Roundup: Corporate Bitcoin Adoption

Corporates Making Bitcoin Moves

In the last week, Marathon Digital, MicroStrategy, Coinbase, and Block (formerly Square), all made headlines in the public company bitcoin space.

S&P Dow Jones Indices announced that Marathon Digital would be added to the S&P 600 small cap index on May 8th. Shares of MARA jumped 18% on the news.

MicroStrategy announced plans to roll-out a Bitcoin-based decentralized identity service called MicroStrategy Orange. The service will leverage Ordinals-like inscriptions to put verification data on the bitcoin blockchain.

Potential use cases for Bitcoin-based decentralized IDs include verifying users on social media platforms, which would be useful in eliminating spam bots, or authenticating emails and text messages. Think of it as the digital-age version of signing a scroll with your seal in wax.

The first implementation of MicroStrategy Orange will be “Orange for Outlook” in partnership with Microsoft, which will allow email recipients to verify the identity of the sender.

Coinbase announced the adoption of Accounting Standards Update 2023-08, which allows for fair market value accounting of crypto assets held on the balance sheet for investment. As a result, Coinbase recognized a $737 million pre-tax mark-to-market gain on its balance sheet crypto assets in Q1.