No ‘Bitcoin strategy’ for Dell yet, despite CEO’s perceived public support

• Dell Technologies didn’t add BTC to its holdings in Q2
• On the other hand, AI was the biggest driver of the firm’s earnings

Michael Dell, CEO of tech hardware giant Dell Technologies, left the Bitcoin community disappointed after it was revealed that the firm didn’t adopt a BTC strategy in Q2. The crypto community expected a declaration of BTC holdings during the Q2 earnings report on 29 August. This, because the CEO has been publicly in support of the world’s largest cryptocurrency across X (formerly Twitter). 

Dell’s ‘public support’ for BTC

In June, Dell conducted an X poll to determine ‘the most important thing’ between AI, BTC, and love/relationships. The poll results ranked BTC higher than the rest of the items and attracted positive reactions from some of the top BTC bulls like Michael Saylor. 

A week before conducting the aforementioned poll, Dell Technologies’ Chief posted a cryptic message – ‘Scarcity creates value,’ which is typically associated with BTC because of its capped supply of 21 million coins. 

These posts created the impression that the exec was leaning towards the crypto asset. By extension, many also believed Dell would adopt the famous BTC strategy that Michael Saylor and MicroStrategy pioneered. 

However, BTC wasn’t mentioned in the firm’s Q2 earnings report. Most market watchers couldn’t hide their disappointment after their BTC hopes were dashed.

Interestingly, despite Bitcoin ranking higher than AI in the poll on X, AI was the major driver of the firm’s Q2 earnings. Reacting to the firm’s Q2 performance, Dell Technologies’ Vice Chairman Jeff Clarke said, 

“Our AI momentum accelerated in Q2, and we’ve seen an increase in the number of enterprise customers buying AI solutions each quarter.”

Here, it’s worth noting that MicroStrategy’s Bitcoin strategy, which involves keeping BTC as part of the treasury, has been adopted by the likes of Semler Scientific and Metaplanet. 

MicroStrategy, at press time, held 226.5K BTC, worth over $13B. The strategy’s main goal is to boost the underlying stock’s value, especially amid increasing institutional adoption through BTC ETFs. This was recently noted by Eric Semler, Chairman of Semler Scientific. He said,

“We are encouraged by the growing institutional adoption of bitcoin. It was recently reported that for the first time, institutions own more than 20% of bitcoin ETF assets under management. We believe this increasing institutionalization will drive value for both Bitcoin prices and for our stockholders.”