An illustration of bitcoin on euro banknotes.
Nicolas Economou | NurPhoto via Getty Images
Shares of MicroStrategy are up more than 700% since August, when the Virginia-based business software company became an early adopter of buying bitcoin for its corporate treasury.
Michael Saylor, the chairman and CEO, is an outspoken evangelist for bitcoin and encouraged other companies to follow MicroStrategy’s lead – including Tesla CEO Elon Musk in a Twitter conversation.
On Monday, just over a month since Saylor tweeted to Musk, Tesla revealed in a regulatory filing that it had purchased $ 1.5 billion worth of bitcoin and plans to accept the digital coin as payment in the future. The price of bitcoin – and MicroStrategy’s stock – soared after the news.