It’s only been a few days since 2026 started, and the major players in the market haven’t been idle. MicroStrategy, a publicly listed company, invested a total of $116 million between New Year’s Day and January 4th, acquiring 1,283 Bitcoins at an average price of about $90,000 each. Now, its Bitcoin holdings have expanded to over 673,000 coins. At the current price of $93,000, this asset’s book value has already surpassed $12 billion, making for a spectacular start to the new year.

So the question is—where did this money come from? The strategy is quite clear: issuing stock to buy Bitcoin. MicroStrategy’s secret lies in leveraging the high premiums in the stock market. It launched an ATM issuance plan, meaning that if the market is willing to pay more for its stock than the current value of its Bitcoin holdings, it will issue more shares to raise funds and then pour all that money into Bitcoin. The $116 million round was raised by issuing 735,000 common shares.

What’s truly jaw-dropping is the subsequent move—MicroStrategy still holds over $11.3 billion in authorized common stock issuance capacity, and combined with its preferred stock, it can mobilize over $30 billion in future funding. In other words, its “ammunition” has yet to be fully unleashed.

However, market sentiment towards cryptocurrencies is currently quite divided. On one side, traditional investors are worried—by the second half of 2025, Bitcoin’s sharp decline caused MicroStrategy’s unrealized losses to reach $17.4 billion, and its stock price has fallen nearly 60% from mid-year highs, prompting many to withdraw. On the other side, top-tier institutions like Standard Chartered Bank remain bullish, projecting a Bitcoin target price of $150,000 in 2026, insisting that this wave is just the “prelude to a bottoming out.” Both viewpoints have market support but point to completely different futures.