As of July 31st, the software firm held 152,800 bitcoins, worth nearly $4.5 billion

MicroStrategy founder Michael Saylor said the firm may be looking to cash in shares to add to the company’s already massive collection of bitcoin.

The firm has used proceeds from stock and bond sales to purchase more bitcoin in the past, and a Tuesday federal filing shows that MicroStrategy could sell $750 million of class A common stock, to be used for either purchasing more bitcoin or other general corporate purposes.

Our aim is to collect as much Bitcoin as we can on behalf of our shareholders, Saylor told Bloomberg TV on Wednesday.

As of July 31st, the software firm held 152,800 bitcoins, worth nearly $4.5 billion. That’s after Saylor had added to the company’s holdings of the token that month, adding 12,333 bitcoins.

So far this year, the biggest crypto currency in terms of market value has climbed 75 per cent. Its impressive performance helped MicroStrategy post its first profitable quarter in two years. MicroStrategy stock, in the meantime, has jumped 189.45 per cent during the same period.

We have pursued a strategy of levered bitcoin investments. So we use cheap capital — our average cost of capital is like 1.6 per cent, or something in that range —  and the combination of leverage, and then offering our shareholders a yield, Saylor added.

We do not charge them a fee to manage this bitcoin, we actually aim to write a yield; that has permitted us to actually generate 254 per cent performance during the same time the bitcoin was up 145 per cent (since last August).

Saylor is a long-time bitcoin bull. In June, he said he expects bitcoin’s market dominance to only rise, stating that the ongoing regulatory clampdown would remove a number of competing crypto currencies.

As of Thursday morning, bitcoin was trading near $29,162.