Topic: MicroStrategy Buys $250M in Bitcoin, Calling the Crypto ‘Superior to Cash’ - page 43. (Read 24435 times)

Sure, that is possible.  Without some kind of reasonable evidence, I am not going to assume that MSTR is engaging in deceptive (underground) practices mere because they could be engaged in such practices.. I am also pretty sure that the legal standard would still be that the filing of any timely lawsuit would start from the point of time that such deceptive practice is found out (or reasonably should have been known).   


I am not naive to that fact either.  I have not problem with people being skeptical and/or taking disclosed information with a grain of salt, yet I am still not going to pursue conspiracy theories for the mere sake of it.. when there seems to be a lot of information (maybe even overwhelming amount of information) that Saylor is a pretty damned straight shooter. Sure, there always can be something, but when someone is so public about matters as Saylor has been, there should be some need to attempt to take his various public representations at face value - to the extent that they get into specifics... and surely very sophisticated players will be more careful in some of the ways that they phrase matters, especially if they are regularly consulting with attorneys and other sophisticated consultants, which seems to be the case with Saylor.. so in that regard, sometimes he will pretty well coached on some things to say or not to say, but merely the fact that he is a well coached representative does not automatically mean that he is hiding significant and/or material facts. 

I know that there are some folks who get really skeptical of people who are more educated and more sophisticated, and frequently those kinds of seemingly unfounded skepticisms are getting caught up in the weeds rather than sticking to the main themes.

I am reminded of an interview that Saylor gave in July on the Not investment advice podcast in which he was criticizing ethereum and even calling it immoral.  Afterwards, the not investment advice podcast guys had podcasts episodes (at least one) in which they were criticizing Saylor... and seemingly that they were way less informed about the whole matter than Saylor because they are believers in shitcoins... so in essence I understand them as not really understanding and therefore trying to find fault with Saylor's assertions based on their own lack of sophistication analysis and likely their being biased by their own bags.  I know that I have had some posts in which I had made comments about the first interview, but this is the first time I said anything about the subsequent comments of the not investment advice podcast hosts.


You are just making shit up.  Saylor has talked about his various obligations on several occasions, and he especially talked about those issues towards the beginning of his getting involved in bitcoin with the Company's name and money and describing how he (the company) did it.  You might want to look at some of that early information.. the company went overboard to buy shareholders out of their position or to allow them to get out before they made their early purchases of BTC.  Saylor had been pretty public about all of this, so your proclaiming that he may well have been sneaky about all of this is way contrary to the facts in which the company went overboard in regards to their procedures and even their publicly describing the way that they did it.


He does not have to take it private.  We already know that he already has the company set up in a way that works for him quite well, and he can do whatever he likes in terms of having something like 70% ownership (fillippone described this dynamic several times in this thread), and yeah, while the company is public Saylor has obligations to follow disclosure requirements, and he has been already doing that for more than 20 years that the company has been public.  Sure, he could take his company private again in order to change its structure and sure he already has the votes (namely himself) to take the company private if he wants, but he has no obligation to take the company private, and there is no meaningful evidence to describe that he is in any way being abusive of the legal system that allows him to maintain a public company with overwhelming majority ownership retained by himself.  Your ongoingly not liking that Saylor is an overwhelming majority shareholder in such a public company, choosing to have his company structured that way and feeling uncomfortable about Saylor's ongoing chosen company structure seems quite strange.  You are ongoingly accusing him of possibly abusing the mandate of the company because he is buying bitcoin with the company's treasures but really NOT having any evidence beyond the fact that he is buying a lot of bitcoin (and leveraging and all of that) and your feeling uncomfortable with what he is doing, so it must be wrong, right?


Yes.. they are o.k. with Saylor buying bitcoin with MSTR treasuries, MSTR debt, MSTR equity and whatever other "creative" financial instruments that Saylor/MSTR has chosen to create/employ.. Otherwise such shareholders could have gotten out (or refused to get in) or maybe read the disclosures a wee bit moar better or maybe watched some of Saylor's videos/tweets in order to decide whether they wanted to get into such a well known company or not.

Hey The Pharmacist, maybe you should buy some MSTR shares in order to be able to file a lawsuit against them?  or do you know anyone who owns MSTRs who are disgruntled beyond your imagining that there are likely people who fit into such category?


They probably do not feel very good.. just like any bitcoin HODLer who has any sufficiently and meaningfully sized stake does not feel too good right now, even though it is likely a great BTC buying opportunity right now, if any of us has any money left for buying? 

If you are underinvested in BTC, then maybe you don't feel bad right now (or anything, except a critical posture towards bitcoin accumulators/HODLers)... and if you are feeling that way, then maybe you should get some my lil precious in case it catches on?

Um, sure....but how many companies have we seen over the years that weren't looking out for their shareholders, weren't honest about their business practices or accounting, and/or that engaged in blatantly illegal activities that their shareholders couldn't have known about? 

I'm not saying the above statement applies to MSTR; my point is that corporations often don't heed obligation you mentioned and will take their chances with lawsuits in order to take unwarranted risks in order to boost their profits (and the compensation of the head executives, mainly).

I really don't know how Michael Saylor thinks, but with respect to his purchases of bitcoin by MSTR, it could very well be that since every other shareholder except him is a minority one, he believes it to be his own company to do with as he wishes.  The truth is that it isn't.  If he wanted it to be, he should take it private.  Again, I haven't heard any outcry about his bitcoin purchases but I can't help wondering if MSTR shareholders would have wanted him to sink so much of MSTR's money into an extremely volatile, relatively new type of asset/currency.  I also wonder how they feel right now with bitcoin sitting under $19k and the stock continuing to slide.

I cannot see that we are deviating too much from the thread topic, especially since how much attention Microstrategy / Saylor is getting regarding his tax issue and even the potential for minority investors to raise issues likely relates to the ways in which Saylor/Microstrategy have been so aggressive in the bitcoin advocacies and also in their ongoing bitcoin accumulations (noting that Saylor/Microstrategy has not made many BTC purchases in recent times).

Regarding whether or not minority shareholders will bring any lawsuits, I was not even suggesting that they would not bring any lawsuits, but I was asserting that absent some much better facts in their favor, they would be hardpressed to be successful in such lawsuits - since one of the main obligations of any public company is to not be deceptive about what it is doing and to be public about material aspects of the company's behaviors in order that shareholders are able to informedly decide whether to buy or to sell shares, so yeah there might be some bad actors (and likely there are some), and sometimes these bad actors might start to believe that they have a sufficient case (not frivolous) to be able to sue based on legal proceeding being brought against Saylor/MSTR and then they might speculate the existence of those other cases (and/or facts revealed therein) give them more legitimate reasons to sue (with the purpose of just harassing Saylor/MSTR) and still little to no likelihood to win.

Absolutely, I was only trying to answer some previous concern about that.

In particular, I am with Saylor this time, as far as my understanding of the tax issue goes.
Also, I think minority investors greatly profited from Saylor conducts over the last years, so no real need to sue the company.

You are right anyway, let’s get a little bit closer to topic (interaction between Microstrategy and bitcoin strategy) rather than casual discussions about Microstrategy.

We might be mixing issues, and my understanding of the DC Tax issue does not really have anything to do with minority shareholders but instead it has to do with whether Saylor had been paying proper taxes in DC, and then the DC tax authorities are trying to bring MSTR into the matter by asserting that they were covering up for Saylor.

Regarding any minority shareholder issue to attempt to try to get their way on some kind of issue or if they perceive injustices, then they may well have difficulties getting a choice or a voice without a lawsuit, but you still seem to presuming hostility in a situation in which Saylor had bent over backwards to disclose that he was getting into bitcoin, so if they are upset about him getting into bitcoin, then they had sufficient notice to get out.  It just seems weird to attempt to argue in the abstract as if Saylor had done something wrong without talking about specific facts in which he may have done something wrong.

Now the suggestion that MSTR is a public company in name only is not really true without setting forth issues in which you might believe that Saylor would have been violating some kind of legal mandated  obligation that he has to shareholders or to the public.  He's a pretty public guy, so you would likely need some kind of specifics, and of course, he is a dominant player in the company, so anyone buying shares in MSTR would already know that going in, and of course, in any organization there are likely to be various tensions, but sometimes I have been reading about supposed tensions that are not even supported in the facts that we have in front of us.  

We cannot merely assume that the company is having any fall out with Saylor merely because charges were brought upon Saylor and the DC tax authority decided to also charge MSTR - and at the same time MSTR seems to have had rightfully distanced itself from Saylor in terms of asserting that Saylor's personal tax matters were not their matters, and that is what they should do.. since DC tax authority is likely overreaching to be making those kinds of assertions.. and of course, we do see the evidence that they see, but I am not going to presume that the DC Tax Authority is acting in good faith, even though they are supposed to.

Of course, if it appears that Saylor and/or MSTR has not been making proper and adequate disclosures to the shareholders (minority or otherwise) or that they were engaging in unrealistic and out of the ordinary risky (unlawful) behaviors, then the revelation of that kind of evidence could spark minority shareholder lawsuits, yet I am not even going to presume such lawsuits are going to come.. and furthermore, I am also going to presume that MSTR is operating with pretty decent legal counsel (both in-house and they have abilities to go out of house too).

It surely is possible that our issues are overlapping, even though I am getting the sense that your framing of these matters make it seem that you are wanting to attribute malconduct onto Saylor and MSTR .. and we hardly have any evidence of that beyond what ifs.. including if you want to say that Saylor is a bad actor because he settled some SEC matters in the early 2000s..   Maybe there is some actual dirt on Saylor and MSTR that exists that I am not currently aware of, and of course, even the DC tax authority has to have some evidence, so sure there should be something more than just smoke there.. and maybe some of the evidence will come out that will show worse conduct than what seems to currently be out there in the public space...

I have already been seeing that sometimes people are complaining about behaviors and practices that Saylor has employed that do not seem to rise to the level of various kinds of illegal conduct assumptions that have been being made out, and I get the sense that bitcoin naysayers want to take Saylor down or to diminish his abilities to speak rather than being based on his actual conduct, so maybe I am having some troubles figuring out if we are talking about some specific conduct that is being disputed versus merely theory about class actions can be raised.. and yeah, they can be raised but I doubt that it is reasonable to presume that they have merit without some actual facts in regards to which conduct is being alleged as being unlawful.

I was only saying that given the structure of ownership in Microstrategy, the only way for minitiry shareholders for being heard is, basically, a lawsuit.

That such lawsuit is successful and effective, that is a completely different story.
TL;DR: Microstrategy is not a public company. It is an absolute Micheal Saylor kingdom.

If I read you correctly fillippone, I am having troubles understanding how you would be giving much if any benefit of the doubt to the state in a matter like this that seems quite likely to be motivated to harass someone like Saylor and his company...

I am not exactly sure where the burden of proof lies.  It should lie with the Government to prove its case, but tax laws can sometimes be a bit weird in the way they play out.. so the threshold of this issue would be year by year tax laws for each of the 10 years that they are claiming that Saylor had really lived in DC, when he said that he was living in other lower tax jurisdictions.  So it would seem to me that the state would have to show that Saylor was actually staying in DC for each of those 10 years for more than half of the time - half of the time +1 day.

And the company has nothing to do with this, except that the IRS is wanting to claim that the company was conspiring to cover up on behalf of Saylor.. So then the IRS can get into the idea of co-mingling and was Saylor keeping his matters sufficiently separate from the company - and likely there had been quite a bit of commingling going on which happens with many companies versus businesses, but usually more sophisticated players are going to be smart enough to keep them sufficiently separate so that the corporate veil is not allowed to be pierced.

So I am thinking that if the company shows a certain amount of evidence that Saylor had been living for more than 50% of his time in DC for each of the 10 years, then maybe Saylor would have to go back and show evidence of where he was in terms of at least that question, and I had not even known that anyone was required to keep tax records back for that long - absent some special and/or extenuating questions? 

I don't really fell like looking up each of these matters, beyond just wanting to make my point that there seems to be quite a bit of knee-jerk reactions on the side of the state's supposed good intentions here, yet I believe that the more reasonable knee-jerk reactions would being more skeptical of the state good intentions, and their seeming intentions to harass Saylor with their stupid vague-ass laws.. and don't get me wrong I am surely not anti-state and I am not even anti-taxes, even though in this case, on the face, it does appear that there may well be some abuse of power in terms of the IRS, overextending of matters in terms of building in private rights of actions for whistle-blowers to get rewarded, and just the seeming likely anti-bitcoin overtones - in terms of undermining Saylor's credibility - even though many of us likely believe that Saylor has pretty decent attorneys, yet I can see that there are possibilities that he could be personally burdened by these kinds of matters - especially when one procedure can lead to other procedures and part of governmental abuse of power are when then engage in fishing expeditions and then various other agencies can share in their findings to persecute in other ways.. and some of us may wonder how Saylor is being brought up on supposedly outrageous conduct - while in the meantime we have guys like Craig Wright still roaming free and not seeming to get much of any punishment for his ongoing abuse of the legal system.... ok.. I am starting to deviate, I will admit.

I don’t know the details, but I bet Microstrategy has been Saylor’s playground for the last 20 years at least. And also I guess that every high-level executive was perfectly aware of every detail of Saylor’s Tax plan.

Having said that, I bet this lawsuit will end in nothing done.

It seems true what you say, it's too early to make a statement about the problems they face.

But if the claim is true, then shareholders will protest against a much larger lawsuit and it could happen.

That's why political relations can never be separated and look so terrible, when it comes to play.
I hope my view is wrong?

Two different statements I get?
Saylor said that it was the company's domain for tax reporting, but on the other hand the company considered it was Saylor's personal tax problem, so there was no fundamental relationship with the company.
The two statements actually contain meaning, it seems Saylor's position in the company is being questioned, considering that there has been a CEO change (if I'm not mistaken)

Or it could be the other way around, both making musical dramas, as a form of 90% stock price decline as you mentioned, am I exaggerating?

Given the peculiar voting rights in Microstrategy’s governing bodies, I reckon minority shareholders have no option than a lawsuit to express their voice.

What I think is that Micheal Saylor already survived a -90% share price drawdown and survived as CEO, so I see little scope in a similar lawsuit.

Not for nothing, but the lawsuit for this tax evasion accusation was just announced, so I think it's way, way too early to start passing judgement as if we know all the facts (not sure if that's what you were doing, but even so I stand by my statement).

And so what if he borrowed against bitcoin holdings and thereby avoided capital gains taxes?  That isn't illegal at all.  I'm not saying it was a smart thing to do, because I don't, but if the IRS wants to throw people in jail they'd better make sure the law is on their side and they're not just making shit up as they go along.

I had a strong feeling Saylor and/or MSTR was going to be hit with one or more lawsuits, but I figured they'd start by the shareholders, not the government.  Anyone want to bet there's going to be a massive wave of shareholder lawsuits coming soon?  I'm not saying that gleefully, so don't get the wrong idea, but it's the next logical step when the 3-year stock chart now looks like this:

No. The idea of telling the average citizen to sell everything to buy BTC was not correct.

Michael Saylor on How To Use Debt in Your Favour 👀 "Mortgage Your Home And Buy Bitcoin."

It's not just that this is not right, it's that it's insane.


Yes, his understanding of the subject is well above average, on this and many other subjects, but very smart people also make mistakes and blunders sometimes.

I don’t think so.

The ideas Micheal Saylor was selling about bitcoin were right, and were so even if he failed in a completely different field of knowledge: abiding to IRS rules.

Of course Bitcoin is honey badger and doesn’t care about Micheal Saylor’s fate, but I must say that, bar some hyper bullish claims (“it’s going up forever, Laura”) his understanding of the matter were way above the average garbage you read on mainstream everyday.

I just saw the news.

I don't know how you see it but I think this caps off the end of a dream. The one that Michael Saylor sold, not the BTC one.

Let's remember that among other things, he recommended everyone to never sell their BTC, but to borrow against it in order to avoid capital gains tax.

I am not saying that this is not legitimate and that there are not people who do it, but his message to the general public is flawed on two sides: on the leverage side, we have seen the number of exchanges that have had problems and the number of trading positions that have been liquidated in cascade due to the drop in price.

And on the tax side, he has not yet been found guilty and he will defend himself, but following the tax advice of someone who is accused of tax fraud and who has already had problems with the SEC for which he ended up paying a penalty does not seem more appropriate.

A statement was made by the Attorney General of Washington, D.C. Karl Racine that they are suing Michael Saylor, the head of Microstrategy for tax fraud, since Saylor has lived in the district for more than a decade, but has never paid any income taxes in the District of Columbia. Washington is also suing MicroStrategy for conspiring to help Sailor evade taxes that he legally owes, in their opinion, several hundred million dollars earned by him while he lived in the District of Columbia.
We are waiting for an official response from MicroStrategy and Michael Saylor.


Source: https://twitter.com/AGKarlRacine/status/1565031380471382019

Perhaps you have recognized the sarcasm in my previous comment, but still you seem to either NOT sufficiently understand the actual financial situation of Saylor (MSTR) (not that I am an expert) and/or you want to subscribe a higher risk gambling approach within your presumption that Saylor is already employing a high-risk gambling approach, so may as well double down on his high-risk gambling approach, no?

Don't get me wrong, I have never been much of a fan for Saylor's bitcoin allocation choices (in terms of I have frequently thought that he over does it), but I have been a pretty decent fan of both his seeming financial creativity and his being public in regards to the various ways that he was financing high levels of bitcoin purchases.

You seem to have missed my attempt to highlight cashflow within my earlier snarky comment, and as far as I can tell one of the smart and prudent angles of Saylor's approach has been a recognition and appreciation that his company has had a pretty consistent ability to generate decent amounts of cashflows that go beyond their abilities to service whatever loans that they have undertaken in their bitcoin purchases.  If Saylor/MSTR were to lose a large percentage of its cashflow in such a way that it is not able to service whatever loans that they have, then at that point they would need to consider liquidating various assets, and the way Saylor presents his views on bitcoin, it would be quite doubtful that Saylor/MSTR would be liquidating bitcoin prior to liquidating other assets... (referring to if the company were to suffer cashflow generating issues).
 It is also quite possible that they could miscalculate their abilities to generate cashflows, which surely does tend to happen when all markets are cutting back .. so in that sense, if too many cashflows dry up, then their situation becomes way more precarious than they had previously projected it to be.

So surely in regards to Saylor's/MSTR's bitcoin investment, ONLY a relatively small portion of it is based on any loans, and at one point when prices were in the high $30ks and low $40ks, Saylor was proclaiming that there was no problems with those loans because Saylor/MSTR had pledged collateral in such a way that the BTC price would have to go down into the $21ks before the loan would end up getting margin called, and at that time, $21ks had seemed somewhat unthinkable.  So when BTC prices went down to $21k and below, presumptively Saylor/MSTR had placed whatever additional collateral in order that his outstanding loans had not gotten margin called, and at that point Saylor began to say that he had enough unencumbered BTC that BTC prices would have to go into the $3ks before his loaned out BTC would be subjected to margin calls, and MSTR had more (non BTC) collateral that it could pledge if BTC prices were to get down to those $3k-ish price levels.

I can understand why regular people (including you Google+ - presuming that you are a normal people) are going to retain quite a lot of reservations in regards to what various company representatives are going to say (especially when they have a vested interested in the subject matter being discussed), and so many times we witness that various company representatives had been misrepresenting what they had been doing, and they are really caught in lie after lie after lie and when the BTC prices ended up going way the fuck lower than the overwhelming majority of people in bitcoin (including seeming market experts), then surely there were a decent number of companies (so far) who have been caught with their pants down.. and people realize that they had been lying and they no longer had any choice but to have their nakedness revealed. So, yes, I understand that it is reasonable for people to have a decently high level of reservations regarding disclosures and/or representations that companies are making about their financial situation that may well not be as positive and rosie as they are making their situations out to be.

I am surely not opposed to having reservations regarding representations that any company is making (including Saylor/MSTR) in regards to their situation, yet so far, it appears that Saylor/MSTR has neither materially misrepresented what he is doing and/or his company's financial situation - which still seems to be pretty solid in spite of the "on the book" losses of a decent amount of value (yes well over a billion dollars)


You seem to be overplaying the importance of what other people think in regards to whether MSTR is profitable or not?  Sure, there is another portion of MSTR that involves it being a publicly traded company, so in that regard, Saylor has more obligations to the public and/or to various shareholders than he would have if the company were a private one.. Yet based on the level of Saylor's public disclosures that seem to go way beyond minimum legal requirements (and likely he has quite a decent legal staff), I surely have my doubts about any kinds of claims that the share holders would be in any kind of solid position to make any claims against the company - while at the same time, they are able to vote with their feet, and surely there are ways for buyers of MSTR stock are able to get in and out of such stock within the parameters of the market liquidation mechanisms that are available to them (my understanding is that MSTR is traded on NASDAQ, but it is likely traded in other ways too).

MSTR share prices as they are shown on NASDAQ do seem to have even more volatility than the BTC price.  


Even though on an ongoing basis, a lot of people seem to love to talk about MSTR and the supposed precariousness of its BTC related position, absent some further negative information, I have quite a few doubts about the position of MSTR being even close to as precarious as either you (Google+) or the general bitcoin naysaying public seem to want to paint it.

I understand, He can take out a loan (if the situation is precarious) to run the DCA option as he did a few months ago. The hype of her purchase could trigger a huge backlash, Is not that it as she expected.

I know that this may be a difficult path for Saylor because of her financial support, the investment loss is quite large, so the next decision will be made carefully.

It really sucks to be Saylor (MSTR) right now.  HOLDing almost 130k BTC.. and with around $10 million of cashflow coming in every month in dollars..

Does he (his company) buy MOAR cornz or not?

That must suck to be him/his company in that (seemingly precarious) position.

Don't you think?

  

The online Excel report the correct amount:



That is almost the exact same figure reported by @Google+ (probably a different rounding).
The link to the Excel is in the OP.

source : read here
The last time I saw saylor buy a btc drop at $20817 and it happened in June. Well, if we look at the last two months there has been no activity from Saylor to buy Btc when the price falls. so my question is saylor is running out of money to accumulate more Btc or will he step in when btc price drops deeper.

for now I see from the total btc he has with the average purchase price I can confirm he lost almost $ 1.3 billion. a pretty fantastic number.