Bitcoin and cryptocurrency prices have bounced back this week, riding a wave of positive news even as researchers warn of crypto thefts.
The bitcoin price came within touching distance of $50,000 per bitcoin but has today dropped back, losing more than $2,000 per bitcoin in a matter of hours. Ethereum has also erased its latest gains, despite traders eagerly eyeing a long-awaited upgrade.
Now, after El Salvador last week postponed its controversial $1 billion bitcoin-backed bond, outspoken bitcoin billionaire Michael Saylor has warned the market perhaps isn’t “quite ready” for bitcoin bonds.
“I’d love to see a day where people eventually sell bitcoin-backed bonds like mortgage-backed securities,” Saylor, the chief executive of business intelligence software company MicroStrategy, which has pivoted to become a bitcoin acquisition vehicle over the last two years, told Bloomberg in an interview. “The market is not quite ready for that right now. The next best idea was a term loan from a major bank.”
Last week, El Salvador, which became the world’s first country to adopt bitcoin as legal tender last year, revealed it had postponed its planned $1 billion bitcoin bond offering with the country’s finance minister Alejandro Zelaya blaming unfavorable market conditions—but El Salvador’s president Nayib Bukele blaming the delay on necessary pension reforms.
“I think this is not the time,” Zelaya said in comments reported by Reuters, with Russia’s invasion of Ukraine unsettling markets in recent weeks. “In May and June sometimes you can, but the market variables get different. After September, it is difficult to raise, unless you are previously funded, as in the case of bitcoin bond.”
The hotly-anticipated bitcoin bond, designed to fund the creation of an ultra-low tax bitcoin city in El Salvador, will have a “substantial oversubscription” that could reach $1.5 billion, according to Zelaya. Half of the funds raised will be used by the country to buy more bitcoin and the rest earmarked to develop bitcoin mining infrastructure powered by a volcano.
Earlier this week, MicroStrategy announced it’s bitcoin-focused subsidiary MacroStrategy had taken on a $205 million loan to buy more bitcoin, adding to its 125,000 bitcoin hoard. MicroStrategy stock price, up some three-fold since it first began buying bitcoin, has slide 6% this week.
The loan will give MicroStrategy “an opportunity to further our position” as the largest publicly-traded bitcoin investor, Saylor said in a statement.
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MicroStrategy CEO and Bitcoin permabull, Michael Saylor believes that traditional financial markets aren’t quite ready for Bitcoin-backed bonds. Saylor told Bloomberg on Tuesday, that he’d love to see the day come where Bitcoin-backed bonds are sold like mortgage-backed securities, but warned that, “the market is not quite ready for that right now. The next best idea was a term loan from a major bank.”
The remarks come two days after MicroStrategy’s (MSTR) Bitcoin-specific subsidiary MacroStrategy, announced that it had taken out a $205 million Bitcoin-collateralized loan to purchase even more Bitcoin. This loan was unique, as it marked MicroStrategy’s first time borrowing against its own Bitcoin reserves — which are currently valued at approximately $6 billion — to buy more of the cryptocurrency.
Saylor’s comments also follow El Salvador’s recent decision to postpone the issuance of its $1 billion dollar Bitcoin-backed “Volcano Bond” on March 23rd. According to El Salvador’s Finance Minister Alejandro Zelaya, the decision to delay the bond was due to general financial uncertainty in the global market driven by conflict in Ukraine.
In a potential warning to El Salvador, Saylor said that the country’s Volcano Bond was somewhat more risky than his company’s Bitcoin-collateralized loan,Saylor added that he remains extremely bullish on the long-term potential for Bitcoin-based bonds, going as far to say that it would be a good idea for cities like New York to use Bitcoin as a debt instrument.
Related: MicroStrategy CEO won’t sell $5B BTC stash despite crypto winterSince its initial $250-million Bitcoin investment in August 2020, MicroStrategy has now amassed a substantial 125,051 BTC — which at the current price of $44,547 equates to $5.5 billion. MicroStrategy has made a series of separate BTC purchases using the company’s cash on hand as well as the proceeds of sales of convertible senior notes in private offerings to institutional buyers.
Saylor’s actions have gradually transformed MicroStrategy into a partly leveraged Bitcoin holdings company, with MSTR shares closely correlated with the price of Bitcoin.
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