Quote from: gentlemand on August 11, 2020, 07:47:36 PM

Is there any indication anywhere that they bought actual tangible Bitcoin? Lots of people started to froth when Paul Tudor Jones made his announcement but of course it was nothing but futures.

Interesting, I missed that bit, do you have any source for that?

Quote from: The Pharmacist on August 11, 2020, 09:30:06 PM

Quote from: fillippone on August 11, 2020, 01:52:51 PM

This is so big: A publicly traded firm decided to invest half of his 500 millions excess cash reserves buying bitcoin, deliberately dumping the ever value loser, inflationary, exponentially printed fiat currency, to embrace the superior hard money, digital gold, Bitcoin.

I agree. MicroStrategy isn't a huge company in terms of market cap ($1.3 billion), but the fact that they'd buy a huge amount of bitcoin to hold as its "treasury reserve asset" (I don't know exactly what that means) is indeed big news for bitcoin. What I'm wondering is what their shareholders are going to think about it, and I'm putting MSTR on my stock watchlist. I'd never heard of them before, but it looks like they've been around for years and their stock has done pretty well over the past decade.

Every firm has cash, this cash is managed by a Treasury department, who is in charge of maximising the return on this cash (think about a firm based in Switzerland, where you actually pay money for your cash balance in your saving account) investing it in low risk bonds (t-bills) Short money market operations or FX operations to minimise the exposure to different currencies..
Every firm has a "reference" currency, mostly based on the location of headquarters (AAPL has inflows in many different currencies, but ultimately the balance sheet are in USD, so they try to manage all their cash in USD terms). Well, apparently, MicroStrategy choose to elect Bitcoin as their "base" treasury asset. This means, probably, all the resto f their business is going to depreciate massively against their cash balance. (hopefully...).

Regarding the shareholders part, that was part of a pre-announced part of capital allocation, approved by the shareholders (they had 500 mios reserves, half of those in BTC, half i shares buyback).

Quote from: The Pharmacist on August 11, 2020, 09:30:06 PM

And lol, reading the summary of what the company does, I can barely understand a word of it:
<...>

Another description:

Quote

MicroStrategy Incorporated provides business intelligence software and related services. The Company provides a platform that enables departments and enterprises to deploy web-based reporting and analysis solutions. MicroStrategy also offers consulting, training, and support services. MicroStrategy serves retail, finance, telecommunications, insurance, and healthcare sectors.

Extended Company Description (Source: Hoover's Inc., a Dun & Bradstreet Company)

OVERVIEW

MicroStrategy knows you need the details to make a good plan. The company's cloud-based business intelligence software addresses functions such as building reports and dashboards, managing mobile applications, and capitalizing on social media. Specific analytics modules include human resources management, Web traffic analysis, and sales and distribution. It sells to many of the world's largest companies, such as Aetna and eBay, as well as midsized companies and government agencies, such as NASA and the US Army. MicroStrategy also offers consulting and support services. Founded in 1989, MicroStrategy has operations in about 25 countries.

TLDR: Microstrategy builds software that organise data collected all over the firm, so that dumb manager can take smart decision based on some tables they see. Competitor : SAP, I don't know if you are familiar with them.

Quote from: The Pharmacist on August 11, 2020, 09:30:06 PM

Quote from: fillippone on August 11, 2020, 01:52:51 PM

This is so bullish. A new era for Bitcoin in the path of a recognition as a superior Store Of Value.

Maybe. It would be far more bullish had the company been Microsoft or Amazon. And I'm not sure how big a story this is overall. You and I certainly find it to be incredible, but that doesn't mean the market is going to react to it at all. We'll see.

IT's a start, of course other might follow. Maybe Facebook will do the same with their Libra, one day.

Quote from: gentlemand on August 11, 2020, 10:25:57 PM

Quote from: cAPSLOCK on August 11, 2020, 10:01:33 PM

I wonder who is handling the custody of this for them. That was probably the hardest part of the whole thing for them to work out.

I figure it could be Greyscale, or one of the exchanges (Gemini? Kraken? Coinbase?). Could be Bakkt? Of course they could do it themselves, but that is a fairly serious security undertaking when $250MM is the amount of value.

If it's actual coin then one of your list no doubt. I'd love to sit in on the pitch these custody places give them. A lot of people will come to them knowing nothing and nothing about their specific company either. There's no possibility of any of it being insured either.

I strongly doubt that. Those are exchanges, and their business is the exchange of Cryptoassets, not the custody. I expect the elected venue for the custody to be BitGo, who is the leader in the custody sector. Please note that BitGo is insured on their funds, as some of the exchanges (Gemini and Binance) are, with varying degree of security.
This is only my tough, I didn't read anything about that, for now.