I am quite certain their position on taking a loan against their bitcoin to buy more bitcoin is safe because they have more bitcoin to deposit in their account to avoid a margin call. However, taking leverage by borrowing against a volatile asset to buy the same volatile asset is very risky. The real whales of the cryptospace, Sam Bankman Fried, Changpeng Zhao and Arthur Hayes and the cryptofunds who follow them can manipulate the market to liquidate Michael Saylor.
MicroStrategy’s CFO Phong Le explained in the company’s first-quarter earnings call on Tuesday that if Bitcoin’s price falls below $21,000, or around 50% from current levels, it will be forced to pony up more cryptocurrency to back its $205 million Bitcoin-collateralized loan with Silvergate Bank that was used to buy Bitcoin in the first place.
"We took out the loan at a 25% LTV; the margin call occurs at 50% LTV,” Le said. “So essentially, Bitcoin needs to cut in half, or around $21,000, before we’d have a margin call.”
The CFO noted that MicroStrategy still holds “quite a bit” of uncollateralized Bitcoin that it could use to answer any potential margin call, however.
“As you can see, we mentioned previously we have quite a bit of uncollateralized Bitcoin,” Le said. “So we have more that we could contribute in the case that we have a lot of downward volatility. But again, we're talking about $21,000 before we get to a point where there needs to be more margin or more collateral contributors. So I think we're in a pretty comfortable place where we are right now.”
Read in full https://fortune.com/2022/05/04/michael-saylor-microstrategy-margin-call-bitcoin/
MicroStrategy’s CFO Phong Le explained in the company’s first-quarter earnings call on Tuesday that if Bitcoin’s price falls below $21,000, or around 50% from current levels, it will be forced to pony up more cryptocurrency to back its $205 million Bitcoin-collateralized loan with Silvergate Bank that was used to buy Bitcoin in the first place.
"We took out the loan at a 25% LTV; the margin call occurs at 50% LTV,” Le said. “So essentially, Bitcoin needs to cut in half, or around $21,000, before we’d have a margin call.”
The CFO noted that MicroStrategy still holds “quite a bit” of uncollateralized Bitcoin that it could use to answer any potential margin call, however.
“As you can see, we mentioned previously we have quite a bit of uncollateralized Bitcoin,” Le said. “So we have more that we could contribute in the case that we have a lot of downward volatility. But again, we're talking about $21,000 before we get to a point where there needs to be more margin or more collateral contributors. So I think we're in a pretty comfortable place where we are right now.”
Read in full https://fortune.com/2022/05/04/michael-saylor-microstrategy-margin-call-bitcoin/
The crypto market could be even worse than we could have imagined if MicroStrategy got liquidated