Good morning! I’ve been reporting on crypto more than usual this month for the same reason that bitcoin’s price is skyrocketing — the asset class is getting more interest across Wall Street and retail investors.

Today’s edition unpacks how MicroStrategy has emerged as the biggest winner of the surge.

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Piling into BTC

There are a few ways investors can gain exposure to bitcoin. Among them:

• Buy bitcoin directly

• Buy bitcoin ETFs

• Buy stock in companies mining bitcoin

• Buy stock in companies buying bitcoin

Michael Saylor’s MicroStrategy falls into that fourth category, and it’s paid its shareholders the most handsomely in 2024 as bitcoin has breached record after record. 

Between November 11 and 17, the software company purchased 51,780 bitcoin for about $4.6 billion, new regulatory filings show.

With its stockpile up to 331,200 tokens worth some $30 billion, the company is the largest institutional owner of bitcoin. 

And investors like what they see. 

The stock gained nearly 13% Monday to push its year-to-date returns above 461%. MicroStrategy shares have actually more than doubled Nvidia’s returns, which some on Wall Street consider the world’s most important stock.

The S&P 500, meanwhile, barely registers on the same chart even though it’s secured an admirable 24% return in its own right. 

Bitcoin itself has returned more than 106% this year.

Demand is ramping up and market-watchers expect regulatory hurdles to fall away with the incoming pro-bitcoin White House. 

Forecasters including Fundstrat’s Tom Lee have predicted the asset could hit $100,000 before the end of the year.

And Saylor, as you might guess, has said he’s planning a $100,000-milestone party for bitcoin, which he predicts will be sometime around New Year’s.

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Elsewhere:

👀 BlackRock’s new bitcoin options ETF is set to launch today. Nasdaq will likely debut the feature with BlackRock during Tuesday’s trading session. The firm’s iShares Bitcoin Trust is the most successful bitcoin ETF of nearly a dozen that have launched this year. (CoinDesk)

📉Nvidia slipped as much as 3.4% Monday. The stock fell ahead of its hotly-anticipated earnings this week as reports emerged of overheating issues with its new Blackwell AI servers. Wall Street will be watching its quarterly results Thursday after the bell. (Yahoo Finance)

🪙 Donald Trump met with Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong. The president-elect and the crypto executive discussed personnel appointments for Trump’s second administration, according to sources familiar with the matter. (WSJ)

Rapid-fire:

• Oil prices jumped after crude production at a key oil field in Norway had been halted (CNBC)

• The DOJ will ask a judge to force Alphabet to sell off Google Chrome (Reuters)

• S&P Global cautioned that strained debt and high borrowing costs might be a sign of a possible bubble in credit (Bloomberg)

• Super Micro stock surged over 15% as it filed a plan with Nasdaq to stay listed on the exchange (Barron’s)

• The benchmark diesel price hasn’t been this low in over three years (FreightWaves)

• European stocks lag behind US equities by a record margin so far this year (FT)

Fed rate cut odds according to Kalshi, the biggest US prediction market:

Last thing:

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