Michael Saylor says bitcoin has elevated Microstrategy's brand and doubts politicians like Elizabeth Warren fully understand the cryptocurrency

MicroStrategy CEO Michael Saylor speaks at the Bitcoin 2021 Convention held on June 04, 2021 in Miami, Florida (on the left). Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) questions Deputy Treasury Secretary nominee Adewale Adeyemo during his Senate Finance Committee nomination hearing on February 23, 2021 at Capitol Hill in Washington, D.C. (on the right).Joe Raedle/Getty Images (for Saylor) and Greg Nash-Pool/Getty Images (for Warren)

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Michael Saylor says he believes MicroStrategy's association with bitcoin has elevated the brand, and asserted that politicians calling for increased oversight of cryptocurrencies don't fully understand the market. 

The Virginia-based company was among the first institutions to invest in the world's largest digital asset, initially using only cash on its balance sheet. Saylor's firm has even raised debt to add to its bitcoin hoard. 

"Bitcoin has done wonders for our brand. It's elevated our brand by a factor of a hundred," the CEO of MicroStrategy told CNBC Friday. "Obviously, it's made our shareholders billions of dollars over the past 12 months."

MicroStrategy first announced its bitcoin investment in August 2020. The business intelligence software firm as of June 30 holds a total of 105,085 bitcoins at an aggregate cost of $2.7 billion. The coins are valued roughly at $4.1 billion as of publishing.

Saylor called bitcoin a "door opener" and a "conversation starter," especially when it comes to the c-suite executives of other businesses. 

Even as bitcoin continues to trade sideways following a massive crash in May, Saylor remains bullish towards the asset. He even compared investing in bitcoin to investing in the early days of Facebook, now a social media behemoth with a $1 trillion market capitalization. 

"If you borrow billions of dollars at 1% interest and invest it in the next Big Tech digital network that you thought was going to be the dominant Amazon or Google or Facebook of money, why wouldn't you?" Saylor told CNBC. "I mean, if I could borrow $1 billion and buy Facebook a decade ago for 1% interest, I think I would've done quite well."

Cryptocurrencies have been under the spotlight in recent weeks with lawmakers calling for more oversight. Among the critics is Sen. Elizabeth Warren who has said cryptocurrencies are divorced from the broader economy and are not reliable hedges against inflation over the long run.

"Look, if you'd ask Elizabeth Warren her opinion of Google, Facebook, Amazon, and Apple in the year 2010, I wonder what she would have said," Saylor told CNBC.

He continued: "It would take a thousand hours to really understand [bitcoin] well. I think that, right now, every politician in the world is being asked to have an opinion on it, and I doubt that every politician has a thousand hours to think about it or study it."

 

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