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Medical technology firm Semler Scientific converted part of its healthcare-focused investment portfolio into Bitcoin (BTC).
According to a recent Semler Scientific announcement, the Nasdaq-listed firm acquired 871 BTC for $88.5 million. With this latest acquisition, the company’s Bitcoin holdings reach a total of 3,192 BTC bought at an average price of $101,616 per Bitcoin. The company’s chairman, Eric Semler, said:
“We are thrilled with the progress we are making in growing our bitcoin stockpile. […] “We were especially pleased with our successful convertible notes offering, which was substantially oversubscribed with investor demand. Additionally, we were pleased to have monetized a part of our investment in Monarch Medical in order to buy more bitcoin.”
The details
At the time of writing, Bitcoin is trading just under $96,700 after shedding 1.7% of its value over the last 24 hours. The current value is also 4.3% lower than the price at which Bitcoin changed hands seven days ago.
Semler Scientific’s approach is seemingly a less-extreme version of MicroStrategy’s strategy. MicroStrategy is a publicly traded business intelligence company founded in 1989. In 2020, it pivoted to acquire as much Bitcoin as possible.
The company now holds well over 1% of all Bitcoin that will ever exist and is well underway in its pursuit of 2%. At the end of January, the firm bought another 10,107 BTC for $1.1 billion in a single swoop.
Still, more recent reports indicate that after 12 weeks of non-stop buying, MicroStrategy is halting its Bitcoin addiction. The firm’s CEO Michael Saylor wrote in an X post:
“Last week, MicroStrategy did not sell any shares of class A common stock under its at-the-market equity offering program, and did not purchase any Bitcoin.”
The announcement reignited speculation that the company was implementing a possible “blackout period.” Public companies often employ a “blackout period” ahead of earnings releases to prevent insider trading, and those periods are often conducted without warning the public.
Rumors of a blackout period started circulating as early as December 2024. However, venture capitalist and Framework Ventures founder Vance Spencer then claimed that Saylor and MicroStrategy would pause bitcoin purchases throughout January, something that turned out to be false. It could be that the blackout was delayed until now, however, closer to the earnings report release.
