On Wednesday (June 22), Michael J. Saylor, Co-Founder, Chairman, and CEO of Nasdaq-listed business intelligence company\u00a0MicroStrategy Inc.\u00a0(NASDAQ: MSTR),\u00a0shared his thoughts about the crypto space in general and Bitcoin in particular.<\/p>\n
It is worth remembering that on 11 August 2020, MicroStrategy announced via a\u00a0press release\u00a0that it had \u201cpurchased 21,454 bitcoins at an aggregate purchase price of $250 million\u201d to use as a \u201cprimary treasury reserve asset.\u201d<\/p>\n
Saylor said at the time:<\/p>\n
\u201cOur decision to invest in Bitcoin at this time was driven in part by a confluence of macro factors affecting the economic and business landscape that we believe is creating long-term risks for our corporate treasury program \u2015 risks that should be addressed proactively.<\/em>\u201c<\/p>\n Since then MicroStrategy has continued to accumulate Bitcoin and its CEO has become one of Bitcoin\u2019s most vocal advocates. MicroStrategy\u2019s latest $BTC purchase, which Saylor tweeted about on April 5, means that the firm is now HODLing around 129,218 bitcoins, which were \u201cacquired for ~$3.97 billion at an average price of ~$30,700 per bitcoin.\u201d<\/p>\n Saylor\u2019s most recent comment about Bitcoin were made during a conversation yesterday with CNN International anchor and correspondent\u00a0Julia Chatterley.<\/p>\n Chatterly started by asking Saylor if Bitcoin could go bust.<\/p>\n Saylor replied:<\/p>\n \u201cWe\u2019re in here for the long term. Bitcoin is going to outlast all of us. I\u2019m quite sure of that.<\/em>\u201c<\/p>\n She then asked if Bitcoin needs the crypto space to get regulated to start going up again.<\/p>\n Saylor answered:<\/p>\n \u201cYeah, I think it\u2019s It\u2019s clear that the people are confused, and regulation will be constructive because clarity will help the market mature. The people are confused about what\u2019s a currency, what\u2019s a commodity, what\u2019s a security, what are tokens.<\/em><\/p>\n \u201cThere\u2019s 19,000 cryptos out there. I think we can see in the crypto crash that the average investor\u2019s been taken advantage of by traders and by wildcat crypto banks and as the regulators come in and they clear up this confusion and they introduce rules of the road, it\u2019s going to be good for mainstream investors.<\/em><\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s going to be good for corporations. It will catapult the industry from the entrepreneurial offshore anything goes stage into into an institutional mature asset class.<\/em>\u201c<\/p>\n Chatterly then wanted to know whether it is too high risk at the moment for retail investors to invest in the crypto market.<\/p>\n Saylor told her:<\/p>\n \u201cWell, I think the challenge is if you wait for a decade for everything to be cleared up, the price of Bitcoin is going to be 10 or 100 X more than this right now. So, you have to choose whether or not you want to enter knowing that there are about a dozen things that are going to mature the asset class and make it more transparent or whether you want to wait for all those things to take place and then pay a much higher price when it does.<\/em>\u201c<\/p>\n On June 15, the MicroStrategy CEO talked about Bitcoin during an interview with\u00a0David Faber\u00a0and\u00a0Carl Quintanilla, two of the co-anchors of CNBC\u2019s \u201cSquawk on the Street\u201c, and Senior Markets Commentator\u00a0Michael Santoli.\u00a0<\/p>\n Faber started by asking the MicroStrategy CEO how he feels about MicroStrategy\u2019s nearly $4 billion investment in $BTC given the current bear market (which has seen $BTC drop to as low as $20,116 from the all-time high of around $69,044, which it reached on 10 November 2021).<\/p>\n Saylor replied:<\/p>\n \u201cI think it\u2019s been a net positive. We back-tested our strategy against every other alternative. If you roll the clock back to August 10th of 2020, when we embarked on this journey, Bitcoin\u2019s performed 10x better than anything else. Gold\u2019s down 10%. Nasdaq is flat. Bitcoin is up 86% since that time. Over any timeframe, two years, four years, eight years, Bitcoin\u2019s the best performing asset. I can\u2019t come up with a better idea.<\/em>..<\/p>\n \u201cIf you think about Bitcoin, if your time horizon is one month, it looks like a volatile risk asse, but if your time horizon is 10 years, it looks like a risk-off store of value asset. So, the crossover point is four years. Nobody\u2019s ever lost money investing in Bitcoin for four years.<\/em><\/p>\n \u201cAnd if you want to surrogate a the book value of the Bitcoin network, it would be the four-year simple moving average. The simple moving average of Bitcoin over four years is about $21,685. Bitcoin has only touched that that point a couple of times in its history, and those always been great buying opportunities.<\/em>\u201c<\/p>\n Santoli asked what Saylor tells those people who bought Bitcoin on margin after listening to Saylor and are now finding themselves \u201cin a deeply negative position.\u201d<\/p>\n Saylor replied:<\/p>\n