One of Bitcoin (BTC)’s most frank and highest-profile advocates, Stone Ridge Asset Management founder Ross L. Stevens, has written to shareholders in his company to talk up the most prominent cryptocurrency – and its role in the company’s future, bringing parallels to investors supporting firms like Amazon, Google, and Facebook during the companies’ early days.
Stevens declared that “from a valuation framework perspective,” he believed Bitcoin “should be viewed identically to those network business models – the value of the network growing with the number of users.”
His company has been acquiring Bitcoins as part of its actions, making a $ 115 million investment in the token just last year. It has also been partnering with firms that use their balance sheets to purchase the token.
Stevens’ partner Michael Saylor, the co-founder of MicroStategy, lately attempted to share his BTC-buying “roadmap” to other company-runners, including the equivalents of Elon Musk.
And this BTC preaching is obviously contagious. Stevens made his latest calls about the token in a letter to shareholders hosted by MicroStrategy.
Here, Stevens compared investing in network business models with BTC investment, adding a hint that there were two major differences.
The first of these, he wrote, was that “money is primordially more important in a way even the most hilarious on-demand cat
videos, or same-day delivery of any product we want, will ever be – there is no comparison.”
Secondly, he added, try as they might, regulators would never be able to “turn off” the Bitcoin network.
He wrote,
“Bitcoin lacks the possibility of antitrust enforcement. Ever. No matter how big and no matter how valuable it gets. Nor can Bitcoin ever be globally confiscated. Yes, individual countries can attempt to confiscate Bitcoin and, over time, some may try. […] However, just like the internet can be censored in certain countries, but cannot be turned off, Bitcoin can be (attempted to be) confiscated in a country, but cannot be turned off.”
Stevens added in the letter – something of eulogy to the virtues of BTC – that a range of factors will lead all generations to adopt bitcoin.
He emphasized that “United States Government-Paper-Money (USGPM)” (the dollar) was in a downward depreciation spiral while the rise of bitcoin was now inevitable.
He believes that,
“The power of the insight – that only point-to-point USGPM depreciation matters, not volatility – will lead, I believe, to an explosion in bitcoin-driven financial innovation, including bitcoin-denominated life insurance for the 30-50-year-old crowd, and bitcoin-denominated annuities for the 50-70-year-old-crowd.”
As reported, America’s Massachusetts Mutual Life Insurance (also known as MassMutual) has purchased a USD 5m minority equity stake in NYDIG, a Stone Ridge-run subsidiary firm that provides crypto services to institutional investors.
Stevens also stimulated to pacify fears about the environmental damage caused by crypto mining, challenging that the electricity usage involved in BTC mining was “worth it,” writing,
“Bitcoin mining is the only profitable use of energy in human history that does not need to be located near human settlement to operate. The long-term implications of this are world-changing. […] The world has never had a profitable use of energy that is location independent.”
As of May 2019, Stone Ridge Asset Management had USD 15.88bn in assets under management, according to Wallmine data.
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