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Fortune
Fortune
Jim Edwards

Michael Saylor’s Strategy may have BlackRock to thank for the 11% rise in Bitcoin

Michael Saylor speaks on stage during Bitcoin Conference 2023 at Miami Beach Convention Center on May 19, 2023. (Credit: Jason Koerner—Getty Images for Bitcoin Magazine)

Bitcoin is holding at just above $93,000 per coin this morning after staging a nearly 11% rally since its low on Nov. 22 of just above $84,000. Its recovery seems to have rescued Michael Saylor’s Strategy, the Bitcoin treasury company whose stock rose 3.9% yesterday and is up 8.4% over the past five sessions. It was up marginally this morning in overnight trading.

Although Strategy’s market cap ($55.7 billion) remains below the value of the $60.6 billion in Bitcoin it owns, its mNAV ratio (net asset value expressed as enterprise value over its Bitcoin holdings) has risen to 1.16 this morning. If Strategy’s mNAV falls below one, owning the stock becomes a money-losing prospect, and the company said it may be theoretically forced into selling part of its Bitcoin hoard

Saylor may have BlackRock and its retail investors to thank for helping it avoid that crisis. In Q4 2025 so far, BlackRock’s Bitcoin exchange-traded fund (ETF) continued to add Bitcoin while most of the other ETFs sold off. “BlackRock, which, despite heavy outflows of roughly 23,226 BTC between Nov. 1 and Dec. 1, has still added a net 24,411 BTC compared with the previous quarter,” analyst Paul Hoffman wrote in a research note for BestBrokers.com, a site that ranks trading platforms.

BlackRock’s iShares Bitcoin Trust (IBIT) now owns just under 60% of all Bitcoins owned by ETFs, he said, bringing its total to 776,474.65 coins as of Dec. 1. Its Q4 buying was preceded by the acquisition of another 71,236 coins in Q3, Hoffman wrote. 

That means BlackRock’s ETF, which retail investors use to buy Bitcoin without actually owning their own crypto wallet, now owns 3.9% of all existing Bitcoin—more than Strategy.

BlackRock did not immediately respond to a request for comment from Fortune.

IBIT is now BlackRock’s most profitable product, according to CoinDesk. Perhaps unsurprisingly, BlackRock chief Larry Fink is now fairly bullish on Bitcoin. Speaking at the New York Times’ DealBook Summit on Wednesday, he admitted he once thought Bitcoin was for money laundering and thieves. Since then, “my thought process has evolved,” he said.

“I see a big, large use case for Bitcoin, and I still do today,” he said. “In my role, I see thousands of clients a year. I meet with governmental leaders, and we have conversations that evolve my thinking. This is a very public example of a big shift in my opinion.”

Also helping: news that Vanguard, which has long turned its nose up at crypto, will cave and offer its massive customer base another Bitcoin ETF.

Here’s a snapshot of the markets ahead of the opening bell in New York this morning:

  • S&P 500 futures were flat this morning. The last session closed up 0.3%. 
  • The STOXX Europe 600 was up 0.3% in early trading. 
  • The U.K.’s FTSE 100 was up 0.14% in early trading. 
  • Japan’s Nikkei 225 was up 2.33%. 
  • China’s CSI 300 was up 0.34%. 
  • The South Korea KOSPI was down 0.19%. 
  • India’s Nifty 50 is up 0.18%. 
  • Bitcoin was flat at $93K.
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