Cathie Wood and Elon Musk. The current bull market in stocks can be seen as an homage to these two names. Wood is the hottest portfolio manager in the world, with her ARK Investment Management LLC leading the universe over the past year. The “Toast of Wall Street”.
Elon Musk is the world’s richest man and a guy who says he won’t sell his Tesla shares because he needs to ramp their worth high enough to self-fund human colonization of other planets.
So, big thinkers. And two of the most successful future prognosticators in the world today, as a matter of objective data-driven analysis. She has been the best at picking disruptive star investments. He has been the best at predicting the future course of industry as an entrepreneur and executive, at PayPal, Tesla, and SpaceX.
Now, both of them are out very publicly saying the place to be is Bitcoin – Wood out for the first time on it, Musk doubling down once again.
The shakeout may be over. Hence, we take a look at a few of the most interesting ways to play it in the stock market, including: Bit Digital Inc (NASDAQ:BTBT), MicroStrategy Incorporated (NASDAQ:MSTR), ISW Holdings Ord Shs (OTCMKTS:ISWH), and Overstock.com Inc (NASDAQ:OSTK).
Bit Digital Inc (NASDAQ:BTBT) trumpets itself as the Bitcoin company dedicated to integrating resources globally for bitcoin and bitcoin mining.
It commenced bitcoin mining in early 2020 and currently operates 2,253.5 PH/S of Bitcoin Hash Rate across the entire Bitcoin network, making it one of the largest bitcoin mining companies listed on NASDAQ.
Bit Digital Inc (NASDAQ:BTBT) most recently announced a group of hosting partnerships that will expand its operations across North America. Compute North and Link Global Technologies (CNSX: LNK) are the hosting companies that are partnering with Bit Digital. This strategic move will grant Bit Digital the ability to deploy greater Bitcoin mining power to North America.
According to the release, prior to the new agreement, Bit Digital hosted 2,100 miners with Compute North. With the updated partnership, the Company will move an additional 3,000 Bitmain S17+ miners with a hashrate of 73 THs per miner during Q2-2021. This expansion is expected to bring the total hash power hosted in the U.S. with Compute North to approximately 326 PHs within Q2.
In total, over the past five days, shares of the stock have dropped by roughly -38% on above average trading volume. All in all, not a particularly friendly tape, but one that may ultimately present some new opportunities. However, the stock is up by well over 200% since December. So… there’s that.
Bit Digital Inc (NASDAQ:BTBT) recently announced revenues from bitcoin mining business was $7.91 million for the quarter ended in December 2020. In that same report, the company noted that the number of bitcoins earned from bitcoin mining business was 739.51. The net loss from discontinued operations was $0.10 million on net income of $54 and earnings per share of $0.00, compared with the net loss of $3.0 million and loss per share of $0.20 for the same period last year.
MicroStrategy Incorporated (NASDAQ:MSTR) bills itself as the largest independent publicly-traded business intelligence company, with the leading enterprise analytics platform. Crypto investors know it as Michael Saylor’s company, with Saylor being one of the most fervent bitcoin bulls on the planet, having committed huge portions of the company’s free capital to the digital currency over the past year.
MicroStrategy provides modern analytics on an open, comprehensive enterprise platform used by many of the world’s most admired brands in the Fortune Global 500. Optimized for cloud and on-premises deployments, the platform features HyperIntelligence, a breakthrough technology that overlays actionable enterprise data on popular business applications to help users make smarter, faster decisions.
MicroStrategy Incorporated (NASDAQ:MSTR) most recently announced that it had purchased an additional approximately 19,452 bitcoins for approximately $1.026 billion in cash at an average price of approximately $52,765 per bitcoin, inclusive of fees and expenses. According to the release, as of February 24, 2021, the Company holds an aggregate of approximately 90,531 bitcoins, which were acquired at an aggregate purchase price of approximately $2.171 billion and an average purchase price of approximately $23,985 per bitcoin, inclusive of fees and expenses.
“The Company remains focused on our two corporate strategies of growing our enterprise analytics software business and acquiring and holding bitcoin,” said Michael J. Saylor, CEO, MicroStrategy Incorporated. “The company now holds over 90,000 bitcoins, reaffirming our belief that bitcoin, as the world’s most widely-adopted cryptocurrency, can serve as a dependable store of value. We will continue to pursue our strategy of acquiring bitcoin with excess cash and we may from time to time, subject to market conditions, issue debt or equity securities in capital raising transactions with the objective of using the proceeds to purchase additional bitcoin.”
While this is a clear factor, it has been incorporated into a trading tape characterized by a pretty dominant offer, which hasn’t been the type of action MSTR shareholders really want to see. In total, over the past five days, shares of the stock have dropped by roughly -13% on above average trading volume. All in all, not a particularly friendly tape, but one that may ultimately present some new opportunities.
MicroStrategy Incorporated (NASDAQ:MSTR) pulled in sales of $131.3M in its last reported quarterly financials, representing top line growth of -1.7%. In addition, the company is battling some balance sheet hurdles, with cash levels struggling to keep up with current liabilities ($60.8M against $285.6M, respectively).
ISW Holdings Ord Shs (OTCMKTS:ISWH) has commercial activity now as a miner and a mining equipment producer in the crypto space, with its Proceso Pod5 Datacenter mining solution.
Designed in partnership with Bit5ive, and geared primarily for the cryptocurrency mining industry, the Pod5 Datacenter offers next-generation dynamic self-management functionality, plug-and-play operation, virtually non-existent maintenance needs, and an industry best-in-class 1.06 Power Usage Effectiveness score.
ISW Holdings Inc (OTCMKTS:ISWH) shares have been soaring higher in recent action as it nails down a strong position in the cryptocurrency mining and mining equipment space. The big news from the company in recent weeks is that, not only has it switched on its initial mining pod in Pennsylvania, but it has also initiated the process to add up to three more Pod5 units, which would be something akin to about another 800-1000 mining rigs latched into a high-PUE efficiency state-of-the-art bitcoin mining module.
According to information from the company, that expansion involves assembling, equipping, and powering up additional Pod5 units, each of which houses 300 miners and is capable of driving roughly $3 million in annualized revenues at current cryptocurrency market pricing.
Management is targeting the acquisition of 900 new miners capable of equipping three (3) new Pod5 units, which would lead to an additional $8.64 million in annualized revenues from mining activities at current market prices.
“We have managed to stick to the basic framework of our initial plan and timeline despite some inevitable delays related to the pandemic and supply chain issues as well as availability of mining machines,” commented Alonzo Pierce, President and Chairman of ISW Holdings. “We have been able to execute and stay on our path in the larger strategic vision we put in place for our cryptocurrency segment. In line with that vision, we are now ready to invest, expand, and grow, and to start directly capitalizing on the strong investments we made starting in May of last year. This next expansion in firepower is just the start.”
ISW Holdings Ord Shs (OTCMKTS:ISWH) has demonstrated strong growth in its telehealth segment, with seven consecutive quarters of sharp sequential growth. Its most recent quarter put the company on an annual run-rate to pull in more than $1.5 million in revenues not counting what appears to be significant growth brewing in its crypto mining and mining equipment segment over coming months as it continues to scale up operations.
Overstock.com Inc (NASDAQ:OSTK) bills itself as a an online retailer and technology company based in Salt Lake City, Utah. The stock has become a mainstay among crypto traders given its partnerships and investments in the space.
In addition, it’s also-ran e-commerce website sells a broad range of new products at low prices, including furniture, décor, rugs, bedding, home improvement, jewelry, and more. The online shopping site, which is visited by nearly 40 million customers a month, also features a marketplace providing customers access to millions of products from third-party sellers.
Overstock.com Inc (NASDAQ:OSTK) recently announced, via its tzero segment, a technology integration with Tokensoft subsidiary, Tokensoft Transfer Agent, an SEC-registered transfer agent, to support issuers using Tokensoft’s digitization and transfer agent services.
Following the integration, Tokensoft’s digital security technology will be interoperable with tZERO’s secondary trading technology, allowing securities of issuers utilizing Tokensoft’s services to seamlessly onboard and trade on the tZERO ATS, an alternative trading system (ATS) that is operated by tZERO ATS, a FINRA member broker-dealer, subject to tZERO ATS’s trading terms and due diligence.
Even in light of this news, OSTK has had a rough past week of trading action, with shares sinking something like -16% in that time. That said, chart support is nearby and we may be in the process of constructing a nice setup for some movement back the other way. Shares of the stock have powered higher over the past month, rallying roughly 31% in that time on strong overall action. Overstock.com Inc (NASDAQ:OSTK) generated sales of $731.7M, according to information released in the company’s most recent quarterly financial report. That adds up to a sequential quarter-over-quarter growth rate of -6.5% on the top line. In addition, the company has a strong balance sheet, with cash levels far exceeding current liabilities ($533.6M against $353.9M).
