On February 3 and 4, the Michael J. Saylor firm Microstrategy (NASDAQ: MSTR) held an event called “Bitcoin for Corporations,” which aims to entice corporate entities to get into the leading crypto asset. In 2020 and into 2021, there’s been a major expansion of the M2 money supply as estimates believe 25-30% of all USD in existence was printed last year. This has led to a number of firms exchanging cash and bonds for bitcoin (BTC) in order to protect the company from devaluing fiat.
Michael J. Saylor is an American entrepreneur and business executive, who co-founded and leads MicroStrategy, a company which provides business intelligence, mobile software, and cloud-based services. Saylor authored the 2012 book The Mobile Wave: How Mobile Intelligence Will Change Everything.
Today we will be interviewing 10 of the most influential leaders in the #Bitcoin marketplace live. Yesterday I was shocked by @NYDIG Ross Stevens' estimate of $25 billion in institutional $BTC assets by year end. Now I am wondering if anyone might beat that? Join us & find out.
— Michael Saylor (@michael_saylor) February 4, 2021
Microstrategy certainly started a trend in 2020, getting numerous publicly listed and private firms to add BTC to their balance sheets. According to bitcointreasuries.org, 1,233,038 BTC, or 5.87% of the entire supply is held by corporate entities. That’s approximately $46.5 billion worth of bitcoin held in treasuries, leveraging BTC exchange rates at 9:30 p.m. (EST) on February 3, 2021.
Is it a new gold rush, or is it just another online bubble waiting to explode at any second? Ever since Bitcoin’s creation in 2009 by Satoshi Nakamoto – an individual or group of people whose identity remains unknown today – the cryptocurrency increasingly gathered global interest. “Bitcoin” searches on Google were much higher than that for “Ethereum” in 2020, with Google Trends adding that interest was particularly high in non-Western countries.
In January 2021, the Bitcoin market cap reached an all-time high and had grown by over 400 billion U.S. dollars when compared to the summer months. The market capitalization currently sits at more than 600 billion U.S. dollars. Market capitalization is calculated by multiplying the total number of Bitcoins in circulation by the Bitcoin price. The Bitcoin market capitalization increased from approximately one billion U.S. dollars in 2013 to several times this amount since its surge in popularity in 2017.
The growing use of Bitcoin at a transactional and stored value tool coupled with the finite supply is going to see Bitcoin go to $145,000 to $300,000 by 2022.