![]() But the feds describe Arthur Hayes differently: a wanted man who “flouted” the law by operating in the “shadows of the financial markets.” Hayes’s indictment was unsealed in October, and he remains at large in Asia as prosecutors in New York hope to arrest him and try him on two felony counts, which carry a possible penalty of 10 years in prison.Īt a time when the SEC is seemingly doing the bidding of Wall Street titans-eager to punish the unwashed masses of day traders for scuttling banks’ and hedge funds’ trading positions on GameStop and other stocks-Hayes might just be patient zero when it comes to exposing the hypocrisy in high finance that is now coming into sharp relief. Screen-star handsome and fabulously wealthy, the African American banker turned maverick personifies the contemporary fintech pioneer. And all the while he keeps one eye trained on an obscure-sounding currency exchange that he built out of thin air and through which more than $3 trillion has flowed. One minute Hayes is hitting the powder in Hokkaido, the next he’s crushing it on a subterranean squash court in Central-Hong Kong’s Wall Street. Just replace New York with Hong Kong and infuse it with a dose of Silicon Valley-where unicorns spring from the minds of irrepressible company founders-and, well, you get the picture. ![]() This story was originally featured on Fortune.Arthur Hayes lives large. MicroStrategy did not respond to Fortune’s request for comment. If the world’s leading cryptocurrency falls and a margin call goes through, MicroStrategy would be put in a tough spot. Still, taking out a loan collateralized by Bitcoin to buy more Bitcoin is a risky game. So I think we're in a pretty comfortable place where we are right now.” But again, we're talking about $21,000 before we get to a point where there needs to be more margin or more collateral contributors. “So we have more that we could contribute in the case that we have a lot of downward volatility. “As you can see, we mentioned previously we have quite a bit of uncollateralized Bitcoin,” Le said. The CFO noted that MicroStrategy still holds “quite a bit” of uncollateralized Bitcoin that it could use to answer any potential margin call, however. “So essentially, Bitcoin needs to cut in half, or around $21,000, before we’d have a margin call.” “We took out the loan at a 25% LTV the margin call occurs at 50% LTV,” Le said. MicroStrategy’s CFO Phong Le explained in the company’s first-quarter earnings call on Tuesday that if Bitcoin’s price falls below $21,000, or around 50% from current levels, it will be forced to pony up more cryptocurrency to back its $205 million Bitcoin-collateralized loan with Silvergate Bank that was used to buy Bitcoin in the first place. But with Bitcoin’s price down roughly 35% in the past six months, that may be changing.Īs a result of its status as a quasi-Bitcoin ETF, and a pile of over $2.3 billion in long-term debt, MicroStrategy’s stock is down over 20% in the past month and nearly 65% from its February 2021 all-time high of over $1,000 per share.Īnd if Bitcoin’s value continues to fall, Saylor and company could face one hell of a margin call. MicroStrategy has said it has no plans to sell its Bitcoin, and thus far, its buy-and-hold strategy has been profitable. The company’s market cap, on the other hand, is roughly $4 billion. ET on Wednesday, the company’s holdings were worth over $5.1 billion. MicroStrategy added another $215 million worth of Bitcoin at an average purchase price of $44,645 per coin in the first quarter, SEC filings show, bringing its total holdings to 129,218 Bitcoins acquired for $3.97 billion, or $30,700 per coin.Īt Bitcoin’s $39,800 price as of 4 p.m. ![]() ![]() The collateral? That’s right, more Bitcoin. Saylor’s Bitcoin appetite has grown so much that the CEO is now borrowing millions from banks to add more of the cryptocurrency to MicroStrategy’s balance sheet. The CEO has gone so far as to call Bitcoin “ freedom,” and “the most universally desirable property in space and time.” And at Bitcoin 2022 Miami-the largest Bitcoin event worldwide-Saylor was met by thousands of cheering fans as he instructed the crowd to never sell their crypto. Saylor, an MIT graduate and the cofounder and CEO of the business intelligence firm MicroStrategy, has become a hero to the Bitcoin faithful ever since his company began stockpiling the cryptocurrency in August 2020. Michael Saylor is perhaps one of the most fervent supporters of Bitcoin on the planet-and that’s saying something, given the almost cultlike community behind the world’s leading cryptocurrency.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |