Showing posts with label treasury. Show all posts
Showing posts with label treasury. Show all posts

Friday, October 16, 2020

How to put Bitcoin on your Balance Sheet

The COVID-19 pandemic and the resulting economic crisis has pushed all governments around the world to print money like never before resulting in a global devaluation of cash assets. People and companies sitting on large piles of cash have struggled to invest that cash into harder assets such as gold, real estate or equities (in particular big techs that have been perceived as less immune to the COVID-19 dislocation event). 

But more and more people have been turning to Bitcoin as well. Indeed the cryptocurrency has all the characteristics of a hard currency (the supply is limited by a hard cap of 21 million coins) without the downside of existing options (lack of convenience, low liquidity, elastic inflation -- as prices increase, inflation rate increases as well along with economic incentives). As fears that government might outlaw the cryptocurrency fade away, more and more corporates are taking the plunge. This is a virtuous circle: as more and more companies hold the cryptocurrency on their balance sheet, and as governments acknowledge and regulate that behaviour, the legal risk evaporates. 

Microstrategy was the first public company to announce that they converted the majority of their Treasury into Bitcoin, a total of $425 million. Since then a number of businesses have disclosed that they had done or intended to do that as well. Coldcard creator, Rodolfo Novak, has even put up a web page listing those businesses

Converting part of your Treasury into Bitcoin is more complex than converting it into another currency, especially if you don't have the resources of a large public company. But if you're ready to protect your funds with a swarm of cyber hornets, here are some of the issues and how to deal with them:

Security

As most people know, holding Bitcoin is hard. Everyone has heard of hacks or mistakes that have cost Bitcoin owners their savings. As a company putting a significant amount of your Treasury in Bitcoin, you have a fiduciary responsibility to ensure that those funds are secured properly. You have basically 3 options.