022, thus bringing its value to its highest levels since December 2021, right before crypto winter.

Now, Saylor is looking to profit off of his HODLing habits.

A total of 315,000 MSTR stocks will be going on sale at NASDAQ, although it’s possible that even more will be sold later. According to Bloomberg, it was stated in an earlier announcement that up to 400,000 MSTR stocks would be sold between the 2nd of January and the end of April.

However, it’s equally possible that the co-founder of MicroStrategy simply decided to retain more of his own stock than previously decided, owing to Bitcoin’s continuous bull run in recent weeks.

An Alternative to ETFs

As Grayscale, Blackrock, and other companies in the financial industries continue to wait for the approval of the SEC concerning their proposed Bitcoin ETFs, MicroStrategy still has the option of presenting itself as a BTC ETF that also produces software, given that the vast majority of the firm’s financial reserves have been held in the oldest cryptocurrency for several years now.

As a result, the value of MSTR shares closely follows that of BTC, albeit with variations due to the reception of the software produced by the company, offering an alternative way of buying into the BTC circuit for institutional clients who do not want to deal with a non-traditional financial system.