Institutional Bitcoin Investors Briefly Lose $13 Billion in Biggest-ever Market Dip

Companies holding significant amounts of the currency today lost billions in a flash. But the coin has bounced back and their investments are once again looking rosy.

By Mathew Di Salvo

In brief

• Bitcoin today had its biggest single-day fall in value.
• This means that billions were temporarily lost by companies invested in the asset.
• Bitcoin is still down but big investors are still up.

Over $13.6 billion worth of Bitcoin holdings disappeared from companies’ books today after a shocking market dip. 

Bitcoin earlier dropped from its near-record high of $58,000 to $47,700 in just 24 hours—the largest single-day fall in value for the cryptocurrency. This means the cumulative value of the 1.3 million Bitcoin held by 41 companies and institutional investors per data tracked by Bitcoin Treasuries temporarily went from $76.7 billion to $63.1 billion—a $13.6 billion loss. 

But Bitcoin has done what it always does, it seems, and bounced back: At the time of writing, the currency is down just 6.9% in the past 24 hours, meaning that more than half of those losses have since been recovered. 

That’s still a sizable drop for some companies, though. Business intelligence firm MicroStrategy, which holds the most Bitcoin of any public company, this month sold off $1 billion-worth of debt to buy Bitcoin. But the 71,079 Bitcoin it owns today is worth $3.8 billion. Yesterday it was worth $4.1 billion—a decline of over $336 million.

 Car company Tesla, which also made a monster investment this month—of $1.5 billion—is down $208 million at the time of writing from where it was yesterday.

Other investors took a hit too. The Grayscale Bitcoin Trust, which holds 649,130 Bitcoin is down $2.8 billion. Smaller investment firm Ruffer Investment Company unwillingly shaved $195 million off its holdings.

 But it’s worth noting a lot of the big dogs on the list are still doing well in terms of when they bought Bitcoin, given that the currency is still up 57% in the past month. As previously reported by Decrypt, Tesla has made crazy profits on its investment—more than with its 2020 car sales. 

MicroStrategy can’t be too worried about the market dip, either. Since the company first bet on Bitcoin by investing last August, the currency is up 352%.