Recently, Michael J. Saylor, CEO of Nasdaq-listed business intelligence software company MicroStrategy Inc. talked about Bitcoin with Charles Payne, the host of Fox Business Network (FBN) show “Making Money With Charles Payne“.
This past summer, MicroStrategy became the first Nasdaq-listed company to make a major investment in Bitcoin when it announced on August 11 that it had “purchased 21,454 bitcoins at an aggregate purchase price of $250 million” to use as a “primary treasury reserve asset.”
Saylor said at the time:
“Our decision to invest in Bitcoin at this time was driven in part by a confluence of macro factors affecting the economic and business landscape that we believe is creating long-term risks for our corporate treasury program ― risks that should be addressed proactively.
“Those macro factors include, among other things, the economic and public health crisis precipitated by COVID-19, unprecedented government financial stimulus measures including quantitative easing adopted around the world, and global political and economic uncertainty.
“We believe that, together, these and other factors may well have a significant depreciating effect on the long-term real value of fiat currencies and many other conventional asset types, including many of the assets traditionally held as part of corporate treasury operations.”
Since then, MicroStrategy has continued buying Bitcoin. Saylor’s most recent update was on December 21:
Saylor’s interview with Payne was last Tuesday (December 22), at a time when Bitcoin was trading around $23,423.
Payne started the interview by why the MicroStrategy CEO was such a big believer in Bitcoin.
Saylor replied:
“There’s two things that I want to say to the world.
“First of all, Bitcoin itself is an institutional-grade safe haven asset, and it’s engineered to be superior to gold in all respects that makes it the ideal store of value solution to every individual, institution, corporation on earth.
“The second thing is Bitcoin is the world’s first digital monetary network. It’s like Facebook or Google for money. It’s the first network in the history of the world where you can collect and channel and store all the money on the world for a hundred years and not lose any of it. That makes it a hundred times bigger than big tech.
“Everybody needs to plug into it. Every individual, every corporation, every government’s got a problem which is how do they deal with a collapsing currency and what’s their store of value. Bitcoin’s the solution.“
By the end of the interview, the Fox Business host was so convinced by Saylor’s investment case for Bitcoin that he said he was going to immediately open a Coinbase account:
“We really appreciate it. Loved the way you laid it out. I want to open my Coinbase account right after the brand after this show.”
At the time of Saylor’s interview on Fox Business, MicroStrategy’s 70,470 bitcoins — which cost $1.125 billion to purchase — were worth roughly $1.65 billion. Currently (as of 18:55 UTC on December 27), according to data from Trading View, Bitcoin is trading around $26,924 on Coinbase, which mans that MicroStrategy’s BTC holdings are worth $1.90 billion. In other words, in just the past few months, MicroStrategy has made an unrealized gain of $775 million on its Bitcoin investment.
Featured Image by “petre_barlea” via Pixabay.com
The views and opinions expressed by the author are for informational purposes only and do not constitute financial, investment, or other advice.
