South Korea’s National Pension Service (NPS), the third-largest public pension fund globally, has acquired nearly $34 million worth of shares in MicroStrategy.
According to an Aug. 13 filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, NPS acquired 24,500 MicroStrategy shares for $33.75 million.
NPS, the largest investor in South Korea, manages over $777 billion in assets as of February 2024. The filing also revealed that NPS continues to hold investments in other tech and crypto-related companies, including a $51 million stake in Coinbase, $31.5 million in Roblox, and $61.5 million in Jack Dorsey’s Block.
MicroStrategy has made headlines for its aggressive Bitcoin accumulation strategy, which began in August 2020. As of its latest earnings report, the company acquired an additional 12,222 Bitcoin during the second quarter of 2024, bringing its total holdings to 226,500 BTC, valued at $13.19 billion.
This makes MicroStrategy the public company with the largest Bitcoin holdings, outpacing other major players in the crypto space, including Marathon Digital, the world’s largest Bitcoin miner.
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In its Q2 earnings call, MicroStrategy posted losses of $5.74 per share on a quarterly revenue of $111.4 million, a 7% decline year-over-year. The losses exceeded analysts’ expectations, which pegged a quarterly loss of $0.78 per share and $119.3 million in revenue.
MicroStrategy said its BTC yield currently stands at 12.2% year-to-date, noting that it would target a rate of between 4%–8% annually over the next three years.
The investment by NPS aligns with a broader trend of institutional interest in companies heavily involved in cryptocurrency. MicroStrategy’s stock has surged by 92.5% in 2024, surpassing $150 for the first time in over two decades. This strong performance has also attracted attention from other financial entities, with Defiance ETFs launching a U.S.-based fund that offers a 175% long daily exposure to MicroStrategy.
Japan’s Government Pension Investment Fund, with nearly $1.5 trillion in assets, remains the world’s largest pension fund, followed by Norway’s Government Pension Fund, holding just over $1.3 trillion, according to the Thinking Ahead Institute’s Global Pension Assets Study.
