Latin ecommerce that is American MercadoLibre disclosed a $7.8 million bitcoin (BTC, +4.28%) purchase on Wednesday, making it the latest publicly traded company to park bitcoin on its balance sheet.
The business that is argentina-based in an earnings report the purchase happened in the last quarter and ended up being element of its treasury strategy. MercadoLibre trades on Nasdaq as MELI.
Though not even close to the bitcoin that is lofty of MicroStrategy (roughly $2.2 billion) or Tesla ($1.5 billion), the investment by MercadoLibre represents a strong step toward mainstreaming bitcoin as being a payment choice.
The e-commerce player that is largest in Latin America, MercadoLibre unveiled a bitcoin-only real-estate platform just last week. Its MercadoPago repayments platform integrated bitcoin in 2015.