MicroStrategy/YouTube
- Bitcoin evangelist Michael Saylor is doubling down on the cryptocurrency despite its recent plunge.
- Saylor tweeted, "I'm not selling" to his more than 900,000 followers on Wednesday amid bitcoin's fall.
- Bitcoin fell as low as $30,000 per coin on the day, while ethereum dropped to under $2,500.
- Sign up here for our daily newsletter, 10 Things Before the Opening Bell.
Noted crypto evangelist Michael Saylor doubled down on bitcoin on Wednesday amid a collapse in the cryptocurrency market.
Bitcoin fell as low as $30,000 per coin on Wednesday and cryptocurrencies as a whole lost nearly 20% of their total market cap in a single day, according to data from CoinMarketCap.com.
Saylor, the co-founder of MicroStrategy, tweeted to his more than 900,000 followers the simple phrase "I'm not selling" amid the drop. The post quickly received more than 30,000 likes.
Saylor has long been a proponent of the crypto space and even held a virtual conference called Bitcoin for Corporations in February to spur institutional investment.
MicroStrategy, an enterprise analytics and software firm, has become one of the largest institutional holders of bitcoin over the past year as well.
The company currently holds some 92,079 bitcoins acquired for roughly $2.251 billion at an average price of approximately 24,450 per bitcoin, according to Saylor.
MicroStrategy's most recent purchase came a day before bitcoin's historic drop. The company acquired an additional $10 million worth of bitcoin at an average price of $43,663 per coin, according to a Tweet from Saylor.
MicroStrategy stock fell as much as 15% on Wednesday amid the crypto rout, but mounted a recovery later in the day.
Saylor's biggest rivals used bitcoin's fall to take aim at the crypto evangelist. Peter Schiff, a noted gold bull, compared Saylor to Captain Ahab from Herman Melville's Moby-Dick.
Schiff told his nearly 500,000 Twitter follows that Saylor's "obsession with Bitcoin will not only be his death but it will kill everyone onboard MSTR."
"Shareholders must choose between mutiny or jumping ship," Schiff added.
