“The institutions are coming.”
Anyone who has been in the bitcoin space for a significant period of time has heard some prominent figure within the space utter this phrase.
In August 2020, when Microstrategya United States-based enterprise software company, announced that it would be bitcoin-microstrategy-cryptocurrenc/”>buying bitcoins to incorporate it into their treasury, many thought it was the beginning of the institutional stampede.
But it was not like that.
Sure, bitcoin.html”>Tesla bought some bitcoins the following year, just for bitcoin-purchases-to-fiat-currency-in-q2-2022.html”>throw away 75% of it shortly after.
And so, from 2020 to 2023, MicroStrategy was an anomaly. During these years, the company, led by bitcoin permabull Michael Saylor, remained the only major corporation on Earth to convert a notable portion of its treasury into bitcoin.
However, Saylor's vision of making MicroStrategy a bitcoin standard has not wavered.
Instead, he has doubled down and continued to guide MicroStrategy as it puts more bitcoins on its balance sheet. He has also hosted a conference, MicroStrategy World: bitcoin for Corporations, every year starting the year after his company made its first bitcoin purchase as a means to show other companies how to emulate MicroStrategy.
This year's edition of the conference, held May 1-2 in Las Vegas, NV, marked the beginning of a new era, according to Saylor, an era in which the time has come for institutions to follow suit from MicroStrategy.
The era of bitcoin for institutions and corporations has begun
In Saylor's keynote presentation on the second day of the conference titled “There's No Second Best,” he called the 2020-2023 period the “crazy years” in the bitcoin space.
He explained that these years were part of a period of “crypto chaos,” a period in which bitcoin emerged as the dominant and most trusted crypto asset.
What follows the crazy years, Saylor said, are the years in which institutions and corporations adopt bitcoin, telling bitcoin Magazine in a x.com/BitcoinMagazine/status/1785414016397197667″>x spaces on April 30, the day before the conference began, believes this new era began in January 2024, when 11 spot bitcoin ETFs were launched in the United States.
However, let's not just take Saylor's word that a new day has dawned. Consider what Hunter Horsley, CEO of Bit by bitone of 11 financial institutions to launch a spot bitcoin ETF in the US, had to say about institutional interest in bitcoin.
“bitcoin ETFs have really brought bitcoin into the realm of possibilities for many traditional financial institutions,” Horsley said on a panel during the second day of the conference.
“Many traditional and reputable companies have begun to interact with bitcoin like never before, but very few are saying anything about it. “If you just browse your LinkedIn or read press releases, you would think that nothing has changed from last year, but, for now, most, or many, prefer it not to be public,” he added.
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet”>
JUST IN: $3.5 billion, says Bitwise CEO "Many traditional and reputable companies have started collaborating with twitter.com/hashtag/bitcoin?src=hash&ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw”>#bitcoin like they had never done before, but very few say anything about it."
"The banks are approaching us" pic.twitter.com/h0jjhrzZQ6
– bitcoin Magazine (@BitcoinMagazine) twitter.com/BitcoinMagazine/status/1786133907051536807?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw”>May 2, 2024
Alexander Leishman, CEO and CTO of bitcoin Exchange RiverHe also noted in his presentation that while bitcoin purchasing has traditionally been a phenomenon driven by retail investors, more and more companies are also starting to dip their toes into the bitcoin waters.
In one of his slides, Leishman noted that the percentages of companies and funds/ETFs that own bitcoin may not seem like many, but they are higher than in previous years.
“We have companies, funds, ETFs and governments, these big institutions, these blue and black bars. These bars have gone from virtually nothing to where they are today, but they continue to grow,” Leishman said.
“Retail is not really driving the recent bitcoin price rally. Consumer interest in bitcoin is nowhere near all-time highs. So what is driving this price increase? We believe that an important factor is the institutions,” he added.
According to David Marcus, CEO of spark of lightIn the near future, institutions will not only look to keep bitcoin on their balance sheet or offer it to their customers, but they will begin to use it for payments.
Lightspark uses Lightning to link businesses globally
To conclude the first day of the conference, Saylor sat down with Marcus, a former PayPal executive and former leader of facebook's abandoned cryptocurrency project Libra, to discuss how the Lightning Network will connect businesses around the world.
Lightspark made headlines the day before the conference started, when it announced that Coinbase would use Lightspark to integrate Lightning for its US users.
According to Marcus, Coinbase was just the first of many companies that would soon harness the power of Lightning.
“In a world where there will be hundreds of millions, if not billions, of people who have an address to receive money that can be settled in real time in the currency of their choice, you can imagine all kinds of new applications (for businesses) ”Marcus said of companies using Lightning to not only send sats, but also digitized versions of fiat currencies.
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet”>
"Now is the time to enable fast, cheap, real-time movement of bitcoin and other assets (on Lightning)."
-David Marcus, CEO of LightSpark twitter.com/lightspark?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw”>@luzparquetwitter.com/hashtag/BitcoinforCorporations?src=hash&ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw”>#BitcoinforCorporations
– MicroStrategy (@MicroStrategy) twitter.com/MicroStrategy/status/1785813796490985710?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw”>May 1, 2024
“Transmitting money to the terminals is one of them. New payment methods for merchants that would reach new audiences or new customer bases that they couldn't reach (previously). The ability to create new business models that allow people to really contribute to whatever you are building from anywhere in the world,” she added.
“It will have an impact on the world that will be as important as the Internet was in its time for communications.”
Marcus also mentioned how companies are more multinational in nature than individual bitcoin users and will greatly benefit from the movement of value around the world in real time via Lightning.
It was hard not to be optimistic about bitcoin and Lightning after listening to Marcus and Saylor chat.
It was also difficult not to be optimistic about bitcoin not only as a store of value and medium of exchange, but as a trusted platform after Cezary Raczko, executive vice president of engineering at MicroStrategy, revealed his plans for MicroStrategy Orange, a decentralized platform. Identity platform (DID) built on the bitcoin blockchain.
Orange MicroStrategy
MicroStrategy Orange is an enterprise platform that allows organizations to employ DID applications, built directly on top of the bitcoin base layer.
It is the first technological innovation involving bitcoin that MicroStrategy has been a part of.
“The platform consists of three fundamental pieces,” said Raczko. “In the background, there is a cloud-hosted service that allows you to issue those identifiers to users in your organization. It also allows you to deploy applications running on MicroStrategy Orange. The Orange SDK allows you to integrate the applications into your own services. And Orange apps will be packaged solutions that address specific digital identity challenges.”
This news came as a pleasant surprise to many at the conference, as it illustrated that MicroStrategy wants to continue leading the way in bitcoin adoption (outside of its store of value use case) as we enter this new era of enterprise and institutions that adopt bitcoin. .
Normalizing bitcoin for corporations
Conversations both on and off the conference stage revolved around bitcoin's maturation from a taboo entity to something that is becoming more normal, making it harder for companies and institutions to ignore.
In conversations I had with bitcoin industry leaders like Becca Rubenfeld, COO of AnchorWatch; Sam Abbassi, founder and CEO of hose; and Nathan McCauley, co-founder and CEO of Anchorage DigitalI learned that companies and institutions that once dismissed bitcoin as little more than a scam or fad are now starting to ask how they can adopt it.
“It's exciting to be at an adoption stage where access to bitcoin is expanding to businesses and their customers,” Rubenfeld told bitcoin Magazine. “This event is particularly geared toward that, allowing the conversation to focus on the benefits and challenges unique to that new set of bitcoin owners.”
While it has taken some time for corporations to adopt bitcoin, it is clear that we are at the beginning of an era where they are beginning to see its value.
Even if companies and institutions are not necessarily ready to adopt a bitcoin standard as MicroStrategy has done, it appears that more people are willing to have some exposure to the bitcoin asset or start using Lightning for payments or applications that use the blockchain. of bitcoin.
For this, we have Michael Saylor and the MicroStrategy team to thank.
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