The flagship BTC-strategy company, Microstrategy, plans to actively buy Bitcoin in the first quarter of this year. Microstrategy targets a capital raise of up to $2 billion of preferred stock, which will be senior to the company’s class A common stock. As usual in such cases, Microstrategy notes that the decision to proceed with the offering is “subject to market and other conditions”. However, it is obvious that if the price of Bitcoin stays near current levels or moves higher, Microstrategy will have no problems with raising money to buy BTC.
In case the average purchase price is $100,000 (for example’s sake), Microstrategy will be able to buy as much as 20,000 BTC. As of January 5, 2025, Microstrategy owned 447,470 BTC at an average price of $62,503.
A company that is often called “Japanese Microstrategy”, Metaplanet, is going to buy 10,000 BTC. It should be noted that Metaplanet’s access to capital markets is limited compared to Microstrategy, so its plans are modest. The purchase plan will be spread over the whole year 2025 and will amount to 2,500 BTC per quarter.
On average, 450 new BTC are mined every day. In 90 days, 40,500 BTC will be mined. Thus, Microstrategy and Metaplanet combined plan to buy more than half of new Bitcoins entering the market in the first quarter of this year.
Companies that aggressively buy Bitcoin plan to make BTC even more scarce by the time governments decide to establish strategic Bitcoin reserves.
Strategic BTC reserves are expected to be a hot topic in 2025. Not surprisingly, the market’s attention will be focused on the United States, which will have a pro-crypto government after Donald Trump enters the office. Crypto has been among the biggest topics in Trump’s campaign, and discussions about the potential creation of the strategic BTC reserve will likely intensify soon after he takes office as president.
The government machine of a big country, like the U.S., usually moves slowly, so smaller countries will be tempted to start buying BTC to build their reserves ahead of the U.S. When a big buyer enters the market, the price will inevitably move higher, so forward-looking politicians from various countries would likely try to push the idea of strategic BTC reserves to front-run the U.S.
The “race for BTC” between countries is the key reason why several private companies have already adopted the BTC strategy and have started to increase their Bitcoin reserves. The task is easier for individual investors since the size of their positions is minimal compared to the total Bitcoin market capitalization — they can add a BTC position that represents a significant part of their portfolio at any time.