Latin American e-commerce giant MercadoLibre disclosed a $7.8 million bitcoin purchase on Wednesday, making it the latest publicly traded company to park bitcoin on its balance sheet.
The Argentina-based company said in an earnings report the purchase happened in the last quarter and was part of its treasury strategy. MercadoLibre trades on Nasdaq as MELI.
Though far from the lofty bitcoin acquisitions of MicroStrategy (roughly $2.2 billion) or Tesla ($1.5 billion), the investment by MercadoLibre represents a strong step toward mainstreaming bitcoin as a payment option.
The largest e-commerce player in Latin America, MercadoLibre unveiled a bitcoin-only real estate platform just last week. Its MercadoPago payments platform integrated bitcoin in 2015.