In this post I am linking a series of articles from the last month to paint a picture.
1.) MicroStrategy, a Nasdaq listed publicly traded company, had about $550M in cash on its balance sheet, and put $425M of it into Bitcoin. The company decided to use Bitcoin as its primary reserve asset going forward. Michael Saylor, the CEO who spearheaded this move, described the company’s cash as like a melting ice cube, losing money to inflation. He also noted that an ever increasing portion of the company’s operating profits of ~$30M per year were going to replacing the purchasing power of its cash lost to inflation.
A page on the MicroStrategy website with a load of content about their move into Bitcoin:
https://www.microstrategy.com/en/bitcoin
2.) On the heels of the MicroStrategy news, several other companies announced they also hold a portion of their balance sheets in Bitcoin too. You can track the companies that have disclosed their holdings at https://bitcointreasuries.org/. There are several other private companies that have announced a portion of their treasury allocated to Bitcoin, but haven’t disclosed the figures.
Most notably Square, Inc, a NYSE listed Fortune 500 company, announced that it would be keeping 1% of its cash in Bitcoin, which was about $50M at that moment. Notably they also stated they may increase the percentage in the future. Not a huge surprise as Square has been advocates of Bitcoin, allowing users to buy bitcoin via its hugely popular CashApp, and supporting several open-source Bitcoin projects and developers via a grant program.
Interestingly, Square released a whitepaper detailing how they purchased, secured, insured, and are accounting for their Bitcoin holdings, which provides a how-to for other companies to do the same:
https://images.ctfassets.net/2d5q1td6cyxq/5sXNrlEh2mEnTvvhgtYOm2/737bcfdc15e2a1c3cbd9b9451710ce54/Square_Inc._Bitcoin_Investment_Whitepaper.pdf
3.) The online payments behemoth PayPal added Bitcoin to their platform. Their 350M users are now able to buy and sell Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies with their PayPal accounts. The upper-bound estimate of current Bitcoin users is approximately 187M, so this move has the ability to nearly triple the amount of Bitcoin owners. Additionally, the 26M merchants that use PayPal for payment processing will be able to accept Bitcoin as payment going forward.
Currently, PayPal does not allow for withdrawals of Bitcoin out of their platform, which is against the ethos of Bitcoin (self-sovereignty, ‘not your keys, not your coins’, etc). However, I’m fairly confident they will introduce full Bitcoin wallet capabilities over time. I’m certain the Bitcoin mob will keep the pressure on their asses to do so. Until then I wouldn’t recommend using PayPal to buy bitcoin as you can’t take possession of it. All the same, this is a big signal of Bitcoin’s legitimacy, staying power, and the need for companies to integrate it to stay competitive.
Do you see a trend here? We are accelerating towards a Bitcoin Standard. It is inevitable. Humans acting for for their own rational self-interest always converge on the most salable form of money, and that is, and will continue to be, Bitcoin.
I have a few more significant stories from the past month that I will share in another post to further elucidate this accelerating trend. Until then, #BuyBitcoin.