No matter how it looks, swims or quacks, if the law says it’s not a duck, then it’s not one – “Michael Saylor’s Guide to the Identification of Waterfowl.”
No, to our knowledge, Saylor, CEO of business intelligence company MicroStrategy, has not written any such guidance. However, if he did, a record such as this one can be imagined alongside the famous “duck test” of observed reality that the poet James Whitcomb Riley is believed to have made.
It certainly conveys the letter-of-law logic Saylor used on Twitter on Friday night to dispel widespread speculation that his company’s recent massive purchases of bitcoin had turned it into an investment company or even a de facto bitcoin exchange trading fund (ETF).
While some have argued that Nasdaq-listed MicroStrategy (MSTR) investors are now effectively buying a regulated investment vehicle that gives them exposure to the leading cryptocurrency, Saylor turned to statute citations to argue that his company was nothing of the type:
Since August, MicroStrategy has bought $ 475 million in bitcoin and the company is showing no sign of stopping. This past week, MSTR sold $ 650 million in advanced convertible notes to raise funds to acquire even more bitcoin.
During binge drinking buys the company, MSTR shares have more than doubled because many investors see holding the company’s shares as a way to gain exposure to bitcoin, much like holding shares in an ETF giving one exposure to whatever asset the ETF is invested in. But with his tweets on Friday, Saylor was essentially saying that it doesn’t matter what those investors think. The words “effectively” make all the difference.
With his usual chutzpah Saylor draws a line in the sand by saying that he believes an MSTR purchase of only 40,824 bitcoin is the company that chooses to hold its reserves in currencies other than US dollars no matter how investors might see it or why they are uploading on MSTR shares. Regardless, Saylor, which controls 70% of MSTR shares, has been the stock’s biggest beneficiary of bitcoin fuel.
By publicly referring to applicable law / rulings, Saylor may also hope to persuade the US Securities and Exchange Commission from revisiting its own work on waterfowl identification, revisiting, which could lead to a different ruling on bitcoin and therefore , change species a little, cook his goose.