Tech giant Meitu loses over $43M of its crypto investment in bear market

Meitu was one among many public companies that purchased Bitcoin to hold as a treasury reserve during the peak of the bull run last year and now joins the list of companies that have suffered heavily due to the bear market.

Hong Kong tech giant Meitu made headlines in April last year after it reported nearly $100 million in crypto holdings. However, with the advent of the bear market, the tech firm has lost nearly half of the valuation of its crypto holdings.

According to a local media report, Meitu reported an impairment loss of over 300 million yuan, approximately $43.4 million, on their crypto holdings. An impairment loss is a loss in value of an asset when it falls below the carrying value of the investment.

The financial filing revealed that the impairment loss has more than doubled from the last quarter, something the firm had anticipated earlier. The tech giant has said that its crypto holdings could impact the net loss of the company by the end of the first half of the year.

In a July exchange filing, Meitu reported crypto holdings of about 940 Bitcoin (BTC) and 31,000 Ether (ETH), purchased for $49.5 million and $50.5 million respectively. The net crypto investment of the company was reported at about $100 million, and the firm has lost nearly half of the valuations of its investment by the end of the second quarter of 2022, owing to the current downturn in the crypto market.

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Meitu is not the only company to incur significant losses on its crypto investments. Microstrategy, the flag bearer of public companies investing in Bitcoin, reported an impairment loss of over $900 million on their BTC holdings by the second quarter of 2022.

At the peak of the crypto bull run last year, Michael Saylor-led Microstaretgy popularized the use of BTC as a treasury reserve replacing a portion of the U.S. dollar. The idea gained a lot of traction as BTC was hitting a new all-time high every month, and the likes of Tesla, SpaceX and more than a dozen public companies joined the bandwagon. However, with the advent of the bear market, Bitcoin price fell by over 70% from the top and currently trading at one-third the value of its all-tim high.