Who is Michael Saylor?
Meet Bitcoin’s biggest bull
The crypto space, as I’ve mentioned frequently on this blog, is exploding. Every single day there is some new NFT piece ready to be minted or a new blockchain-based technology that’s ready to 1000x in price. This growth, particularly with Bitcoin and Ethereum, has turned the heads of many “traditional” investors. Michael Saylor is leading the charge.
Michael J. Saylor is the Chairman of the Board and Chief Executive Officer of MicroStrategy. He founded the company in 1989 with his former MIT fraternity brother, Sanju Bansal. The company was founded as a data mining company and grew into business intelligence. They went public in 1998 and are now a multi-billion dollar company with a myriad of products in analytics, big data and machine learning.
The One Where Michael Invests in Bitcoin
Today, however, I don’t really want to talk about MicroStrategy’s products. I want to talk about their investments. As I mention in the subtitle, Michael Saylor is one of Bitcoin’s most bullish investors. In August of 2020, MicroStrategy (headed by Saylor) made the announcement that they would begin shifting their available cash into Bitcoin as an investment. This turned heads on Wall Street and across the space as Bitcoin was (and still sort of is) not a common investment for a company to make, nor something that had seen any real institutional adoption.
At the time, MicroStrategy bought $250 million worth of Bitcoin. Bitcoin was only worth around $11,000 per coin at the time. It is now sitting between $55,000 and $60,000. In the months after that initial investment, MicroStrategy has continued buying the dips and holding, with their most recent investment on March 1st, 2021 of $4.45 billion at a price of around $45,710 per coin. As of March 1st, Microstrategy holds 90,859 BTC. According to their SEC filings, their average purchase price sits nicely at $24,063 per coin. This means that MicroStrategy has more than doubled their $2 billion investment. Not bad, not bad at all.
More Institutional Pile-On
As we’ve seen in the recent months, the cryptocurrency space has gained a slew of institutional adoption. Telsa, for instance, invested $1.5 billion into Bitcoin. This move was at the direction of Elon Musk and was likely inspired by Michael Saylor’s encouragement of other institutions to get involved.
The funny thing about that Tesla investment is that it’s been paying out quite nicely for the car and battery company. In fact, the company has made more money on Bitcoin in 2021 than they have selling cars and batteries!
Many other companies are getting in on the action, too. PayPal is accepting cryptocurrencies for merchant payments, Taco Bell is making NFTs and JP Morgan Chase is backing Bitcoin. This space is exploding, and it’s no wonder than the price is continuing to reflect this growth.
What’s the point?
The point on this one is quite apparent.
More institutional adoption = growth in the crypto space
We are seeing a massive adoption of not only Bitcoin as a store of value, but in other cryptocurrencies, as well. This is massive for the space as a whole, but it’s even more important for the global financial system.
Michael Saylor believes that Bitcoin will flip gold and could one day be worth $100 trillion. This really is not as crazy as it sounds. Investors across the world are realizing that Bitcoin is going to be a greater store of value in the long-term, and that it is a valuable hedge against the standard fiat money system or traditional investments given it’s decntralized nature and scarcity. As the price grows, we will see more companies join in and more investors will begin to move their portfolios into the crypto space.
I’m extremely excited by the crypto space. It’s something that is still, even with this current market and the growth that its seen, in its infancy. Michael Saylor’s attitude towards Bitcoin, and his earlier-than-most understanding of the value that it brings his company (or any company that chooses to add it to its balance sheet) as a hedge against inflation and a place to store value so that it grows over the long-term will pay off significantly off in the years to come.
If you are interested in learning more about Michel Saylor’s strategy relating to Bitcoin, I’d recommend watching any of the countless interviews that are available with a quick search. Additionally, he will be speaking at Texas A&M on April 16th during the May’s Business School’s Bitcoin Conference. I plan on attending as a student during the virtual portion, and I’m eager to hear Saylor continue to prove why he’s got the right idea about Bitcoin.