Mercado Libre, the largest e-commerce platform in Latin America, has announced that it acquired $7.8 million in Bitcoin in the first quarter of 2021.
It stated:
“As part of our treasury strategy this quarter we purchased $7.8 million in Bitcoin, a digital asset that we are disclosing within our indefinite-lived intangible assets.”
It has been reported that the purchase makes the Argentinean company the first large Latin American company to acquire Bitcoin for its treasury and sees it join an exclusive club of companies such as MicroStrategy and Tesla, which have previously announced to the authorities the holding of BTC within their assets.
However, last week, major Japanese game developer Nexon announced that it had purchased 1,717 BTC for its balance sheet at a cost of around $100 million.
The latest SEC filing confirms that the Argentinean company bought BTC in the first quarter of 2021. It's the first major Latin American company to do so. https://t.co/LbsMJgyiKR — Cointelegraph (@Cointelegraph) May 5, 2021
Mercado Libre’s announcement makes it the 36th publicly listed company to hold Bitcoin according to Bitcoin Treasuries. Mercado Libre trades on Nasdaq as MELI.
The report said that beyond the formal announcement, the relationship of the popular eCommerce portal with Bitcoin is not new.
Thus, Marcos Galperín, the founder and former CEO of Mercado Libre, has already announced publicly on several occasions that he has owned Bitcoin in his personal portfolio since 2013, and has also expressed a variety of bullish opinions regarding the cryptocurrency ecosystem in Latin America, even stating that he saw Bitcoin as a better store of value than gold.
Source: Cointelegraph
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