It seems that the race towards bitcoin integration is gaining momentum in the traditional finance and business world. After a negative vote from Microsoft shareholders on bitcoin integration, we are also seeing developments from Meta. Shareholders of Meta are in favor of bitcoin. On January 1st, Meta shareholders submitted a request titled “Bitcoin Treasury Assessment,” in which they ask for an evaluation to determine if adding bitcoins to Meta’s treasury would be in the shareholders’ best interest. The document states that as of September, Meta had over $100 billion in assets, including $60 billion in cash and equivalents, as well as securities such as treasury bonds.
This highlights the need to allocate a portion of assets to assets that may appreciate more strongly, despite facing higher short-term volatility. It is worth noting that many of Meta’s shareholders are institutional players such as Vanguard and Blackrock. While some have launched BTC spot ETFs, which suggests a favorable reception, this was not the case for Microsoft, where the proposal to add bitcoin to the treasury received only a few positive votes.
As the tenth most capitalized asset in the world, ahead of Tesla and TSMC, Meta’s adoption of bitcoin in its treasury, even in a small proportion as recommended by Blackrock, would be a positive move for the crypto ecosystem. It will be important to closely monitor how the company approaches this, especially compared to Microsoft, given its history. Meta, formerly Facebook, previously developed a stablecoin project called Libra, later renamed Diem, with the aim of offering an asset and financial infrastructure integrated with Facebook. However, the project never came to fruition publicly due to significant pushback from regulators worldwide, forcing Meta to scale back the project significantly. This battle with regulators prevented Meta from launching the project on which teams had been working for several years.
In this context, the company, with its historical experience in the industry, will need to carefully navigate the integration of bitcoin into its treasury. The outcome of this move will be closely watched by industry observers and investors alike.