(Reuters) – MicroStrategy Inc said on Tuesday it would raise $600 million through a sale of convertible notes and use the proceeds to buy bitcoins, adding to the U.S. company’s steadily growing investment in the cryptocurrency.
Shares of MicroStrategy, the world’s largest publicly traded business intelligence company, rose nearly 4% in premarket trade on the news, which also added fuel to a surge for bitcoin past $50,000.
The company, whose Chief Executive Officer Michael Saylor has become one of Bitcoin’s most visible proponents, spent last year steadily amassing more of the currency as it surged in value.
Elon Musk’s Tesla Inc provoked a new round of hype around the currency earlier this month by revealing it had purchased $1.5 billion of bitcoin, adding to a handful of U.S. companies holding it on their balance sheets.
MicroStrategy also sold notes worth $650 million in December to buy bitcoin.
(Reporting by Noor Zainab Hussain in Bengaluru; Editing by Bernard Orr and Patrick Graham)
