Latin American e-commerce giant MercadoLibre discloses treasury bitcoin buy

MercadoLibre, the Latin American e-commerce and fintech company, said in a Wednesday regulatory filing that it now holds bitcoin on its balance sheet.

Per a press statement announcing its first-quarter results for 2021, the firm said that "[a]s 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."

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The exact timing of the purchase is unclear, though the financial results cover the first quarter ending March 31, 2021.

By doing so, the firm becomes the latest publicly-traded company to add bitcoin to its balance sheet. Others include automaker Tesla and payments firm Square.

MercadoLibre, which trades on Nasdaq under the ticker MEDI, has a market capitalization of more than $76 billion.