MicroStrategy CEO could ‘liquidate $200M in Bitcoin on a Saturday’

Michael Saylor has said that all $400 million of business intelligence firm MicroStrategy’s Bitcoin reserve holdings could be liquidated at any time.

In a Sept. 22 interview, Saylor told Bloomberg that although “volatility isn’t really a reason to sell,” he would not hesitate to dump MicroStrategy’s 38,250 Bitcoin (BTC) at a moment’s notice if an alternative asset’s yields were to jump.

Though MicroStrategy acquired Bitcoin in a carefully orchestrated series of 78,338 separate off-chain transactions, the CEO said offloading them would be much simpler.

“We can liquidate it any day of the week, any hour of the day,” Saylor said. “If I needed to liquidate $200 million of Bitcoin, I believe I could do it on a Saturday.”

There is, however, no reason to think that Saylor intends to sell the company's newly acquired Bitcoin anytime soon, particularly with the CEO estimating that so-called asset inflation will surge to more than 20% a year, eroding purchasing power. "We feel pretty confident that Bitcoin is less risky than holding cash, less risky than holding gold,” he said.

MicroStrategy announced on Aug. 11 that it had purchased 21,454 BTC for $250 million, adopting the cryptocurrency as its primary reserve asset. Following the initial investment, the firm bought an additional 16,796 Bitcoin for $175 million.

Its total holdings are now valued at roughly $401.5 million with the crypto asset’s recent 6% drop, meaning a negative 3.2% return after six weeks. However, Bitcoin in general has been on the rise in 2020, up from the $7,000s in January to testing the $11,000 barrier in September.

Though initially claiming “Bitcoin’s days are numbered” in 2013, Saylor has since become a major advocate for crypto, even seemingly embracing a Bitcoin maximalist mindset in a Sept. 20 tweet by calling BTC one of the few “crypto-asset networks.” In his Bloomberg interview, he predicted  that other companies would likely invest in Bitcoin within six months.