Institutions are coming: The dawn of a new era at this year’s MicroStrategy World — Bitcoin for Enterprise Conference
“The agencies are coming.”
Anyone who has been in the Bitcoin industry for any significant amount of time has probably heard this statement from a prominent figure in the space.
When MicroStrategy, a US-based business software company, announced in August 2020 that it would purchase Bitcoin and add it to its Treasury, many thought this was the beginning of institutional trouble.
But that wasn’t the case.
Sure, Tesla bought some Bitcoin the following year, but soon dumped 75% of it.
So from 2020 to 2023, MicroStrategy has been exceptional. During this period, the company, led by Bitcoin perpetual Michael Saylor, remained the only major corporation on the planet to convert a significant portion of its treasury into Bitcoin.
But Saylor’s vision to transition MicroStrategy to the Bitcoin standard did not waver.
Instead, he doubled down and continued to guide MicroStrategy, adding more Bitcoin to its balance sheet. He also hosted a conference called MicroStrategy World: Bitcoin for Business every year starting the year after he purchased his first Bitcoin as a means to show other companies how his company could emulate MicroStrategy.
According to Saylor, this year’s conference, held May 1 and 2 in Las Vegas, Nevada, marked the beginning of a new era, one in which the time has come for institutions to follow MicroStrategy’s lead.
The Bitcoin era has begun for institutions and businesses
In his keynote address on the second day of the conference titled “There is no second best,” Saylor called 2020-2023 a “crazy year” in the Bitcoin space.
He described this period as part of a period of “cryptocurrency chaos,” a period in which Bitcoin emerged as the dominant and most trusted crypto asset.
After the crazy times, Saylor said, it’s time for institutions and businesses to embrace Bitcoin. He believes this new era will begin in January 2024, he told Bitcoin Magazine in an interview at X Spaces on April 30, a day before the conference began. , 11 spot Bitcoin ETFs have been launched in the United States.
But let’s not take Saylor’s word for it that a new day has dawned. Let’s take a look at what Hunter Horsley, CEO of Bitwise, one of 11 financial institutions to launch a spot Bitcoin ETF in the U.S., had to say about institutional interest in Bitcoin.
“Bitcoin ETFs really bring Bitcoin into the realm of possibility for many traditional financial institutions,” Horsley said during a panel on the second day of the conference.
“Many traditional, reputable companies are starting to engage with Bitcoin in ways they have never done before, but very few are talking about it. If you scroll through LinkedIn or read press releases, you might think nothing has changed since last year, but for now, most or many people are preferring not to disclose,” he added.
JUST IN: $3.5 billion Bitwise CEO reveals. "Many traditional and reputable companies are starting to get involved. #Bitcoin It’s something that’s never been done before, but few people are talking about."
"The bank is contacting us" 🙌 pic.twitter.com/h0jjhrzZQ6
— Bitcoin Magazine (@BitcoinMagazine) May 2, 2024
Alexander Leishman, CEO and CTO of Bitcoin exchange River, also pointed out in his presentation that Bitcoin purchases have traditionally been a retail investor-driven phenomenon, but more and more businesses are starting to dip their toes into the Bitcoin waters.
In one of the slides, Leishman points out that the percentage of companies and funds/ETFs holding Bitcoin may not seem like a lot, but it is larger than in previous years.
“We have companies, funds, ETFs, governments, large institutions, blue and black bars. This bar went from virtually nothing to where it is today and continues to grow,” Leishman said.
“Retail isn’t really driving the recent rise in Bitcoin price. Consumer interest in Bitcoin is near an all-time high. So what is driving these price increases? “We think one big factor is institutions,” he added.
According to David Marcus, CEO of Lightspark, in the near future, institutions will start using Bitcoin for payments as well as holding it on their balance sheets or providing it to customers.
Lightspark uses Lightning to connect businesses globally.
To conclude the first day of the conference, Saylor sat down with Marcus, a former executive at PayPal and former head of Libra, Facebook’s abandoned cryptocurrency project, to discuss how the Lightning Network connects businesses around the world.
Lightspark made headlines the day before the conference began when Coinbase announced that it would use Lightspark to integrate Lightning for its US users.
According to Marcus, Coinbase was the first of many companies that would soon leverage the power of Lightning.
“You can imagine all kinds of new applications (for enterprises) in a world where hundreds of millions, if not billions, of people have addresses that allow them to make real-time payments in the currency of their choice. ),” Marcus said of the company, which uses Lightning to send not only sats but also digital versions of fiat.
"Now is the time to move Bitcoin and other assets (on Lightning) quickly, cheaply, and in real time."
-David Marcus, LightSpark CEO @Lightspark#BitcoinforCorporations— MicroStrategy (@MicroStrategy) May 1, 2024
“Streaming funds to an endpoint is one of them. A new payment method for merchants that gives them access to new customers or a new customer base that they (previously) had no access to. “We need the ability to create new business models so that people can actually contribute to whatever is being built from anywhere in the world,” he added.
“It will have an impact on the world that will make it as important as the Internet itself was for communications.”
Marcus also noted how businesses are inherently more multinational than individual Bitcoin users and could greatly benefit from moving value around the world in real time via Lightning.
After listening to Marcus and Saylor’s conversation, it was hard not to be optimistic about Bitcoin and Lightning.
After Cezary Raczko, MicroStrategy’s senior vice president of engineering, revealed plans for MicroStrategy Orange, a decentralized solution, it was difficult not to be optimistic about Bitcoin not only as a store of value and medium of exchange, but also as a platform for trust. It is an ID (DID) platform built on the Bitcoin blockchain.
MicroStrategy Orange
MicroStrategy Orange is an enterprise platform that enables organizations to use DID applications built directly on Bitcoin’s base layer.
This is the first technological innovation involving Bitcoin in which MicroStrategy has participated.
“The platform consists of three basic elements,” Raczko said. “At its core is a cloud hosting service that can issue those identifiers to users in your organization. You can also deploy applications running on MicroStrategy Orange. Orange SDK allows you to integrate applications into your own services. And the Orange app will be a pre-packaged solution that solves specific digital identity challenges.”
This news was a pleasant surprise to many who attended the conference because it demonstrated that MicroStrategy wants to continue to drive Bitcoin adoption outside of store-of-value use cases as we enter a new era of businesses and institutions adopting Bitcoin. .
Bitcoin Standardization for Enterprises
The conversation, both on and off the conference stage, has shifted from Bitcoin being taboo to becoming increasingly normalized, making it harder for companies and institutions to ignore it.
We spoke with Bitcoin industry leaders like Becca Rubenfeld, COO of AnchorWatch. Sam Abbassi, founder and CEO of Hoseki; And Nathan McCauley, co-founder and CEO of Anchorage Digital, has noticed that businesses and institutions that once disparaged Bitcoin as a scam or a fad are now starting to ask how they can adopt it.
“It’s exciting that we’re in an adoption phase where access to Bitcoin is expanding to businesses and customers,” Rubenfeld told Bitcoin Magazine. “This event is specifically focused on ensuring the conversation is focused on the unique benefits and challenges of this new class of Bitcoin owners.”
Although it will take some time for businesses to start using Bitcoin again, it is clear that we are beginning to realize the value of Bitcoin.
Although businesses and institutions may not be ready to adopt the Bitcoin standard in the same way as MicroStrategy, they may have some exposure to Bitcoin assets or are willing to use Lightning for payments or apps that leverage the Bitcoin blockchain. It appears that there is.
Thank you to Michael Saylor and the MicroStrategy team for this.
