Ask HN: Any startups here own Bitcoin (and digital assets)?

5 points by bigbossman 5 years ago | 13 comments

Public companies like Square and MicroStrategy have been in the news for buying bitcoin. Anyone here work for a startup that owns bitcoin on its balance sheet? How does the company custody and track their holdings?

Question is intended for both non-crypto and crypto companies.

superbcarrot 5 years ago |

This is one of the worst things a startup can do with their money. I wonder how many will try it just because they want to emulate Tesla.

quickthrower2 5 years ago | |

Not a great thing for Tesla to do. It’s one step away from Google buying Microsoft stock instead of reinvesting it or buybacks.

bigbossman 5 years ago | | |

Your analogy brings up an interesting point.

A better example is the actual case of Microsoft buying Facebook stock to gain exposure to a burgeoning digital network https://www.vox.com/2017/10/23/16412108/facebook-microsoft-2...

tor11 5 years ago | |

owning digital currencies is not even remotely "one of the worst things a startup can do with their money". it is not an investment. it is not productive. but it is not a bad idea.

throwaway2a02 5 years ago | | |

In other words, it's a gamble. And it has terrible effects on the public image of the company if you ask me. If I was a stockholder, that would make me question the long-term stability of the company, if the executive has tendencies towards such behavior.

zachlatta 5 years ago |

At Hack Club, a 501(c)(3) nonprofit that helps teenagers run high school hacker clubs, we accept cryptocurrency donations at https://hackclub.com/donate/.

We open source nearly everything we do at https://github.com/hackclub, even our finances. We have deeply appreciated the generosity of the cryptocurrency community.

We have a Coinbase account where we store received crypto. In our books, we log everything in USD and I believe we record our crypto holdings as an asset. This has worked at our current size since we are a small and cash-strapped organization focusing nearly all our efforts on those we serve.

derivagral 5 years ago |

I don't have an answer, but I do have a question. If you funded some amount of crypto as the primary asset into a new company, and then convinced a SPAC to take you public... is that a net gain? We've seen already-public companies buy up crypto, but what about taking a private one public and skipping the "real" business part?

bigbossman 5 years ago | |

If that's the case, it's similar to owning any kind of asset, such as cash & equivalents, marketable securities, real estate, etc.

quickthrower2 5 years ago | |

How complex can we make the scam eh!

doggosphere 5 years ago |

You can be exposed to a bitcoin etf or closed fund as well, there's a bunch now and probably more coming out.

EBIT, BTCC, GBTC, BTCG, QBTC, BITC

Watch out for momentary premiums/discounts on share price though. https://bitbo.io/ for quick calculations.

randomopining 5 years ago |

STX is looking pretty solid. You can stake out for 8-15% APY in 2 week stints for BTC. Would not be bad as a way to store capital.