Becoming a Better Business with Bitcoin

Friday the 13th is always revered and joked about, but Friday the 13th of March 2020 is one “Friday the 13th” I’ll remember for a very long time to come. Due to COVID-19, markets panicked globally. The following Monday, we held a team meeting to announce we’d be working from home due to growing concerns in Australia. Thinking we’d be back in the office in a month or two was naive, in hindsight…

We all know what happened in the months after that. Black swan events tend to change your mindset pretty quickly. Coincidentally, our management team had jotted down a black swan scenario plan a year earlier—which included the steps and actions we’d take, should something like this occur.

As a company, we were lucky we didn’t have to action that plan. We managed to ride out the lockdowns and uncertainty in the market. How did we manage to do this? Well, those events forced me to think of ways we could protect the company and team from future scenarios like this.

As a company, a large part of our retained earnings was kept in the business. This certainly helped us through last year, giving us added peace of mind of being able to ride out a long term recession.

Investing our earnings in Bitcoin

I’ve always been interested in economics and Bitcoin, but last year’s events made me pay much more attention to the world economy. In fact, it forced me to pay serious attention to what the local and macro economy was doing. To cut a long story short, we decided to convert a large portion of our retained earnings into Bitcoin. Why, you might ask? I realised that keeping the cash was hurting the business as monetary inflation became the new ‘normal’. To protect the business and ensure its long-term sustainability, we had to have an insurance policy in the event of another economic meltdown.

So how did that decision pay off?

That decision has paid off well to date. With the appreciation of our company balance sheet, we now have additional innovative ways to access capital which we can use for growth, and to provide the best possible services to our clients. Bitcoin has allowed us to invest in the following:

• We’re able to attract top talent.
• We can invest in innovative technology and new services.
• We’ve got an ‘insurance policy’ if another black swan event comes along.

Leveraging Bitcoin on a larger scale

Some people may have heard about MicroStrategy. They essentially did exactly what we did last year, but on a much larger scale. They made waves around the world when they converted USD 1.1 billion into Bitcoin, and they still convert all their retained earnings every month. Led by billionaire tech investor, entrepreneur and CEO Michael Saylor, MicroStrategy has paved the way and showed companies how to leverage Bitcoin for the benefit of the company and their customers.

While I’ve always had an interest in Bitcoin, the events of 2020 gave me the push I needed to make the move and invest our earnings. In doing so, we saw a range of benefits which will continue to grow into the future. I highly recommend any CEO, CFO and business owner (small or big) visits Hope.com, and learns more about MicroStrategy’s approach and macro economic views. Having this knowledge could help your business plan better for the future.

@michaelsaylor @microstrategy #Bitcoin