The NASDAQ-listed software giant MicroStrategy has seen a total impairment loss of nearly $700 million in Q2 2021 from its massive bitcoin investments. The company promised to increase its bitcoin investments and double down on the paper.

MicroStrategy’s Q2 BTC Impairment Loss

Michael Saylor’s brainchild has become one of the largest holders of bitcoins, with over 105,000 coins accumulated in the span of a year. However, the substantial purchases completed during the second quarter of this year have resulted in a cumulative impairment loss of $689.6 million for the company, according to the Q2 report.

Despite the positive revenue during this period from the non-bitcoin products, the operating expenses, which “included impairment losses on MicroStrategy’s digital assets,” have resulted in a paper loss of $424.8 million.

However, Saylor did not let this deter him as he assured that the firm does not intend to alter its BTC strategy.

” We are pleased with the outcomes of our digital asset strategy implementation. Our latest capital raise allowed us to expand our digital holdings, which now exceed 105,000 bitcoins. Going forward, we intend to continue to deploy additional capital into our digital asset strategy.”

It is worth noting the company has not yet sold any of its BTC. This means that losses are only paper-based and not real.

MicroStrategy, and Bitcoin: A Historic Years

As mentioned above, the love story between the NASDAQ-listed company and the primary cryptocurrency began in the summer of 2020 when the firm announced its first purchase. Saylor later explained that it was the result of extensive research on suitable assets during times of economic uncertainty.

Since then, the organization has used every possible chance to buy more – from relatively smaller purchases of $10 million to whopping amounts of $1 billion at once.

Saylor and the company launched BTC-oriented events for corporations and retail users, MicroStrategy became a node on the Bitcoin network, and non-employee executives started receiving funds in the cryptocurrency instead of cash. We must not forget that bitcoin was the company’s reserve asset in treasury.

This last part caught the attention of many because it was very revolutionary at the time. A popular crypto analyst, ecoinometrics, highlighted the event in a chart that shows the performance of BTC and MicroStrategy stocks over the same time period. The graph below shows that the first two have outperformed the stock index.

MicroStrategy Performance


Jul. 27, 2021

Since the start of their #Bitcoin treasury program: $MSTR +406%$BTC +227%$NASDAQ +39.1% pic.twitter.com/Ti5Hr3PlOH

— ecoinometrics (@ecoinometrics) July 27, 2021