The lure of a corporate treasury that is full of cryptocurrencies also prompts the National Center for Public Policy Research (NCPPR). This time, the group has Meta Platforms Inc.
Ethan Peck, an employee of the National Center, has submitted a Bitcoin Treasury Shareholder Proposal to Meta on behalf of his family, marking another attempt to bring cryptocurrency to the boardrooms of tech giants.
Tim Jotzman, a Bitcoin (BTC) podcast host, shared the proposal on January 10 through a social media post. See below.
Are corporate treasurers turning into crypto fortresses?
Based in Washington, DC, the NCPPR has been promoting Bitcoin as a hedge against inflation and economic turmoil. They have already approached Microsoft Corp. and Amazon.com Inc. with similar pitches.
Microsoft based in Redmond, Washington nothing the idea, but Amazon based in Seattle reported consider it in an April meeting of its shareholders.
NCPPR seems to be taking a page from Michael Saylor’s playbook. Saylor, as former CEO and current chairman of MicroStrategy, craft a Bitcoin-heavy corporate strategy and has emerged as a poster child for crypto-heavy corporate treasurers.
If NCPPR gets its way, Meta and Amazon, like MicroStrategy, will allocate a portion of their respective assets to Bitcoin. For what? They see it as an alternative to lackluster corporate bonds because of its fixed supply.
Also, Bitcoin ETFs, or exchange-traded funds, broken out 100% by the end of 2024. It quadruples the returns of the S&P 500 index and 35% higher than the Roundhill Magnificent Seven ETF, which tracks the magnificent seven tech giants (of which Meta, Microsoft and Amazon are members ).
And then there’s MicroStrategy, which has seen its stock balloon 2,191% in five years.
Remember Libra? No? Good.
Meta tried to launch its own digital currency, Libra, in 2019 when the company was known as Facebook. The project aims to create a global stablecoin backed by a basket of fiat currencies and government securities.
Libra was intended to facilitate low-cost, seamless transactions worldwide, especially for the unbanked population. However, the initiative has faced significant regulatory pushback from lawmakers and financial authorities around the world, which have raised concerns about monetary sovereignty, data privacy and potential abuse for illicit activities.
The project renamed as Diem in 2020, focused only on stablecoins supported in US dollars. Meta courted Visa, Mastercard and PayPal to be partners, but they he withdrew support
In early 2022, Meta sold Diem to Silvergate Bank for about $200 million.
While the Libra/Diem initiative was a bust, it showed Meta’s ambition in the digital currency space.
Whether Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg and his board will take the NCPPR’s bait and make Bitcoin their next big move remains to be seen.
