The next big treasure: Corporations buy up Bitcoin as a treasury reserve

On Oct. 8, right on cue, mobile payments giant Square, which boasts a market cap of $86.6 billion, announced that it had invested $50 million in Bitcoin.

"We are seeing a new trend emerge where corporations are using Bitcoin as a reserve asset for part or majority of their treasury," pronounced Anthony Pompliano in his Oct. 15 newsletter.

"These firms probably see Bitcoin as a hedge or insurance against current market conditions. With these companies entering the markets, it opens the floodgates and establishes some form of confidence for the rest to follow."A longer-term worry.

Buried within Stone Ridge's announcement was a call to banks and philanthropies to likewise make Bitcoin a principal component of their treasury reserve strategies.

Square has been bullish on Bitcoin for some years now.

Its Cash App service enables users to buy and sell Bitcoin, and some analysts believe other payment firms will now have to facilitate crypto investment in some form - or risk being left behind.

"With only roughly 2.5 million Bitcoin left to be mined, many institutional investors will look at other cryptocurrencies for better upside potential," added Moya.

Reflecting on the recent public-firm announcements, Ammous told Cointelegraph: "What was most interesting for me about the MicroStrategy and Stone Ridge purchases is that these are not companies that deal with Bitcoin as part of their core business, and yet they chose to place the majority of their corporate reserves in Bitcoin, not just a small fraction."

No more than that could ever be minted, and that appears to have served Bitcoin well in the time of COVID-19.

As Ammous told Cointelegraph, "There seems to be a growing recognition that the strictly limited supply of Bitcoin gives it a good chance at maintaining its value well into the future."