Michael Saylor — the chairman of top corporate Bitcoin (BTC) holder MicroStrategy — is about to pitch investing in the coin to Microsoft.
Saylor said during a recent X Spaces online public meeting hosted by asset manager VanEck that he will pitch investing in Bitcoin to the Microsoft board of directors. He said that an activist arranged the meeting:
“The activist that put that proposal together contacted me to present to the board, and I agreed to provide a three-minute presentation — that’s all you’re allowed — and I’m going to present it to the board of directors.”
MicroStrategy is a publicly-traded business intelligence company founded in 1989 that pivoted to acquiring as much Bitcoin as possible in 2020. The company now holds over 1% of all Bitcoin that will ever exist, with institutional interest in MicroStrategy being an interest in a regulatory-friendly Bitcoin investment.
Not the first attempt
Saylor mentioned that he had already privately proposed a meeting to Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella with the very same objective. Still, the offer was declined.
“So you will see me putting together the three-minute proposal for Microsoft […], and we’ll send it to the board.”
Last month, a Microsoft document filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) revealed that the company planned to assess investing in Bitcoin and vote on the issue during a Dec. 10 meeting. The board recommended voting against the proposal.
The National Centre for Public Policy Research (NCPPR) pushed for the proposal, noting that MicroStrategy outperformed Microsoft by over 300% with its Bitcoin accumulation strategy. The NCPPR highlighted that this is true despite MicroStrategy doing a fraction of the business” of Microsoft.
More recent reports by industry media suggested that Microsoft could risk being sued by shareholders if it decides not to invest in Bitcoin and the price increases. Saylor suggested that more companies should consider investing in Bitcoin:
“I think it’s not a bad idea to put it on the agenda of every company. It ought to be put on the agenda of Berkshire Hathaway and Apple and Google and Meta because they all have huge hordes of cash, and they’re all burning shareholder value. […] It would be a lot more stable stock and a much less risky stock if half of the enterprise value of the stock was based upon tangible assets or property like Bitcoin.”