Crypto mining stocks surge with Bitfarms, HIVE, and IREN leading gains

Markets are walking on green street on Monday’s US morning market sessions, as crypto-mining equities extend their gains and Tesla shares jump following Elon Musk’s latest stock purchase. 

Shares of crypto mining companies were among the strongest performers this morning. Bitfarms Ltd. climbed to $3.10, up 10.71% with a $0.30 gain as of 8:00 AM Eastern Time. The company is one of the several publicly listed miners benefiting from Bitcoin’s recent price bumps, with the king coin trading at around $114,800 at the time of this publication.

HIVE Digital Technologies Ltd. also posted double-digit gains, now priced at $3.81, up 12.72% after rising $0.43. The stock hit $3.98 in the early US morning hours, adding another 4.46% or $0.17. IREN Ltd also inched higher at $33.96 after a $1.11 increase, or 3.38%. 

Tesla stock surges on Musk’s purchase

According to a filing with the US Securities and Exchange Commission, Elon Musk purchased 2,568,700 shares of common stock on September 12 at an average price of $389.281 per share, and the total transaction was valued at more than $1 billion.

Tesla Inc. shares jumped 6% upwards from Friday’s close to $420, adding to a 7% gain last week that has extended momentum for the electric carmaker. Before markets opened, Tesla was at $395.94, $27.13 more than its value within the day. 

Data from Verity shows Musk’s previous stock purchases were far smaller. His last known acquisition was on February 14, 2020, when he bought around 200,000 shares for approximately $10 million. 

Tesla is in preparation for a high-profile shareholder vote in November. Earlier this month, the company disclosed plans to seek approval for a new compensation package for Musk that could be worth as much as $975 billion for meeting profits and growth targets.

The proposals would require Musk to help the company achieve an $8.5 trillion market value. By comparison, Tesla’s market capitalization was around $1.3 trillion at the close of trading on Friday. 

Many investors are optimistic about Tesla’s long-term prospects if Elon Musk can help steer the company deeper into autonomous driving, AI, and robotics. The chief executive is asking shareholders to back a proposal for Tesla to invest in his other company, Grok developer xAI. Before his recent stock purchases, Musk held about 13% of Tesla’s outstanding shares.

Bitcoin treasuries expand holdings

Alongside equity market moves, companies with significant Bitcoin holdings also made more acquisitions that have been announced today. Business intelligence firm Strategy, the company formerly known as MicroStrategy, disclosed that it purchased an additional 525 bitcoins between September 8 and September 14. The total cost was $60.2 million, with an average price of $114,562 per bitcoin.

In a filing with the SEC, Strategy said it now holds 638,985 bitcoins, worth approximately $73.4 billion at current prices. The company’s average purchase price across its total holdings is $73,913 per bitcoin, amounting to a total cost of $47.2 billion, including fees and expenses.

Strategy Inc Class A stock MSTR was priced at $330 pre-market, dropping by 0.34% from its Friday close. 

Co-founder and executive chairman Michael Saylor said the company’s holdings is more than 3% of Bitcoin’s capped supply of 21 million tokens. Strategy has paper gains of about $26 billion from its BTC investments, calculated using the coin’s current price.

According to BitcoinTreasury.Net, publicly traded healthcare firm Prenetics purchased 40.6 bitcoins, bringing its total holdings to 228. Prenetics also announced a plan to accumulate one bitcoin daily.

Not all firms with significant Bitcoin exposure saw positive market performance. KindyMD, a bitcoin treasury company holding 5,765 bitcoins, tanked 50% before markets opened, extending losses that have left the company 96% below its all-time high.

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