Hot Money Monday: Treasurers swap term deposits for Bitcoin as ASX firms dive in
MicroStrategy's $63bn outmuscles nations
Aussie minnows LOC and OPL dive in last week
Corporate treasury chiefs used to fret about overnight rates and term deposit ladders; now they're sneaking a look at the Bitcoin price before the markets open.
From Texas to Tokyo, listed companies are carving out room on the balance sheet for BTC, pitching it as digital gold or, at the very least, a way to dodge the fallout in an era of central bank money-printing.
Michael Saylor's rebadged MicroStrategy sits at the top of the leaderboard with roughly 592,345 BTC (about $63 billion) after its latest nibble last week, a hoard bigger than the treasuries of many nation-states.
The case for the trade sounds simple: Bitcoin's has a fixed supply of 21 million, making it a hedge against inflation and central-bank moves.
It's also highly liquid, you hold it outright, and over any recent five-year stretch, BTC has pretty much thumped every mainstream asset class.
But the flip side is harder to ignore. Price swings north of 50% in a single quarter can blow a hole in reported earnings.
VanEck's digital-assets boss Matthew Sigel warned that relentless equity raisings to fund BTC buys can cross 'from strategy into shareholder harm' once a stock trades near net-asset value.
The argument is that when a share price drifts down to roughly its net-asset value, any fresh equity deal brings in cash at little or no premium.
Existing holders don't get the usual uplift; instead their slice of the company simply shrinks while the asset base stays more or less the same.
'Once you are trading at net asset value, shareholder dilution is no longer strategic. It's erosion,' said Sigel.
That risk calculus explains why the Silicon Valley heavyweights keep ghosting the idea.
At Meta's AGM four weeks ago, a proposal to shift even a slice of its US$72 billion cash pile into Bitcoin was torched: just 3.92 million votes for, nearly 5 billion against.
Amazon and Microsoft have also fielded, and sunk, similar motions.
Boards say the coin's volatility clashes with predictable cash-flow modelling and, frankly, they have enough fights already on the AI and metaverse fronts.
ASX firms buying Bitcoins last week
Smaller outfits are also willing to put their toes in the crypto surf.
Japan's Metaplanet has just galloped past Tesla after scooping up another 1234 BTC, lifting its stash to 12,345 coins and elbowing Elon out of the global top five.
Last week, that template washed up on Australia's shores in style.
Locate Technologies (ASX:LOC), the last-mile delivery software minnow better known for plotting courier routes than investment theses, raised $239,000 via its at-the-market facility.
It then promptly converted the bulk of the funds into 4 BTC at an average $156,560 a pop, taking its running tally to just over ten coins.
LOC's stock price doubled in the days that followed; proof, at least for now, that markets love a bold narrative.
Hot on its heels, clinical AI firm Opyl (ASX:OPL) announced on Thursday it had also picked up about two Bitcoin for $330,000 via DigitalX's (ASX:DCC) ETF.
The company enlisted poker-pro-turned-crypto-whale Tony G as adviser, and secured a $2 million loan facility against the coin, giving itself a back-door war-chest without hitting shareholders for fresh equity.
It's a pint-sized position compared with the Saylor playbook, but the symbolism is loud. Even niche life-science players seem to think holding a bit of digital gold could help offset future AI infrastructure costs.
'I urge our investors to take the time to fully understand these digital assets," said Tony G.
'With increasing endorsement by institutions and governments worldwide, Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies are emerging as a validated and forward-looking asset class.'
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