Well-known “Bitcoin Holders” Were Shorted by Citron!

Affected by this, MicroStrategy (MSTR) shares fell sharply and closed down 16.16% to $397.28 per share, with a total market capitalization of $89.259 billion.

Since this year, MSTR's stock price has cumulatively increased more than 5 times as the price of Bitcoin has risen.

However, overnight stock price performance was the worst day for stock prices since April 30.

MSTR breaks away from Bitcoin's fundamentals

On Thursday local time, Citron Research (Citron Research) posted on social networking platform X that it was optimistic about the future of Bitcoin, but hedged by shorting MSTR.

Citron said that now, as Bitcoin investment is easier than ever before, such as ETFs, etc., the market value of MSTR has completely separated from the fundamentals of Bitcoin. Although Citron Research is still optimistic about Bitcoin, we have hedged by shorting MSTR positions.

MSTR is considered an avid follower of Bitcoin, and it also holds a lot of positions.

Under the leadership of its chairman Michael Saylor, MSTR has almost become synonymous with Bitcoin, snapping up billions of dollars in cryptocurrencies and sometimes selling debt to finance purchases.

Michael Saylor said during the October earnings call: “Bitcoin is drastically beating 'Mag 7', and the best hope to really keep up with Mag 7 is a constructive Bitcoin strategy.”

Previously, the regulatory attitude towards Bitcoin was unclear. There were not that many ways for people to invest in Bitcoin; some people would choose to invest in Bitcoin indirectly by investing in MSR.

However, in recent years, with the introduction of Bitcoin ETFs, investors can directly buy such funds without having to use MSTR shares as an alternative.

The latest position is about 30 billion

Recently, Bitcoin has risen sharply, surpassing 98,000 US dollars, and is only one step away from the 0.1 million mark.

Some analysts believe that in addition to Trump's election, the factors that have led to the recent surge in Bitcoin are also MSTR's crazy increase in positions.

MSTR has successively bought close to 0.3 million bitcoins, and only bought but not sold them. Recently, they have also increased their positions through bond issuance and bought close to 5 billion dollars in a week, which is more than all Bitcoin ETFs combined.

Earlier this week, MSTR revealed that it also purchased 51,780 bitcoins for around $4.6 billion in cash, at an average price slightly above $88,500 each.

MSTR has acquired a total of 331,200 bitcoins, with a total value of 16.5 billion US dollars, and the average cost of each bitcoin is 49,874 US dollars.

Prior to this sharp decline, MSTR had a market capitalization of over 100 billion US dollars, but its Bitcoin holdings had a market value of about 30 billion. Compared with the two, it had a premium of more than 3 times.

Notably, Citron Research isn't the first company to suggest hedging bullish Bitcoin positions by shorting MSTR.

In March of this year, Kerrisdale Capital Management made a similar appeal, saying it would go long on Bitcoin but short MSTR shares.