On Friday (11 November 2022), Michael Saylor, Co-Founder and Executive Chairman at business intelligence software company MicroStrategy Inc.\u00a0(nasdaq: MSTR), was affected what the ripple effects of the collapse of FTX would be.<\/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 former CEO has become one of Bitcoin\u2019s most vocal advocates.\u00a0MicroStrategy\u2019s latest $BTC purchase, which Saylor tweeted about on 20 September 2022, means that the firm is now HODLing around 130,000 bitcoins, which were \u201cacquired for ~$3.98 billion at an average price of ~$30,639 per bitcoin.\u201d<\/p>\n Anyway, on Friday (11 November 2022), Saylor had this to say during an interview on CNBC\u2019s Squawk on the Street:<\/p>\n \u201cI think this week highlights the virtues of Bitcoin as much as it exposes the fragility of the crypto ecosystem. Bitcoin\u2019s a commodity you can self custody without an issuer. The vast majority of all the crypto tokens out there are unregistered securities trading on unregulated exchanges, and they\u2019re fairly centralised.<\/em> <\/p>\n \u201cAnd so what could go wrong? Well, we saw what could go wrong if a centralised token trading on unregistered exchange blows up this week. I think that Bitcoiners have been predicting this for a long time. Speaking for all the bitcoiners, we feel like we\u2019re trapped in a dysfunctional relationship with crypto, and we want out\u2026<\/em><\/p>\n \u201cI think the industry needs to grow up, and the regulators are coming into this space. And what the world wants is digital assets and digital commodities and digital securities, but there\u2019s no way to register a digital security. There\u2019s no clear guideline, a roadmap for a designating a digital commodity. The world wants a trillion dollars of digital currency in the form of the USD stablecoin\u2026<\/em><\/p>\n \u201cAnd so I think that the regulatory intervention of late has been all negative, like enforcement, but the marketplace is waiting for the regulators to say \u2018this is how you register a digital currency\u2019, this is how you register a digital security or a digital commodity\u2019\u2026<\/em><\/p>\n \u201cAnd instead of saying all the crypto exchanges should register, we need to get the crypto exchanges registered because the future of the industry is registered digital assets trading on regulated exchanges where everyone has the investor protections they need and the investors understand the difference between Bitcoin and a stablecoin and a security token\u2026 <\/em><\/p>\n \u201cI think it\u2019s definitely going to the strength in the hand of the regulators. It\u2019s going to accelerate their intervention\u2026 And there\u2019s regressive regulation, which is to say \u2018you can\u2019t really do anything\u2019, and that\u2019ll contract the industry\u2026 but there\u2019s a progressive regulation, which says \u2018this is a path to register a digital security, a digital currency, a digital token, and your digital exchange\u2019. <\/em><\/p>\n \u201cIf there is progressive regulation, then I thinkyou won\u2019t see 20,000 tokens, you\u2019ll see dozens but there\u2019ll be properly registered tokens. The industry is going to grow much more rapidly. And ultimately, we\u2019re moving from the entrepreneurial stage where this was a wild west offshore where anything goes to an institutional digital asset stage\u2026 and we\u2019re all just going to grow up and the world is going to benefit from that.<\/em>\u201c<\/p>\n https:\/\/youtube.com\/watch?v=Ql4iiTZfoDI%3Ffeature%3Doembed<\/p>\n And this was gold bug (and Bitcoin perma-bear) Peter Schiff\u2019s response to Saylor\u2019s CNBC interview:<\/p>\n On 1 November 2022, Saylor talked about Bitcoin\u2019s Lightning Network during his firm\u2019s Q3 2022 earnings call.<\/p>\n Anyway, according to the\u00a0transcript\u00a0of the Q3 2022 Earnings Call by The Motley Fool, Saylor said:<\/p>\n \u201cBlock upgraded Cash App and Cash up is a 40 million user type mobile application, and they upgraded it in their support of Lightning. So now they can send and receive lightning to Cash App mobile application instances. And they did it with a universal barcode.<\/em><\/p>\n \u201cAnd so, that means that I can hold the barcode up on my phone, and you can scan it, and it will either send a Bitcoin on the base layer, the Layer 1, if that\u2019s what you requested or it will send it on the Lightning layer. We\u2019re already seeing this create a massive amount of enthusiasm in the Lightning development community.<\/em><\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s launched a lot more lightning wallets. It\u2019s launched a lot more vendor interest in taking Bitcoin as lightening payments. And One of the more interesting stories right now is a supermarket chain call Pick-N-Pay, all around South Africa. Pick-N-Pay rolled out Lightning payments to 40 of their stores in production as the second stage of their Bitcoin adoption.<\/em><\/p>\n \u201cAnd that appears to have been successful. There are a lot of videos circulating around and people going in and paying in a matter of seconds via Lightning transactions off of Android and iPhones, but the more important point is that their stated plan is to deploy Bitcoin Lightning support to 1,628 stores. So the broad-based adoption of Bitcoin as a medium of exchange via Lightning technology is now being taken seriously with the Cash App example, with the Pick-N-Pay example. This is getting a lot of attention in the community.<\/em>\u00a0And of course, the benefit to the retailer would be not only is it almost no fee, but it\u2019s also instant settlement\u2026<\/em><\/p>\n