Michael Saylor Not Interested in Selling: ‘Bitcoin Is the Exit Strategy'

MicroStrategy is up billions on its bitcoin bet, but Executive Chairman Michael Saylor told Bloomberg TV there’s no reason to sell the cryptocurrency.

AccessTimeIconFeb 20, 2024 at 9:30 p.m. UTC
Updated Mar 8, 2024 at 9:50 p.m. UTC
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  • Bitcoin maximalist Michael Saylor is not selling any of his company's bitcoin anytime soon.
  • "There's no reason to sell the winner and buy the losers," he said in an interview with Bloomberg TV on Tuesday.
  • Bitcoin competes with far larger asset classes like gold, real estate and the S&P, but it's the superior product, argued Saylor.
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  • Michael Saylor doesn’t plan to sell any of MicroStrategy' (MSTR)s bitcoin (BTC) anytime soon, or potentially ever, he said in an interview with Bloomberg TV on Tuesday.

    "The spot ETFs have opened up a gateway for institutional capital to flow into the bitcoin ecosystem," said Saylor. "[The ETFs] are facilitating the digital transformation of capital, and every day hundreds of millions of dollars of capital is flowing from the traditional analog ecosystem into the digital economy."

    Saylor's MicroStrategy held 190,000 bitcoins at the end of January which it bought for an average of $31,224 per coin. With bitcoin now trading at roughly $52,000, the company’s holdings are worth about $10 billion, with $4 billion of that profit.

    Many investors might be considering an exit at this point, but not Saylor.

    “Bitcoin," he told Bloomberg, "is the exit strategy.”.

    Bitcoin’s value, currently just over a trillion dollars, is competing with asset classes such as gold, real estate or even the S&P index – all of which have market capitalizations many multiples higher than bitcoin, said Saylor. And bitcoin, argued Saylor, is superior to all of them.

    “We believe capital is going to keep flowing from those asset classes into bitcoin because bitcoin is technically superior to those asset classes and that being the case, there’s just no reason to sell the winner and to buy the losers,” he said.

    MicroStrategy first started purchasing bitcoin in August 2020 and has since consistently added to its portfolio. The software firm alongside its fourth quarter earnings report rebranded itself a “bitcoin development company,” doubling down on its commitment to the cryptocurrency.

    MSTR shares are up 11.8% year-to-date.

    Edited by Stephen Alpher.

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    Helene Braun

    Helene is a New York-based reporter covering Wall Street, the rise of the spot bitcoin ETFs and crypto exchanges. She is also the co-host of CoinDesk's Markets Daily show. Helene is a graduate of New York University's business and economic reporting program and has appeared on CBS News, YahooFinance and Nasdaq TradeTalks. She holds BTC and ETH.


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