We don’t know exactly when the BTC was purchased… or how much they paid for it.
Mercado Libre — the eCommerce giant that’s often dubbed “the Amazon of Latin America” — has announced that it has added Bitcoin worth $7.8 million to its balance sheet.
The announcement was subtly included in its results for the first quarter of 2021. We don’t know exactly when the BTC was purchased… or how much they paid for it.
However, this does mean that Mercado Libre now rubs shoulders with a small number of publicly listed companies who have decided to invest in the world’s biggest cryptocurrency.
Tesla made a splash when it disclosed it had purchased $1.5 billion worth of Bitcoin — later selling 10% of this stash and generating a profit of $101 million.
MicroStrategy is by far and away the company with the most BTC on its balance sheet. It has purchased a total of 91,579 BTC since last August, at a total cost of $2.26 billion. At current prices, the firm is sitting on paper profits of $3 billion.
A Change of Heart?
Mercado Libre is a huge company, and it’s lucrative to boot. It’s taken a rather crypto-friendly stance over the years. It’s long allowed customers to make purchases using Bitcoin. Just last week, its real estate platform launched a new section featuring dozens of properties that can be snapped up using cryptocurrencies, too.
However, it’s worth noting that — at least as yet — the tidal wave of publicly listed companies that were meant to be adding Bitcoin to their balance sheets has not materialized.
Rumors that Facebook, Twitter and Alibaba were planning to embrace crypto have all come to nothing so far.
