By Nathan Ferguson
Peter Schiff, Who is a well-known gold bug and Bitcoin skeptic, recently ridiculed the Bitcoin (BTC) hodlers who are optimistic about the token’s performance in 2023. He posted a question on Twitter on whether the hodlers would sell BTC if its price reaches $5,000. After that, he asked about the extent of the downfall to be experienced by the primary cryptocurrency following which they would acknowledge that their perception of Bitcoin was wrong.
Gold Bug Peter Schiff Ridicules BTC Hodlers by Asking about the Extent of Their Hodling
On this, the majority answered that they would hold Bitcoin even if its price touches the 0 mark. 10% of them opted to sell their Bitcoin holdings if the token reaches $5,000. Nonetheless, it is interesting that up to one-fifth proportion agreed to sell on the $1,000 mark. Many collapses of crypto entities and the pessimistic macroeconomic situation have caused the top crypto to fall abruptly during the 3 quarters after its peak at $69,000.
This figure was reached by it on the 30th of November 2021. Since then, Bitcoin has been dropping in terms of price. Nonetheless, the extended bear market could not decrease the enthusiasm of MicroStrategy for hodling. The platform purchased another dip on 22nd December and enhanced its balance sheet by adding 2,395 more Bitcoin tokens to it.
MicroStrategy Sells 704 Bitcoin to Repurchase It Afterward
Recently, Michael Saylor (the Executive Chairman of MicroStrategy) stated that technocrat BTC investors expect gains from the macroeconomic atmosphere during the upcoming 5 to 10 years. On the contrary, he mentioned that MicroStrategy is in a maximalist group that witnesses BTC as beneficial for human competition and intends to promote BTC adoption with its long-term investments.
It is rather ironic that the firm then sold 704 Bitcoin for nearly $12M, just to rapidly purchase 810 BTC sometime later. While emphasizing this maximalist approach, Saylor acknowledged that trading BTC introduces a capital loss. As per him, that can counterbalance the tax implemented on the capital gains of MicroStrategy’s business of enterprise software.
Nevertheless, the sale is contrary to the promise made by Saylor in his interview conducted in January 2022 by Bloomberg. In that interview, Saylor was asked if MicroStrategy’s Bitcoin holdings would be sold during a prolonged bear market. On this question, he simply answered that they are not sellers and would never sell BTC as holding Bitcoin was their strategy. Fundstrat’s Sean Farrell claimed that MicroStrategy is abusing a loophole.
According to him, by exploiting that loophole the firm sells an asset and then quickly repurchases it to minimize the burden of tax on it. The company can do so as the majority of the crypto tokens are not categorized as securities and thus the wash trading-related rules are not implemented on them.