MicroStrategy CEO Michael Saylor has congratulated Tesla CEO Elon Musk on the EV firm’s $1.5 billion investment into Bitcoin.
“Congratulations & thank you to @elonmusk & @Tesla on adding #Bitcoin to their balance sheet. The entire world will benefit from this leadership,” he tweeted today.
Congratulations & thank you to @elonmusk & @Tesla on adding #Bitcoin to their balance sheet. The entire world will benefit from this leadership.https://t.co/FVTepBqAI2
— Michael Saylor (@michael_saylor) February 8, 2021
News of Tesla’s Bitcoin buy spread like wildfire, propelling the price of Bitcoin to a new all-time high above $43,000.
MicroStrategy’s $2.5 billion Bitcoin buying spree
Saylor has overseen an aggressive program of Bitcoin purchases by MicroStrategy, with the software company buying up some $2.5 billion of the cryptocurrency over the past year.
Earlier this month, Saylor explained that the company had sought new stores of value to invest in, as a result of aggressive monetary expansion caused by the coronavirus pandemic. “The returns on gold didn’t look nearly as compelling as Bitcoin,” said Saylor.
Saylor’s “$100 billion favor” to Musk
In December 2020, Saylor tweeted to Musk that, “If you want to do your shareholders a $100 billion favor, convert the $TSLA balance sheet from USD to #BTC.”
For his part, Musk wondered whether “such large transactions [are] even possible?” whereupon Saylor offered to “share my playbook with you offline.”
Yes. I have purchased over $1.3 billion in #BTC in past months & would be happy to share my playbook with you offline – from one rocket scientist to another.
— Michael Saylor (@michael_saylor) December 20, 2020
The MicroStrategy CEO is intent on luring other companies into the Bitcoin fold; last week, the firm hosted the “World.Now” conference, at which it provided a series of “Bitcoin for Corporations” sessions aimed at interested institutional investors.
In a keynote speech at the event, Saylor said he expected an “avalanche of companies” to follow suit and convert their balance sheets into Bitcoin, as a “scarce digital safe haven asset.”
With Saylor advising Musk that “other firms on the S&P 500 would follow your lead,” he may have set the first pebble in motion.
