PC giant Dell's founder becomes a "new bull" for Bitcoin? He has posted multiple optimistic tweets and supported BTC payments as early as 10 years ago
The leader of this established PC giant, Michael Dell, seems to have turned his attention back to the cryptocurrency sector after early adoption of Bitcoin.Author: Nancy, PANews
In the post-PC era, Dell has once again gained popularity with its AI narrative. Currently, the helm of this veteran PC giant, Michael Dell, seems to be turning his attention back to the cryptocurrency space after being an early adopter of Bitcoin.
A few days ago, Michael Dell tweeted, "Scarcity creates value," which caught the attention of Bitcoin bull and MicroStrategy founder Michael Saylor, who replied, "Bitcoin represents digital scarcity." Subsequently, Michael Dell retweeted Saylor's reply with an image of Cookie Monster eating Bitcoin cookies.
Moreover, Michael Dell initiated a community poll asking, "What do you think is the next major breakthrough in technology?" The options included quantum computing, artificial intelligence, blockchain, and space technology, with blockchain receiving the highest voting rate, surpassing AI.
As one of the world's wealthiest tech tycoons, Michael Dell has a net worth of $120 billion, and every move he makes attracts attention and discussion. His focus on Bitcoin has immediately sparked speculation, especially given the number of billionaires holding Bitcoin globally.
In fact, over a decade ago, Dell, along with giants like Microsoft and PayPal, was an early adopter of Bitcoin and one of the global e-commerce companies accepting Bitcoin payments. In July 2014, shortly after multiple warnings about Bitcoin malware, Dell, which had nearly $60 billion in sales at the time, announced a partnership with Coinbase to accept Bitcoin as a payment method. To encourage more people to use Bitcoin for payments, Dell also launched a 10% discount promotion. In the announcement, Dell not only highlighted Bitcoin's advantages such as "effectively reducing payment processing costs" and "easy to use anywhere," but also emphasized that users could make direct payments with Bitcoin. Customers simply needed to select Bitcoin as their payment method when placing an order, then be redirected to Coinbase to pay through their account or Bitcoin wallet. The entire payment process was similar to today's Alipay, while purchasing goods indirectly through Bitcoin gift cards like Gyft, eGifter, and iTradeBTC was the mainstream choice at that time.
Additionally, the announcement referenced a related report from Coindesk when discussing "whether Dell has already accepted Bitcoin," stating, "Although Dell is not a brand for enthusiasts, it does offer a range of interesting products for different users, such as large high-end displays for designers and Alienware laptops and equipment for gamers." Providing consumers with more flexible payment options may be key to Dell's timely support for Bitcoin.
Less than a month after the feature was launched, Dell received payment orders for over 85 Bitcoins (worth about $50,000 at the time) and subsequently expanded the service to the UK and Canada. Three months later, Dell also became a data center supplier for Bitcoin mining, reaching an agreement with a Seattle-based Bitcoin ASIC provider regarding server hosting, using some of its servers for Bitcoin mining. Dell's Chief Information Officer, Paul Walsh, also stated that Dell is quite familiar with Bitcoin mining.
However, due to sluggish market demand, Dell announced the cessation of Bitcoin payments in October 2017. Since then, Michael Dell has rarely mentioned Bitcoin publicly. In a 2021 interview with The New York Times, he stated that he was unclear about Bitcoin's value but believed that blockchain might be undervalued. When asked if Bitcoin was overvalued or undervalued, Dell replied, "I don't know."
It is worth noting that according to Dell's latest financial report, its current assets on the balance sheet amount to $34.5 billion, including $5.89 billion in cash and cash equivalents, but it has not publicly disclosed holding any Bitcoin.
However, Dell's presence is often felt in the crypto space. For example, in 2019, Dell co-launched the data privacy project Alvarium with IOTA and Linux; in February 2023, Dell joined the Hedera governance council and will develop applications for highly decentralized critical task environments on the Hedera network by running its own Hedera node; in January 2024, the decentralized cloud service OORT joined Dell's global customer loyalty program to provide unique decentralized data storage services for Dell's global customers. Additionally, Dell and Michael Dell's investment firm have participated in investments in crypto projects. For instance, in March 2022, sports merchandise giant Fanatics announced a $1.5 billion funding round led by MSD Capital LP, with a valuation of $27 billion; in May 2024, distributed GPU cloud computing service RunPod announced that Dell Technologies Capital led its $20 million seed round financing.
Although Dell and Michael Dell have not yet publicly made a significant move into the crypto space, their high-profile statements highlight the increasing mainstream attention surrounding Bitcoin, and their public optimism about Bitcoin may also suggest that they are quietly allocating crypto assets.
