On March 1st, 2021, which is approximately 9 months ago, there were a total of 42 companies that had bitcoin on their balance sheet and the number of coins was around 1,350,073. The metrics today indicate that there are a few countries, 59 companies and some exchange-traded funds (ETFs) that are holding bitcoin in their treasuries and the total number of these coins is 1,499,493. An increasing number of companies have disclosed in the last 12 months that they have been adding bitcoin to their balance sheets. As a matter of fact, even countries are adding digital currency to their national treasury, such as El Salvador, which has adopted Bitcoin as legal tender.
It had been reported in March 2021 that 42 companies, including both private and public companies, along with bitcoin funds. The companies had held a total number of 1,350,073 coins, as mentioned above and this was about 6.43% of the maximum bitcoin supply of 21 million. Every so often, MicroStrategy was announcing a purchase of BTC and El Salvador also took to doing the same. The country’s president, Nayib Bukele took to announcing every acquisition of BTC that El Salvador makes to add to its national treasury.
For instance, on December 21st, El Salvador celebrated the 21st century, year and day by purchasing 21 BTC. A list of Bitcoin Treasuries was hosted on buybitcoinworldwide.com and it shows that a total of 59 companies have added bitcoin to their balance sheets so far and five different countries that have added it to their treasuries. According to the web portal, these entities hold approximately 1,499,493 coins so far. This puts it at a value of $71.6 billion and it is 7.14% of the total supply of Bitcoin. As mentioned earlier, there are five countries that have added the pioneer crypto to their national treasuries.
The first country on the list is Bulgaria, but there is controversy surrounding the 213,519 BTC with Bulgarian authorities, as many believe that these were sold. Bivol, a regional news publication, had said in April 2018 that according to Vladislav Goranov, the finance minister of Bulgaria, they had sold the bitcoins. The finance minister had noted that they had sold the coins to Asian investors and some sovereign wealth funds. It was also mentioned that the FBI and Deloitte had helped in facilitating the sales and they had sold it at a value of €15,000 per coin.
If this stash is removed from the Bitcoin Treasuries list, then four countries and 59 companies would have a total of 1,285,974 BTC and this is valued at $61.1 billion. The second country on the list of Bitcoin Treasuries is El Salvador, which has accumulated about 1,391 BTC, followed by the UK government, Finland and Georgia. Exchange-traded funds (ETFs) and public and private companies also own bitcoin. MicroStrategy is the publicly listed company that owns the most bitcoins, which is around 122,478 BTC, and this is valued at $5.8 billion. However, its CEO disclosed that they had bought 1,914 more coins on Thursday.