Month: May 2024

Microstrategy’s annual Bitcoin for Corporations conference has kicked off its second day, featuring conversations with leading finance, regulatory and fintech professionals on the future of corporate Bitcoin adoption.

Discussions will center around the financial implications of the recently approved Spot Bitcoin ETFs in the United States, the changing regulatory landscape for Bitcoin, as well as catalysts for other firms to follow MicroStrategy in pursuing their own Bitcoin strategy.

MicroStrategy World: Bitcoin for Corporations is available for live viewing via the Bitcoin Magazine livestream on X (Twitter), YouTube, LinkedIn and Facebook.

Day 2 Agenda Highlights

Bitcoin and Wall Street – 10:00am PDT

Bitcoin has arrived on Wall Street – but how does this affect portfolio allocation, risk analysis, and investment criteria? Hear first-hand how institutions interpret Bitcoin and the role it will play in financial markets, and how traditional finance organizations are adjusting.

Speakers:

Phong Le (Moderator), President & Chief Executive Officer, MicroStrategyMatt Horne, Head of Business Development, Fidelity Digital Asset ManagementHunter Horsley, CEO & Co-Founder, Bitwise Asset ManagementPuneet Singhvi, Head of Digital Assets, Citibank

Regulatory Roundtable: Shaping Digital Assets — 2:00pm PDT

Regulatory and legal frameworks are essential for any emerging asset class. The digital asset landscape is constantly evolving from regulatory, legal, and accounting standards. Stay at the top of emerging legislation, and acceptance from governments and regulatory authorities.

Speakers:

Ming Shao (Moderator), Senior Executive Vice President & General Counsel, MicroStrategyDax Hanse, Partner, Fintech, Perkins CoieNeel Maitra, Partner, Fintech, DechertAmy Park, Partner, US Audit & Assurance Blockchain & Digital, Deloitte

MicroStrategy Playbook for Corporates – 3:00pm PDT

MicroStrategy is the first public company to adopt bitcoin as its primary treasury reserve asset. Hear from MicroStrategy’s senior leadership on the opportunities, considerations, and catalysts for other corporates to follow MicroStrategy’s open sourced playbook.

Speakers:

Michael J Saylor, Executive Chairman, MicroStrategyAndrew Kang, Senior Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer, MicroStrategyPhong Le, President & Chief Executive Officer, MicroStrategy

View the full Bitcoin for Corporations Day 2 Agenda at https://www.microstrategy.com/world-2024/bitcoin-for-corporations

Bitcoin for Corporations Day 1 Highlights

Bitcoin for Corporations Day 1 made headlines when MicroStrategy announced its new enterprise platform for building decentralized identity applications on the Bitcoin blockchain.

MicroStrategy EVP of Engineer Cezary Raczko explained: “Custodial or non-custodial, the obvious thing is every Bitcoin wallet out there should incorporate the capability of creating a Bitcoin-based digital identity. Many messaging platforms suffer from the same challenges that email does. When you get a text message, how do you know the person who sent you the text message… We would want to include an orange check for these different messaging platforms.” 

JUST IN: MicroStrategy launches an enterprise platform for building decentralized identity applications on #Bitcoin — MicroStrategy Orange 👀 pic.twitter.com/P5PXz80kSD

— Bitcoin Magazine (@BitcoinMagazine) May 1, 2024

Day 1 also featured “Building on Bitcoin”, a conversation between Michael Saylor and Lightspark CEO David Marcus as the pair discussed the advent of the Bitcoin Lightning Network to enable near-instant final settlement of bitcoin and other assets between counterparties. Marcus also made note of his view that Bitcoin is the only logical monetary medium for artificially intelligent agents.

JUST IN: Former PayPal President David Marcus says #Bitcoin is “going to be the native currency of AI” 👀 pic.twitter.com/kWfGwWTNlw

— Bitcoin Magazine (@BitcoinMagazine) May 2, 2024

Follow Bitcoin Magazine on X (Twitter) for breaking news, announcements and commentary on MicroStrategy World: Bitcoin for Corporations.

Visit https://www.microstrategy.com/world-2024/bitcoin-for-corporations for more information.

A Binance user, after purchasing and withdrawing BTC from the exchange, has lucked upon one of just four rare “Epic Sats” as defined the Ordinals protocol.

These special satoshis, which do not exist natively on Bitcoin, but can be identified by a companion piece of software, are considered some of the most scarce and significant in Bitcoin’s history. While Bitcoin has a hard limit of 2.1 quadrillion satoshis, or 2.1 million BTC, the protocol does not track them individually. 

BREAKING: The first satoshi of #Bitcoin’s second halving block was just found by a Binance user.

A $10 transaction worth 33 $BTC. Jackpot 🙌 pic.twitter.com/rLE16ogNsc

— Bitcoin Magazine (@BitcoinMagazine) May 2, 2024

The term “Epic Sat” refers to the first satoshi of each Bitcoin halving era, which occurs about every four years. Recently, the first Epic Sat from the 2024 halving sold for over $2 million at auction, sparking intrigue around these rare units.

In this case, the Binance user unintentionally withdrew a transaction containing the Epic Sat from the 420,000th Bitcoin block in 2016. Binance failed to identify and retain the UTXO that contained the valuable satoshi for itself, representing a potential multi-million dollar oversight.

Blockchain analysis shows this UTXO, categorized by Ordinals as containing sat number “1575000000000000,” moved to the user’s wallet after they bought and transferred bitcoin. 

Its rarity compares to winning the lottery, as only four such “Epic Sats” exist until now. (In total, 34 will be released over subsequent halvings). 

The wallet address that now contains the UTXO that points to the coveted satoshi is bc1ptjcsnnycr52ccwg4mvvsczkwzvc0qydlxw6q7pcelxkx8equk3asduuz86. It was acquired in a 0.02 BTC transaction worth around $1,000 at the time, which paid a transaction fee of just over $1.

Market observers will now doubtless wait to see whether the lucky holder keeps the Epic Sat for themselves or sells it off, potentially for millions.

Sleuths can verify the transaction by referencing Ordinals indexing tools like Ord.io and Ordinals.com. These identify the satoshi’s number and position in the chain, allowing its location to be traced via an explorer-like Mempool.space.

While controversial, these Epic Sats create profound digital scarcity akin to rare collectables. The Binance user’s good fortune may ignite further interest and intensify the search for the remaining two Epic Sats from 2012 and 2020.

Asset management giant BlackRock says it is seeing growing interest in Bitcoin ETFs from institutional players like sovereign wealth funds and pension funds. 

This comes after a hugely successful debut for BlackRock’s Bitcoin ETF, iShares IBIT, which was approved by the Securities and Exchange Commission earlier this year.

BREAKING: Blackrock says “Sovereign wealth funds, pension funds and endowments” are coming to #Bitcoin

Institutions are coming big time 🚀 pic.twitter.com/GLcpMJYkYz

— Bitcoin Magazine (@BitcoinMagazine) May 2, 2024

The U.S. spot Bitcoin ETF market has exploded in 2024, crossing $200 billion in volume since launch. Recent 13F filings have shown major institutional buyers making small allocations to these newly regulated Bitcoin products.

Now, despite a recent cooldown and outflows from Bitcoin ETFs amidst market volatility, BlackRock remains bullish on institutional demand long-term. The firm’s head of digital assets, Robert Mitchnick, said in an interview he expects sovereign wealth funds, pensions, and endowments to start trading spot Bitcoin ETFs in the coming months.

Mitchnick stated that BlackRock has been in educational conversations with these institutions about Bitcoin for years. The asset manager is unfazed even after iShares IBIT saw its first-ever outflows this week following 71 straight days of inflows.

Mitchnick believes the current lull will be followed by a new wave of buying from deep-pocketed institutional players. As more giants like BlackRock build multi-billion dollar Bitcoin reserves, it validates Bitcoin as an investable asset class.

The ETF conversations also come as BlackRock CEO Larry Fink has softened his once critical stance on Bitcoin.

With iShares IBIT quickly accumulating over $17 billion in Bitcoin, BlackRock has proven the massive latent demand for regulated Bitcoin investment vehicles.

Despite short-term ETF outflows amid volatility, its long-term outlook remains highly optimistic.

Click the image to learn more.

As Mitchnick stated, “Many of these interested firms – whether we’re talking about pensions, endowments, sovereign wealth funds, insurers, other asset managers, family offices – are having ongoing diligence and research conversations, and we’re playing a role from an education perspective.”

All in all, such educated, pragmatic institutional interest bodes well for the continued growth of the Bitcoin ETF market.

BNP Paribas, the second largest European bank, has purchased exposure to Bitcoin via a spot ETF, per recent 13F filings with the SEC . 

The filings show BNP Paribas bought BlackRock’s iShares Bitcoin Trust ETF (IBIT).

JUST IN: 🇫🇷 Second largest European bank, BNP Paribas reports exposure to #Bitcoin ETF in 13F filings.

It’s just getting started 🚀 pic.twitter.com/4zi1EkAc07

— Bitcoin Magazine (@BitcoinMagazine) May 2, 2024

U.S. spot Bitcoin ETFs have seen immense success since launching earlier this year, crossing $200 billion in cumulative volume. 

Under regulations, large institutional investors managing over $100 million must disclose their quarterly holdings via 13F filings. After their highly anticipated debut, Bitcoin investors have been awaiting these filings to see which institutions are allocating to Bitcoin ETFs. 

Previous 2024 Q1 filings revealed purchases by asset managers, family offices, and banks like Park Avenue Securities, Inscription Capital, Wedbush Private Capital, and American National Bank.

Now, BNP Paribas, Europe’s second-largest bank with over $600 billion in assets under management, has joined in. While BNP’s roughly $40,000 investment in IBIT is relatively small, it’s significant for one of the largest banks in Europe to start gaining Bitcoin exposure via an ETF.

According to analysts, more 13F filings before the May 15 deadline could uncover substantially more institutional participation in spot Bitcoin ETFs. The filings so far indicate a growing acceptance of Bitcoin among traditional finance players.

Click the image to learn more.

If more major banks and asset managers disclose Bitcoin allocations, it would further validate Bitcoin as an investable asset class. 

Adoption by old-guard institutions could spur wider mainstream acceptance and additional inflows into regulated Bitcoin investment vehicles. While Bitcoin ETF purchases remain a small fraction of portfolios so far, the fact that traditional giants like BNP Paribas are participating is telling.