Bitcoin Bulls plans a long game with cash from American companies

Last week, White House Crypto Czar David Sacks held his first press conference to discuss the future of crypto policy coming out of the Trump administration.

That includes Stablecoin laws and digital asset regulations, but Sacks assesses CNBC’s top agenda idea to “whether it is possible to create either a Bitcoin reserve or some kind of digital asset stockpile?” He said he was doing it.

But will the momentum around Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies be reflected in the balance sheet and be passed on to the broader corporate America?

To date, companies exposed Bitcoin Their business has often been the first move in this area, showing support and support for the industry. According to Bitcoin Tracking Website BitcoinTreasuries, 79 public companies currently own Bitcoin. Riot Platform, Coinbase and block.

strategyformerly known as MicroStrategy, its co-founder Michael Saylor, is the champion of this approach as Bitcoin’s biggest corporate holder. In a third-quarter revenue call earlier this month, the company said it had 471,107 bitcoins on its balance sheet, about 2% of its total supply, worth around $45.2 billion.

Also, the list of crypto industry companies holding Bitcoin on their balance sheet is MoonPay, a venture-supporting financial technology company that builds crypto payment infrastructure. According to CEO Ivan Soto-Wright, the company added Bitcoin to its balance sheet, which is equivalent to 5% of its operating cash.

Soto-Wright says that some of the thought processes will “have only success if Bitcoin succeeds,” but he says there is growing debate about including Bitcoin in the company’s financial strategy. I’m thinking about it.

“It really separates itself from both interest rates and stock market movements, so we could see it from that perspective,” he said. “We could also see it from an inflation hedge perspective. From the perspective of large-scale money movements, it is very efficient so we can argue that it is a better version of gold. .”

That was one of the arguments Saylor had, one he repeated, and one of the most notable pushes to spur the big US companies to add to their balance sheets. It appears in. MicrosoftAnnual General Meeting that speaks on behalf of shareholder proposals requested by the company’s board of directors to assess the holdings of Bitcoin or other cryptocurrency.

Saylor doubled that message at an ICR meeting earlier this year. The presentation said companies could continue to “stick to the past,” buy financial debt, buy back and execute dividends, or “enjoy the future.” Bitcoin as digital capital.

“It works for every company,” Saylor said in his keynote address at the retail conference. “We are people who build from steel, and they build from wood.”

It also looks better, at least in the short term. Teslaone of the few non-crypto-centric companies that hold Bitcoin on their balance sheet showed a positive side of this in the latest quarter, which marked a profit of $600 million through Bitcoin valuation. The Financial Accounting Standards Committee adopts new rules for 2025, requiring that companies’ digital asset holdings be brought to the market quarterly.

But so far, the messaging and wider movement have not spread much wider than in the crypto industry. Just 0.55% of Microsoft’s annual meeting votes supported the plan. Microsoft has proposed that shareholders reject the proposal before voting, similar to proxy advisor Glass Lewis and Institutional shareholder services.

In an October proxy application, Microsoft announced that the Ministry of Finance and Investment Services teams previously evaluated Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies to fund the company’s operations, reducing economic risks and “future” “We continue to monitor trends and developments related to cryptocurrency to inform decisions.”

At Microsoft’s annual meeting, CFO Amy Hood said: Partnerships and investments.. Liquidity is not only a revenue generation but also a truly important standard for us. ”

Bitcoin Backing shareholders will not disappear

The lack of recruitment so far does not discourage supporters of companies holding Bitcoin on their balance sheets. Ethan Peck, assistant director of Free Enterprise Project, part of the National Center for Public Policy Studies, a conservative think tank, has submitted a shareholder proposal to Microsoft, and has made similar proposals during the upcoming proxy seasons at other large companies. He said he plans to submit it. Overall, recently, the company’s S&P 500 universe is estimated to have more than $3.5 trillion on its balance sheet, but numbers change quarterly.

Peck said he has not insisted that companies take as aggressively as their strategy, but that “companies are losing shareholders and therefore are trying to deny or offset the base of cash holdings.” You should consider holding a few percent.” Money. “

“You’re losing money because bond yields aren’t exceeding substantial inflation,” Peck said.

However, Marx Weiss, who leads Grant Thornton’s digital assets practices, said Bitcoin is particularly responsive in line with the broader stock market than inflation last year or so, and volatility is volatility. The debate is far from being decided by corporate America. Still High – what Microsoft’s board also pointed out in its rejection of shareholder proposals.

Veith said regulations could also be pulling the company back. The SEC retracted SAB 121 in January. This required banks to classify cryptocurrencies as liabilities on their balance sheets, creating a capital requirement burden to prevent many banks from providing custody to cryptocurrencies.

That’s a change that could include banks Goldman Sachsrevisit the problem. CEO David Solomon told CNBC last month on Davos. “At this point, from a regulatory perspective, we cannot own it,” Bitcoin added, but he added that banks will reconsider the issue if rules change. Many on Wall Street are at least beginning to sing another song carefully. Morgan Stanley CEO Ted Pick and Bank of America CEO Brian Moynihan told CNBC last month in Davos that it could allow broader adoptions if the regulatory environment changes.

However, regulations cannot resolve Crypto’s extreme volatility issues and concerns that there may be another recession at some point. “If you have another crypto winter and the prices drop and you’re sitting in a big stash of Bitcoin for a long time, what do you do? Will the prices continue to fall? Shareholders, or boards, probably in this space It prevents you from coming in,” Veith said.

The latest CNBC CFO Council quarterly survey conducted in December reflects its risk assessment. 78% of CFO respondents in the survey said that Bitcoin is a highly speculative asset class, while 7% said that it is a reliable repository of value. . Additionally, 11% said it was a scam, but the latter view fell over time in quarterly CFO surveys.

As the Trump administration continues to accept codes, the crypto views from within American businesses could change even further.

Soto-wright was asked if he believes that companies are reevaluating what they once envisioned about crypto.

“If you look at the general trends, there are more products out there on the market, so there are more products, and they start to develop their laws and attitudes, and as truly undiversified, uncorrelated financial products. As attitudes begin to develop, there is more distribution, so it is being adopted by the institutions,” he said.

“I think we’ll see more and more companies realise that this is another justified asset in the Treasury portfolio management strategy,” Soto-Wright said.