MicroStrategy CEO seems to embrace Bitcoin maximalism

Published at: Sept. 20, 2020

MicroStrategy’s decision to use Bitcoin as its primary reserve currency has Michael Saylor seemingly favoring the asset over altcoins.

In a Sept. 20 tweet, the business intelligence company’s CEO stated that he considers Bitcoin (BTC) to be a crypto asset network, unlike tokens like Ethereum (ETH) or stablecoins, which he referred to as “crypto-application networks.”

Posting a chart from analytics site Bitcoin Dominance, the CEO claimed that the coin’s dominance “has advanced from a low of 71.05% on December 20, 2017 to 93.57% today.”

When considering network dominance in the crypto industry, I find it clarifying to separate crypto-asset networks like #Bitcoin from crypto-application networks like Ethereum & stablecoins. Bitcoin dominance has advanced from a low of 71.05% on December 20, 2017 to 93.57% today. pic.twitter.com/03cbWVyoLY

— Michael Saylor (@michael_saylor) September 20, 2020

However, Saylor is intentionally selective when it comes to this data. Bitcoin Dominance’s figures do not include initial coin offerings or stablecoins, but rather “only includes coins using proof-of-work that are attempting to be money.”

According to CoinMarketCap, which takes stablecoins like Tether (USDT) into account, Bitcoin’s dominance was at a yearly low of 56.67% as of Sept. 13, while Messari shows the metric closer to 59%. Both are far from the 93% dominance Saylor tweeted. Ethereum and DeFi have been driving alt season this year, as the 10 largest DeFi tokens now represent a market cap of roughly $9 billion compared to Bitcoin’s $200 billion.

Though initially claiming “Bitcoin’s days are numbered” in 2013, Saylor has turned bullish on the crypto asset in recent weeks following MicroStrategy’s purchase of $250 million worth of BTC as a reserve currency in August. He announced on Sept. 14 that the firm subsequently bought an additional $175 million of BTC.

“Bitcoin scales just fine as a store of value.”

Saylor isn’t alone in the crypto community in discounting the vast majority of altcoins. Emin Gün Sirer, the creator of the first proof-of-work-based crypto, said in April that Bitcoin maximalists are correct to label “95% of the things out there as scams.”

“They’ve just recycled something that belongs to someone else,” he said.

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