More Businesses Follow MicroStrategy, Actively Holding Bitcoin

Businesses across a variety of traditional sectors, from real estate to manufacturing, are seeing a remarkable shift in their approach to digital assets, with Bitcoin at the heart.

Data from Hodl15Capital analysthas revealed a big picture of the world's top 70 businesses actively holding Bitcoin, with a diversity of sizes, industries and geographies.

The US is currently leading the trend, with cult names like MicroStrategy — the “king of Bitcoin” in business circles with more than 444,000 BTC.

Next to this are cryptocurrency miners such as Marathon Digital (44,394 BTC) and Riot Platforms (17,429 BTC), and tech giant Tesla with nearly 10,000 BTC.

The involvement of companies from a variety of sectors, from the Coinbase exchange to the payments company Block (formerly Square), shows Bitcoin's growing appeal to US investors.

However, this wave is not just limited to the United States. Canada is emerging as an eco-friendly Bitcoin mining hub, with companies such as Hut 8 (10,096 BTC), Hive Digital (2,713 BTC) and DMG Blockchain (423 BTC) at the forefront of adopting sustainable mining methods.

Japan has seen growing interest from technology and gaming companies, such as Metaplanet (1,761 BTC) and Nexon (1,717 BTC).

Singapore is equally competitive with the presence of leading hardware mining and manufacturing service providers such as BitFufu (1,664 BTC) and Canaan (1,231 BTC).

The trend is spreading globally, involving businesses from Germany, Norway, Hong Kong and many other countries. This suggests that Bitcoin is gradually being recognized as a potential investment asset, beyond the scope of a mere digital currency.

In addition, the shift in perception of Bitcoin as a potential investment asset has also been reinforced by the recent move by Bitwise, a reputable ETF (Exchange Traded Fund) issuer.

Specifically, Bitwise has submitted to the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) a proposal to launch a new ETF called “Bitwise Bitcoin Standard Corporations ETF”.

The peculiarity of this ETF is that it will focus on investing in public companies that have a long-term Bitcoin holding strategy, with a minimum requirement of 1,000 BTC in the treasury.

These companies must also meet strict criteria of market capitalization (minimum $100 million), average daily liquidity (minimum $1 million) and percentage of freely circulating shares (less than 10%).

Bitwise also proposes a unique weighting allocation method, which is based on the market value of the Bitcoins each company holds, rather than the market capitalization of that company. This means that a company with a smaller market capitalization but holds more Bitcoin may have a larger weighting in this ETF.

For example, MicroStrategy with its huge amount of Bitcoin will be more weighted than Tesla, even though Tesla's market capitalization is much larger.

This move by Bitwise brings many important implications. First, it creates a new investment channel for investors who want to access Bitcoin indirectly through the stock market.

Second, Bitwise's focus on companies with long-term Bitcoin holding strategies contributes to market transparency and professionalization, and encourages other businesses to consider Bitcoin as part of their financial strategy.

Ultimately, the SEC's approval of this proposal (if adopted) would be an important step forward in legalizing Bitcoin and bringing it into the mainstream of global financial markets.