Bitcoin has been on a phenomenal tear over recent months, adding over 200% since early October.
The bitcoin price boom took bitcoin to over $40,000 per bitcoin earlier this month, up from around $8,000 in January 2020, making the combined value of the world’s bitcoins worth more than Visa V , Samsung and Berkshire Hathaway BRK.B .
Now, major bitcoin-buyer MicroStrategy MSTR , led by bitcoin evangelist Michael Saylor, is gearing up to host a virtual “bitcoin corporate strategy” summit in the first week of February—designed to help other companies copy MicroStrategy’s bitcoin playbook.
The bitcoin price has soared in recent months, eclipsing its 2017 highs of $20,000 per bitcoin and … [+]
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Microstrategy, which now owns some 70,000 bitcoin worth around $1.13 billion aftering kicking off its bitcoin-buying spree last summer, is hosting the event on February 3 and February 4, with thousands of companies signed up to attend, according to Saylor.
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“We’re going to have thousands of executives, officers, directors and advisors of corporations coming together in the first week of February,” Saylor told CNBC’s Power Lunch this week.
“They all want to figure out how to plug bitcoin into their balance sheet or their PNL. We’re going to publish our playbook, all of our accounting guidance, our legal guidance, all the work we did over the course of months to get ready to do this as a publicly traded company. And we’re going to open source it, making it available to everybody with the thought of saving them millions of dollars in weeks or months to make this an easier transition.”
While the full list of attendees has not been made public, the event it set to include bitcoin industry giants including crypto exchanges Binance, Gemini, and Coinbase. Others, such as Mike Novogratz’s Galaxy Digital, which specializes in investing and developing cryptocurrency-related services, will take part in bitcoin macro and corporate strategy discussions.
Ross Stevens, the chief executive of Stone Ridge Asset Management, will open the online conference alongside Saylor on Wednesday, February 3. In October, Forbes revealed Stone Ridge’s $115 million bitcoin investment.
Bitcoin’s price has long been tied to its public profile—with bitcoin media mentions and Google search volume closely tracking bitcoin’s price peaks and troughs.
Bitcoin traders and investors will be closely eyeing the upcoming conference for headlines that could push the bitcoin price higher.
“This conference could drive interest in bitcoin further, and even if that does not translate to immediate price gains, it will definitely have a positive, long-term effect,” Joe DiPasquale, the chief executive of San Francisco-based bitcoin and cryptocurrency hedge fund BitBull Capital, said via email. “There is also a possibility that hype around the conference could boost retail sentiments and drive some retail buying.”
Bitcoin’s recent surge has put the cryptocurrency firmly on Wall Street’s radar but Silicon Valley is also showing an interest.
The bitcoin price has had a strong start to 2021 and many in the bitcoin and cryptocurrency industry … [+]
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Jack Dorsey, who currently leads both Twitter and payments company Square SQ , made waves when he announced Square had bought $50 million worth of bitcoin.
Billionaire Tesla TSLA and SpaceX chief executive Elon Musk, who has expressed an interest in being paid in bitcoin, recently asked Saylor via Twitter about the practicalities of adding bitcoin to a corporate balance sheet.
“We can also expect other companies to start emulating MicroStrategy’s approach and invest some portions of their treasures into bitcoin, as MicroStrategy’s CEO recently suggested to Elon Musk,” DiPasquale added.