Bitcoin Hedge Theory Meets a Harsh Boardroom Reality

Globe and Mail

2 days ago

The Bitcoin (CRYPTO: BTC) whitepaper compared the cryptocurrency to physical gold in 2008. 17 years later, the cryptocurrency seems ready to take on a more gold-like role in the global economy.
But it's not all good news. A couple of tech giants have recently demonstrated that the traditional business world still lags behind in embracing Bitcoin as a long-term general asset. Here's what crypto investors need to know about this development.
How Bitcoin earned its Wall Street stripes
The Bitcoin platform has earned some Street cred in recent years.
Large-scale investors have access to exchange-traded funds (ETFs) based on spot Bitcoin prices. These spot Bitcoin funds have nearly $121 billion of digital assets under management in June 2025. Some of the most significant buys of these ETFs come from old-school financial giants such as Goldman Sachs (NYSE: GS) and Morgan Stanley (NYSE: MS).
Massive companies like Tesla (NASDAQ: TSLA) and Block (NYSE: XYZ) have converted hundreds of millions of dollars into Bitcoin. Running even further ahead of the crypto trend, Strategy (NASDAQ: MSTR) is more of a Bitcoin investment vehicle than a software developer nowadays. The company formerly known as Microstrategy has built a $61.7 billion Bitcoin portfolio with mostly borrowed money and shareholder funds.
The Trump administration included crypto support in its campaign messages, and is indeed taking some industry-friendly steps already. There is now an official Strategic Bitcoin Reserve and a smaller Digital Asset Stockpile for other cryptocurrencies. Also, this iteration of the Securities and Exchange Commission looks ready to approve crypto-investing policies that the previous group kept kicking down the road. These political twists have to be good news for Bitcoin owners.
Bitcoin-based investments used to be pure high-risk ideas, with sky-high beta values indicating massive volatility. That's no longer the case. Last year's ETF introductions and Bitcoin halving event threw some cold water on the cryptocurrency's volatility. Recently, Bitcoin ETFs have explored negative beta values, suggesting that this asset often moves in the opposite direction of the American stock market. That's taking the hedging thesis to a new extreme. Low beta values signify below-average price swings, while negative ones belong to investments that often move in direct opposition to the stock market.
Long story short, there are many reasons to treat Bitcoin as an effective market hedge nowadays. The largest and oldest cryptocurrency can counterbalance many quirks in the American and global economy.
Tech giants face the crypto conversation
Inspired by these newfound stability qualities, activist investors have been asking some of the world's largest tech titans to buy some Bitcoin. Actually, not even that -- two different groups asked Microsoft (NASDAQ: MSFT) and Meta Platforms (NASDAQ: META) to just look into the idea. The proxy statements for both companies' annual shareholder meetings asked the board of directors to simply assess whether some Bitcoin exposure would be good for shareholders.
As usual, Meta and Microsoft opposed these proposals. Microsoft's board recommended shareholders to vote against the measure, since the company already considers every cash management option -- including Bitcoin. Meta's board offered the same recommendation, citing its own comprehensive review of every reasonable idea.
"While we are not opining on the merits of cryptocurrency investments compared to other assets, we believe the requested assessment is unnecessary given our existing processes to manage our corporate treasury," the recommendation ended.
The votes are in -- and they're brutal
Putting these Bitcoin proposals on the proxy statements didn't exactly change the game. The policy assessment requests got almost no support from shareholders.
Microsoft's vote results were published in December 2024. Every shareholder proposal fell short of approval. The top performers got more than 30% approval ratings, but the Bitcoin topic fell between the cracks with just 0.55% "yea" votes.
It was Meta's turn to vote on this stuff last Wednesday. A few proposals got the thumbs-up vote from at least 20% of shareholders, but the Bitcoin assessment was barely there. Approval rating: 0.08%. I mean, that's barely a shadow of a forgotten thought experiment.
Reading between the voting lines
At first glance, the overwhelming downvotes look like a total condemnation of Bitcoin as a hedging instrument. Fractions of a single percent simply don't show any real support for that idea. Take your Bitcoin and go home, dear activist investors.
But there's more nuance to this situation.
The negative company board recommendations came with careful language explaining that they're already thinking about this stuff anyway. Therefore, some investors may simply be satisfied with the ordinary review of financial management options -- if Bitcoin ever becomes a no-brainer wealth management holding, the strategic committees of the world's largest tech giants will surely figure it out and take action.
At the same time, there's some truth to the anti-Bitcoin sentiment seen in these lopsided votes. The vast majority of Microsoft and Meta Platforms shares are held by institutional investors, led by ETF managers and retirement fund portfolios. Getting the first hint of Bitcoin investment support from those groups should drive Bitcoin prices dramatically higher in a hurry -- but the mega-investors aren't ready to make that commitment yet.
All in all, I find the lack of investor support surprising but the proposals may have served a worthwhile purpose anyhow. Just asking people to think about Bitcoin as a long-term investment could have positive long-term effects. In this early stage, lots of investors just haven't taken Bitcoin seriously yet. If each vote proposal got just one more financial heavyweight to start thinking in those terms, I'd say it was worth the mountains of proxy-filing paperwork.
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Randi Zuckerberg, a former director of market development and spokeswoman for Facebook and sister to Meta Platforms CEO Mark Zuckerberg, is a member of The Motley Fool's board of directors. Anders Bylund has positions in Bitcoin. The Motley Fool has positions in and recommends Bitcoin, Block, Goldman Sachs Group, Meta Platforms, Microsoft, and Tesla. The Motley Fool recommends the following options: long January 2026 $395 calls on Microsoft and short January 2026 $405 calls on Microsoft. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy.