“MicroStrategy’s acquisition of the first cryptocurrency on the balance sheet by companies is an “overlooked megatrend” capable of “uplifting the entire market.” This opinion was presented by Bitwise CIO Matt Hogan. According to his forecast, in the next 12-18 months, “hundreds” of businesses will buy bitcoins to add to reserves. The expert highlighted three reasons why this trend is underestimated by most investors. The MicroStrategy factor is significant The pioneer of corporate bitcoin strategy is a small incumbent company […]”, — write: businessua.com.ua
MicroStrategy’s acquisition of the first cryptocurrency on the balance sheet by companies is an “overlooked megatrend” capable of “uplifting the entire market.” Such an opinion presented by Bitwise CIO Matt Hougan.
According to his forecast, in the next 12-18 months, “hundreds” of businesses will buy bitcoins to add to reserves. The expert highlighted three reasons why this trend is underestimated by most investors.
The MicroStrategy factor is significantThe pioneer of the corporate bitcoin strategy is a small company ranked 220th in the world by capitalization. However, in 2024, MicroStrategy purchased ~257,000 BTC. This volume exceeds the number of coins mined during this period.
At the same time, Michael Saylor’s firm announced plans to raise $42 billion for further purchases of digital gold. At current prices, this amount will be enough for the entire cryptocurrency issue in about 2.6 years.
Against this backdrop, Hogan wondered what would happen if a giant like Meta, with a market cap 20 times that of MicroStrategy, followed suit.
The trend has already gone beyond MicroStrategyThe business analytics software provider is in the spotlight, but more than 70 public companies hold bitcoins on their balance sheets, the expert said.
Among them are both representatives of the industry (such as Coinbase and Marathon Digital) and enterprises from other industries (Block, Tesla, Semlar Scientific, Mercado Libre and others). Collectively, they hold 141,302 BTC.
Private companies are not required to disclose information about their assets. However, those who did (like SpaceX or Block.one) still hold at least 368,043 BTC.
“This means that even today MicroStrategy has less than 50% of the enterprise BTC market. I suspect it will end up being only a small part of it,” Hogan said.
The number of companies buying bitcoins will grow exponentially
The expert singled out two main factors that prevented corporations from investing in cryptocurrency:
- reputational risks;
- accounting rules that negatively affected financial indicators in case of revaluation of assets.
After the US election, digital assets are “accepted at an all-time high”. Buying bitcoin has become not just commonplace, but even popular, according to Hogan.
As for the second, more important aspect, since December the Financial Accounting Standards Board has introduced changes that have a favorable effect on digital assets.
“If 70 companies added bitcoin to their balance sheets when accounting for it could only lower the value, imagine how many would buy it now. Two hundred? Five hundred? A thousand?”, asked the top manager.
In the end, Hogan noted that the reasons why corporations decide to buy cryptocurrency are absolutely not important. Investors need to properly assess this demand and understand what it means for the market.
As a reminder, on January 13, the largest Italian bank Intesa Sanpaolo bought 11 BTC for the first time, and several companies recently increased their bitcoin reserves or announced plans to create them.
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