Michael Saylor relinquished his title as CEO of MicroStrategy yesterday. For many, this is very unexpected, but the reason is very understandable. Saylor will not be leaving the company, but will be focusing more on bitcoin.
New position
In a new statement, Saylor informs Microstrategy that he will take up a new position in four days (effective August 8).
He will become the new “executive chairman” instead of CEO. His new duties will allow him to focus on long-term innovation and business strategy around bitcoin.
This does not mean that Michael Saylor is quitting all other roles at once. He will still fulfill his role as chairman of the board of directors and in addition he will remain head of the investment committee.
How many bitcoins?
During Saylor’s time at MicroStrategy, the company bought a lot of bitcoins. Currently, the company owns nearly 130,000 BTC, which are currently worth just under $3 billion.
Microstrategy bought these bitcoins at an average price of $30,664, which means they made a loss. The current bitcoin price is about 23,000, so the loss per bitcoin is about $7,600. The total loss amounts to a mega amount of almost $1 billion.
Acquire and hold
Despite these large losses, Michael Saylor continues to make decisions about bitcoin at Microstrategy. He still remains a big supporter of bitcoin, and therefore will not be selling these digital coins anytime soon. He tells this in a comment about his new position:
“I believe that splitting the roles of chairman and CEO will allow us to better pursue our two business strategies of acquiring and holding bitcoin and growing our enterprise analytics software business. As executive chairman, I will be able to focus more on our bitcoin acquisition strategy and related bitcoin advocacy initiatives.”
