Despite having incurred losses due to Bitcoin’s crash back in May, MicroStrategy has announced that it is planning to raise $400 million to acquire more bitcoins.
The company directed by Michael Saylor made the announcement via a press release on Monday 7th, just hours after disclosing via a regulatory filing that it expects to incur the impairment loss in the quarter ending on June 30th.
Accordion to the filing, the company expects to incur a loss of at least $248.5 million as a result of bitcoin’s value crash, which had an impact on the company’s shares tumbling almost by 55% since February due to the 92,079 on its balance sheet.
MicroStrategy is Bitcoin’s biggest corporate backer of any publicly-traded company in the world, which makes its decision to double down on Bitcoin despite the recent crash a reflection of the increasing interest in crypto in the corporate world.
MicroStrategy Believes in Bitcoin
Michael Saylor has been a long-time supporter of cryptocurrency and blockchain technology which has made him a personality in the crypto community due to the investment he and the company he directs has made in the ecosystem.
Speaking at the 2021 Bitcoin Conference in Miami, Saylor shared the stage with personalities like Jack Dorsey, Tony Hawk, and Floyd Mayweather Jr to talk about his reasons to be so bullish on bitcoin and what they expect for the cryptocurrency in the future.
Saylor referred to Bitcoin by calling it “the apex property of the human race” due to it being the catalyst to provide property rights to 8 billion people. He also referred to the environmental concerns around Bitcoin mining by stating:
“I think bitcoin is an extraordinary, disruptive, beneficial technology to the whole energy industry. As I studied it, it became clear that it’s the highest value use of intermittent energy. It’s the highest value use of renewable energy. It’s the highest value use of wasted or stranded energy. And it’s just the highest value use of energy, period. It’s the solution to developing power plants in remote locations, to driving up efficiency of plants and driving down costs…I think as the world understands it, they’re going to embrace it.”
He also referred to Microstrategy’s decision to incur in debt to acquire more bitcoins as a “big breakthrough” to convert the company’s cash from a liability to an asset that can grow more than the percentage paid to borrow cash, making it a valid strategy to generate gains.
Saylor Is Trying to Bring Miners Together
As concerns about the environmental impact of bitcoin mining continue to grow, Saylor took it upon himself to form a Bitcoin Mining Council to promote sustainable mining and increased transparency in the industry.
The initiative counts with the support of crypto mining operations like Argo, Blockcap, Core Scientific, Galaxy Digital, Hive, Hut 8 Mining, Marathon Digital Holdings, and Riot Blockchain, some of the most influential companies in the crypto space.
While there are concerns among cryptocurrency purists about the possibility of an increase in the centralization of decision making in the industry, CEO of Argo Blockchain Peter Wall addressed the concerns by stating:
“We’re not talking about Bitcoin code or block size or anything related to changing the nature of Bitcoin, We all love Bitcoin the way it is, as a decentralized, permissionless system.”
With media outlets jumping at the opportunity to point out environmental concerns as a disadvantage of cryptocurrency, initiatives to fight against misunderstandings relating to crypto are becoming increasingly popular among crypto companies.
CoinBase, one of the world’s biggest crypto exchanges, recently announced it would be redoubling its media efforts to fight disinformation around the crypto market, while also providing educational resources for investors and people interested in crypto.