$BTC: Saylor Says MicroStrategy Is Working on ‘Enterprise Applications of Lightning’

On Saturday (September 3), Michael Saylor, Co-Founder and Executive Chairman of Nasdaq-listed business intelligence company MicroStrategy Inc. (NASDAQ: MSTR), talked about what his firm is doing to help with enterprise adoption of Bitcoin’s Lightning Network.

It is worth remembering that on 11 August 2020, MicroStrategy announced via a press release that it had “purchased 21,454 bitcoins at an aggregate purchase price of $250 million” to use as a “primary treasury reserve asset.”

Michael Saylor (the company’s Co-Founder, Chairman, and CEO) said at the time:

“Our decision to invest in Bitcoin at this time was driven in part by a confluence of macro factors affecting the economic and business landscape that we believe is creating long-term risks for our corporate treasury program ― risks that should be addressed proactively.“

Since then MicroStrategy has continued to accumulate Bitcoin and its CEO has become one of Bitcoin’s most vocal advocates. MicroStrategy’s latest $BTC purchase, which Saylor tweeted about on June 29, means that the firm is now HODLing around 129,699 bitcoins, which were “acquired for ~$3.98 billion at an average price of ~$30,664 per bitcoin.”

On August 2, MicroStrategy released its “Q2 2022 Financial Results“. The company’s press release about its latest quarterly earnings report announced that “as of August 8, 2022, Michael Saylor will assume the new role of Executive Chairman and Phong Le, the Company’s President, will also serve as the Company’s new Chief Executive Officer and as a member of the Board of Directors.” It also mentioned that “Mr. Saylor will remain the Chairman of the Board of Directors and an executive officer of the Company.”

The press release went on to say that “as Executive Chairman, Mr. Saylor will focus primarily on innovation and long-term corporate strategy, while continuing to provide oversight of the Company’s bitcoin acquisition strategy as head of the Board’s Investments Committee.”

Saylor had this to say about his new role at the company:

“I believe that splitting the roles of Chairman and CEO will enable us to better pursue our two corporate 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, while Phong will be empowered as CEO to manage overall corporate operations.“

Here is how Binance Academy explains what the Lightning Network is:

“The Lightning Network is a network that sits on top of a blockchain to facilitate fast peer-to-peer transactions. It’s not exclusive to Bitcoin – other cryptocurrencies such as Litecoin have integrated it. You might be wondering what we mean by “sits on top of a blockchain.” The Lightning Network is what’s called an off-chain or layer two solution. It allows individuals to transact without having to record every transaction on the blockchain.

“The Lightning Network is separate from the Bitcoin network – it has its own nodes and software, but it nonetheless communicates with the main chain. To enter or exit the Lightning Network, you need to create special transactions on the blockchain. What you’re actually doing with your first transaction is building a sort of smart contract with another user.“

On Sunday (September 4), CoinDesk reported that Saylor had spoken (via a video call) on Saturday (September 3) to an audience at the Baltic Honeybadger conference in Riga, Latvia, and that he had this to say about what his firm is doing with the Lightning Network:

“MicroStrategy has got some R&D projects going on right now where we’re working on enterprise applications of Lightning: enterprise Lightning wallet, enterprise Lightning servers, enterprise authentication.“

He also explained why he believes that Lightning has a great future:

“The advantage of Lightning is not just that you could scale up bitcoin for billions of people, or drive the transaction cost to nearly nothing, but also, the ethos of bitcoin is to go very carefully and not move fast on the base layer without the universal consensus, but in Lightning, you can move much more aggressively developing functionality and take more risks with the applications than you can with the underlying bitcoin layer.“

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Featured Image via Pixabay

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