MicroStrategy board members will now be paid bitcoins as royalties. This was announced by the CEO of the company Michael Sailor on his Twitter. The analytical giant’s board of directors consists of five members, including Sailor himself.
These are Stephen Graham, Jarrod M. Patten, Karl J. Rickersen and Leslie Rechan. The payment process for BTC was set out in an official statement to the US Securities and Exchange Commission, which means that the attitude towards cryptocurrency in this case is more than serious. Let’s talk about the situation in more detail.
To begin with, it is important to note that MicroStrategy is the largest holder of bitcoins among public companies, that is, those whose shares are traded on stock exchanges. The company began buying cryptocurrency in August 2020 and has continued to do so on a regular basis since then.
At the moment, the giant has 91,579 bitcoins at its disposal, on which MicroStrategy has spent $ 2.22 billion. Accordingly, the average BTC purchase price for the company is $ 24,306. Taking into account the current Bitcoin exchange rate of $ 62,805, the initial investment has already grown 2.58 times.
Here is a list of all public companies that have invested in BTC.
Where salaries are paid in bitcoins
The acceptance of BTC as compensation for services is interpreted as «MicroStrategy’s commitment to Bitcoin, given its ability to serve as a store of value, supported by a robust, open source, open source architecture that is not tied to sovereign monetary policy.» Thus, the amount of fees paid to directors will remain unchanged and will be nominally denominated in US dollars. However, at the time of payment, the fees will be converted from dollar to BTC and then transferred to a digital wallet.
That is, in fact, the management does not even have to do anything in order to replenish their own stocks of cryptocurrencies. A similar scheme works with American football star Russell Okung, whose salary is also being converted to Bitcoin. And although the club pays money to the athlete in dollars, the player’s representatives use a special payment service to transfer funds to BTC.
By the way, Russell announced the initiative to transfer salaries to Bitcoin a long time ago. This means that, taking into account the current growth of the blockchain asset rate, the decision was definitely correct – albeit risky.
Here is a tweet from Michael Saylor in which he talked about the changes within the company.
MicroStrategy’s board of directors is now paid in bitcoin.
The Board of Directors of @MicroStrategy is now paid in #bitcoin. $ MSTR
– Michael Saylor (@michael_saylor) April 12, 2021
This is the first time that a company in the US and worldwide has decided to pay its directors in BTC instead of regular money, CryptoSlate reports. MicroStrategy was also the first big business to invest in a major cryptocurrency back in the summer of 2020. In this way, she paved the way for other organizations like Tesla, Square and Meitu.
The example of MicroStrategy is likely to be followed by other large companies in the world. Especially now that Bitcoin is no longer just some weird geek hobby. Now the capitalization of the main cryptocurrency has exceeded the $ 1.1 trillion mark, and it itself has become larger than Visa and MasterCard combined by this indicator.
Today, Bitcoin has set a new all-time high at $ 63,213, followed by a slight dip. However, even after that, the market capitalization of the cryptocurrency – that is, the product of the number of coins by the rate – exceeds the level of $ 1.17 trillion.
Here is a graph of the BTC capitalization change in 2021. The indicator has more than doubled.
We believe that given what is happening, the role of MicroStrategy in the current stage of growth of Bitcoin and cryptocurrencies in general is difficult to overestimate. First, the company set the trend for large-scale investments in the coin, and now it will use them to pay bonuses to its employees. Obviously, we are gradually heading towards full-fledged salary payments and settlements in general in cryptocurrency. Hopefully, this transition will happen faster than it seems.
