“People joke that Bitcoin isn’t really a trading strategy, it’s an exit strategy” says Microstrategy CEO Michael Saylor.
The CEO of business intelligence firm Microstrategy Michael Saylor has vehemently defended the firm’s optimistic, long-term Bitcoin (BTC) position, citing the cryptocurrency’s unique ability to expand into “the future of the property.”
Saylor stated in an interview with Bloomberg TV that Microstrategy’s large bet on Bitcoin, which it has financed with debt, is the “highest upside, lowest risk strategy” the company can follow.
“Some people think diversification means buying other types of cryptocurrencies or other kinds of equities,” he explained.
“We think that by holding Bitcoin, we’re diversified. Because we can see Bitcoin on the balance sheets of cities, states, governments, companies, small [and] big investors. Ultimately Bitcoin is going to be the core to tech innovation at Apple, Amazon and Facebook, so we want to be holding the Bitcoin.”
In response to his interviewer’s question on how the interests of massive, centralised behemoths such as Twitter and Facebook can coexist with a decentralised network, Saylor said that Bitcoin held the key to resolving their endemic cybersecurity and spam problems.
Integration with Bitcoin – and, more especially, the Lightning Network, which enables micropayments – may address these concerns by introducing an ecosystem that can vouch for creditworthiness and trust:
“If you want to improve the user experience [on these tech platforms], then you need to have skin on the game. And Bitcoin provides skin in the name for all of the interactors in the cyber environment. Dorsey understands this. The killer app is cybersecurity integrated into an international trust network.”
In Saylor’s estimation of Bitcoin’s long-term potential, a balance appears to exist between the ability of the cryptocurrency to support new web-based functions and the ability of the cryptocurrency to evolve into the property’s future.
This is the reason why Microstrategy has taken a long position in Bitcoin – for which it has controversially borrowed $2.2 billion at a blended interest rate of approximately 1.5 percent – because the firm predicts that Bitcoin, as an open property network, would be utilised by “billions of users.”
Saylor’s statements suggested that his perspective is long in the true maximalist sense, despite the fact that the corporation currently uses a ten-year approach:
“People joke that Bitcoin isn’t really a trading strategy, it’s an exit strategy. What we want to hold is a form of non-sovereign store of value forever […] I took a survey: the average Twitter user thinks it’s going to last 3500 years. Nobody’s in a hurry with Bitcoin. We’re thinking that it’s the future of property.”
However, Saylor pointed out that the coin is also satisfying the demands of retail traders in the meantime, pointing out the fact that cryptocurrencies, in general, provide users of apps such as Robinhood with the unique opportunity to trade around the clock, 365 days a year, 24/7.
His opinion is that Robinhood should “go all out” and increase its support for the new asset class, which “makes total sense.” Although Bitcoin is still the “risk-off king of all cryptos,” according to Saylor, it is also the “heavyweight champion of all digital assets.”
A recent survey conducted by Crypto.com found that the number of cryptocurrency users globally has more than doubled from 100 million in January this year to 221 million this month. In spite of the fact that Bitcoin continues to attract the vast majority of users, smaller altcoins have been quietly eating away at both the market share of the veteran coin and the industry’s second-most popular cryptocurrency, Ether (ETH).
