MicroStrategy Inc. said Monday it purchased about 20,356 bitcoins between Feb. 18 and Feb. 23 using the roughly $1.9 billion raised through a zero-coupon convertible bond offering last week.

David Sacks, appointed by President Donald Trump as the administration's "crypto czar," said the federal government may have lost more than $16 billion by selling off its bitcoins too early.

The process of minting new bitcoins is in some ways similar to the process of extracting precious metals from the earth. For this reason, it has come to be known as 'bitcoin mining.' As stated in the ...