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Michael Saylor has made a lot of predictions during his career. And because he became a billionaire in the process, many assume that his forecasts are generally accurate. For example, Bitcoiners applauded his support for — and multi-billion dollar purchases of — bitcoin. He invested at the right times and prices and has earned billions in profit. So when Saylor decided to place a bet on the future of Ethereum, millions listened.
Unfortunately, Saylor got all of his predictions about Ethereum totally wrong.
First, he predicted that the SEC would classify Ethereum as an unregistered security. At his corporate conference in Las Vegas a few weeks ago, he said, “Sometime this summer it will become very clear to everyone that Ethereum is deemed a crypto asset security, not a commodity.”
Second, Saylor predicted that US stock markets would never list a spot Ethereum ETF. “It will never be wrapped in a spot ETF. It will not be accepted by Wall Street; it will not be accepted by mainstream institutional investors.”
Furthermore, he claimed that spot bitcoin ETFs would be the first and last type of spot cryptocurrency ETF. Pointing to the Bitcoin logo, he said, “This is the one, universal, consensus-accepted, institutional-grade crypto asset in the world. There won’t be another one.”
Every one of those predictions turned out to be wrong within five weeks.
Read more: Michael Saylor dumps quarter billion worth of MSTR while hyping bitcoin
Saylor lost all his bets on Ethereum
Despite Joe Lubin’s ConsenSys lawsuit against the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) claiming that commissioners secretly classified Ethereum as a security in some redacted document, there’s no public evidence that they have actually done so.
Read more: ConsenSys says the SEC designated ETH a security but won’t say where
Furthermore, the SEC recently approved three 19b-4 exchange rule change requests from three US stock markets — NYSE, NASDAQ, and CBOE — to list spot ether ETFs. With those landmark approvals out of the way, the SEC will soon review and is widely expected to approve associated S-1 filings from up to nine ETF sponsors.
Worse for Saylor, those sponsors include the largest and most mainstream Wall Street institutions imaginable: BlackRock, Fidelity, Franklin Templeton, Ark, and others.
That sets a final score for Saylor’s three bets on Ethereum at 0-3: no SEC unregistered securities designation (yet, at least), likely SEC spot ether ETF approval, and mainstream institutional investor support.
Saylor lost many bets, then won one
Of course, Saylor has lost other bets during his career. For example, he lost $15 million in his bet that Washington DC wouldn’t notice his $25 million tax evasion scheme. A few days ago, he agreed to pay $40 million to resolve his tax fraud lawsuit.
Saylor also lost $8.5 million in his bet that he would avoid an SEC penalty for declaring false financials during the dot-com mania. He paid $8.2 million in stock plus $350,000 to settle.
Saylor also lost an uncomfortable number of bets about the best corporate strategy for MicroStrategy for two full decades. From late 2000 through 2020, MicroStrategy stock failed to rally anywhere close to an all-time high despite Saylor’s continuous leadership. Finally, in recent months, and thanks to an improved price of bitcoin, shares are approximately two-thirds of their way back to their dot-com highs.
In all, Saylor got a lot of bets wrong in his career, but only one mattered. His prediction that bitcoin was worth buying on margin has made up for all of his previous and subsequent errors. His company, MicroStrategy, owns 214,400 bitcoins today worth over $15 billion after buying at an average price of $35,180 per coin. With the crypto trading at double that price today, MicroStrategy has doubled its $7.5 billion investment.