Bitcoin, the largest crypto by market capitalization is down roughly 70% from previous All-Time High (ATH) levels. This, however, doesn’t stop some people from remaining incredibly bullish, scooping up as much Bitcoin as they can. That is, while it’s still cheap!
If you’ve done any research on Bitcoin and cryptocurrencies over the past 3 years, you would have likely come across the name, Michael Saylor or MicroStrategy.
Who Is Michael Saylor
Michael Saylor is the co-founder, Executive Chairman and former Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of MicroStrategy. In addition, Saylor is also the chairman of the board of directors of MicroStrategy, a position he has held since co-founding the company. Saylor held the position of CEO for over 30 years before stepping down in 2022 to focus on the company’s Bitcoin acquisition strategy, leaving the CEO role to the company’s president, Phong Le, who is set to manage the overall corporate operations and management of the organization.
In recent years, Saylor has positioned himself as a Bitcoin maximalist, purchasing over 100,000 Bitcoin through business intelligence company, MicroStrategy. This strategy introduced by Saylor involves using the cryptocurrency as a hedge against inflation. Saylor, on various occasions has referred to Bitcoin as digital gold, claiming that Bitcoin is 100x better that physical gold. Saylor predicts that many business leaders will soon adopt a similar strategy to protect their cash reserves.
Who Is MicroStrategy
MicroStrategy (NASDAQ:MSTR), a US-based publicly traded company that provides business intelligence (BI), mobile software and cloud-based services (MicroStrategy cloud). The company was founded in 1989 by Michael J. Saylor, Sanju Bansal, and Thomas Spahr and currently has over 2,000 employees. Among other things, the firm develops software to analyze big data, enabling businesses to make informed business decisions.
MicroStrategy Workstation is one of the firm’s most popular tools that searches through and analyzes real time data from a number of sources, including data warehouses, Excel files, and other sources, using business intelligence and predictive analytics.
MicroStrategy’s BI platform helps enterprises build and deploy cloud-based, hyper intelligent apps. The BI company serves various industries including the retail, finance, telecommunications, insurance, and healthcare industries.
The BI firm is currently the largest corporate holder of Bitcoin in the world. The company has accumulated a significant amount of BTC, showing no signs of slowing down anytime soon.
When Did MicroStrategy First Buy Bitcoin?
MicroStrategy made their first Bitcoin purchase in August 2020. The company announced via a press release that it had purchased 21,454 Bitcoin for $250 million.
MicroStrategy claimed that various factors played a role in their decision to invest in Bitcoin. These included, the economic and public health crisis brought on by the COVID-19 Pandemic, unprecedented government financial stimulus measures, and including quantitative easing adopted around the world, along with and global political and economic uncertainty.
The company believed that these reasons, among others, may have a large depreciating effect on the long-term value of fiat currencies and other traditional assets like gold and silver.
How Much Bitcoin Does MicroStrategy Own?
Within a period of a little over 2 years, MicroStrategy has successfully accumulated approximately 130,000 Bitcoin. This means that the company owns over 0.6% of the total supply of Bitcoin.
MicroStrategy Bitcoin holdings were purchased for a whopping $4 billion, or an average purchase price of just over $30,000. These figures imply that the firm is currently sitting on a loss of around 30%.
How Much Bitcoin Does Michael Saylor Personally Own?
Being one of the most vocal supporters of Bitcoin, you would think Saylor must hold a considerable amount of Bitcoin.
While it’s unclear how much Bitcoin Saylor owns in 2022, Saylor revealed in 2020 that he held over 17,000 BTC at an average purchase price of $9,882.
“Some have asked how much #BTC I own. I personally #hodl 17,732 BTC which I bought at $9,882 each on average. I informed MicroStrategy of these holdings before the company decided to buy #bitcoin for itself,” said a Tweet by Saylor.
At present value, Saylors Bitcoin holdings are worth over $350 million.
Bitcoin Price Vs MicroStrategy Share Price
Many industry experts argue that MicroStrategy shares may as well be Bitcoin, based on how closely they correlate with each other. It’s no surprise that MicroStrategy’s share price closely correlates with Bitcoin, considering how much Bitcoin the company owns.
MicroStrategy’s stock price has been notably volatile since it started purchasing Bitcoin. During the same period Bitcoin reached All-Time High (ATH) levels of $69,000, MSTR also reached ATHs of roughly $1,300 per share. Much like BTC, MSTR is currently down roughly 80% from its ATH.
Why Does MicroStrategy Keep Buying Bitcoin?
The strategy behind the company’s Bitcoin purchases is quite simple. The company intends to use their Bitcoin purchases as a hedge against inflation. While Saylor is the main driver for the company’s BTC accumulation, various other senior executives are clearly on board with the strategy.
Saylor has stated that he thinks the best course of action for the company is to focus on what it does best: offer business intelligence software, make money off of it, and store value. Storing value doesn’t necessarily mean via fiat currency, this is where the company’s Bitcoin purchases come in.
In an interview in 2020, CNBC posed the question to Saylor: “Are you a software company or a Bitcoin hedge fund?”
Saylor responded:
“We do have a software company generating cash, but if we simply swept the cash into fiat currency and allowed it to debase at 15 percent per year, we’d be losing as much on the balance sheet as we generated from the P&L, so that didn’t make sense,” he responded. “[Bitcoin] looks like it’s emerging as the primary treasury reserve asset for people that are looking for some way to avoid the great monetary inflation.”
Is MicroStrategy Buying More Bitcoin?
With billions of dollars allocated to the asset, MicroStrategy has made it clear that it is among the most prominent investors of Bitcoin. Both MicroStrategy and Michael Saylor have flaunted Bitcoin as an asset that will play a role in the future of the global economy.
The company clearly hasn’t changed its stance on Bitcoin as the company has recently filed to sell up to $500 million worth of stock to load up their bags with more Bitcoin. Will they ever stop? Who knows, they seem to have been bitten by the BTC bug.
When Will MicroStrategy Sell Their Bitcoin?
Asking a Bitcoin maxi when they’re going to sell their holdings is like asking a trader to never look at a chart again. It’s probably not possible to answer this question, but what we can do is provide an educated guess based on the data we have.
If we take a look at Saylors Bitcoin price predictions:
In contrast to the current crypto winter and the countless detractors who predict BTC’s price will fall to zero, one of bitcoin’s biggest proponents, Michael Saylor, believes the price of BTC will rise to $1,000,000.
During a recent interview with Yahoo Finance, Saylor said:
“There’s no price target. I expect we’ll be buying bitcoin at the local top forever. And I expect Bitcoin is going to go into the millions. So we’re very patient. We think it’s the future of money.”
We know Saylor is clearly mega bullish, so it’s unlikely he’ll sell any of his holdings before his price predictions come true. But who’s to know if he’ll ever really sell.
When Will The Bitcoin Price Start To Rise Again?
This is a question on the tip of everyone’s tongues. We, like Saylor, are also incredibly bullish on Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies. We, however, understand that bear markets are a normal part of investment cycles. Cryptocurrencies have made incredible progress in terms of adoption and utility over the past few years and we can only expect further growth over the next decade.
While it’s difficult to predict market movements, we remain bullish on Bitcoin and cryptocurrencies in general. We’re hoping to see the bear market come to an end relatively soon, but given how volatile the crypto market can be, no one can ever really be sure when this will happen. This is why many investors believe in buying the dip, and that’s exactly what we’re doing.
About RR² Capital
RR² Capital is a Lisbon-based Venture Capital (VC) firm empowering the ‘new internet’. RR² specializes in disruptive technology spaces such as decentralized ledger technology, Artificial Intelligence (AI), machine learning and digital assets. They believe that many traditional businesses and organizations will implement these technologies, adding immense value to the core of those businesses.
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