Bitcoin (CRYPTO: BTC) has shed half of its value since the start of the year and has fallen even more since it topped out around $69,000 last November.
Although the sharp price decrease has been alarming for some cryptocurrency investors, MicroStrategy Inc (NASDAQ: MSTR), which has more than $4 billion in Bitcoin exposure, doesn't seem phased.
"If you try to time the market, you are going to be very frustrated," MicroStrategy CEO Michael Saylor said Monday on "Benzinga Live."
"But if you look out over four years or six years or eight years, then simply acquiring high-quality property with free cash flow is generally a really good investment strategy."
MicroStrategy's Bitcoin Bet: That's exactly what Saylor's company has done. MicroStrategy is a business intelligence, mobile software and cloud-based services company, but more than anything else, it's a bet on Bitcoin. The firm has accumulated nearly 130,000 Bitcoin at an average price of around $30,000, and it plans to sit on the crypto long term.
"We have a simple strategy and our strategy is we just acquire Bitcoin, and we hold the Bitcoin," Saylor said.
See Also: Bitcoin (BTC) Moving Sideways - Calm Before The Storm?
The MicroStrategy CEO told Benzinga that when there is a massive expansion in money supply followed by a significant contraction in money supply, investors want to focus on scarce, desirable, high-quality property that other investors will want to buy down the road.
"And of course we happen to think that Bitcoin is the highest-quality scarce desirable property," he said.
As the company generates free cash flow, it intends to sweep said cash into Bitcoin, and it doesn't seem like Saylor sees anything that can sway the company from its approach. Although there has been much speculation about MicroStrategy facing a potential Bitcoin margin call, Saylor shrugged off those claims.
"No, we're not worried about a margin call," he said. "We took a little bit of debt, but it was 20x overcollateralized."
"If Bitcoin went to $3,000 a coin, we would have to post some other collateral, but we have other collateral and Bitcoin I don't think will go to $3,000 a coin," Saylor added with a laugh.
So Where Is Bitcoin Headed? Saylor maintains a bullish outlook on the long-term prospects of Bitcoin, but it may be tied down for a while as the world's largest and oldest crypto moves through another four-year cycle.
Mining rewards are cut in half roughly every four years after 210,000 blocks are mined. Bitcoin's price has historically been bound to these halving cycles.
"You have to be able to last through the four-year cycles. So when you lay out your strategy, if you can't last for four days or four weeks, right, then you're a speculator or a gambler, but when you're looking out five years in advance, and you think about the volatility, then it's an investment strategy," Saylor said.
Although the longtime Bitcoin bull acknowledged that crypto could be stuck in a bear cycle for a while, as regulations are imposed and adoption ramps up over the coming years, Saylor expects Bitcoin to become more attractive to a larger number of people, which should help push the price higher.
"We think that the highest-quality, best asset in the world is Bitcoin. Everything else in the world is inferior to Bitcoin. So, if you gave me $1 million and said what do you want to buy, I don't want to buy a sports team, I don't want to buy a building, I don't want to buy a company ... all I want to buy is Bitcoin," Saylor said.
"If you hate Bitcoin, you can short our stock ... if you love Bitcoin, you can buy our stock."
See the full interview with Saylor here:
MSTR Price Action: MicroStrategy has a 52-week high of $891.37 and a 52-week low of $134.09.
The stock was down 5.01% at $195.16 at press time, according to data from Benzinga Pro.
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