Patrick Byrne, the CEO of Overstock, has sold his 13 percent share in the company after 20 years of founding and managing the company. He wrote a letter to his former colleagues and explained to them that by 20th September, all the funds gathered from the sale of his shares would be used to invest in the economy.
The investments he’ll be focusing on are gold, silver, and cryptocurrencies. Patrick was able to sell 4.7 million shares over 3 days and collected $90 million from the sale. This sale of such a large amount of shares caused the price to drop from $30 to less than $16.
Patrick has been open about his interest in the security tokens from back in his days when he was at Overstock, but this time he has decided to focus on more privacy-centric investments. In the letter, he explained how gold and silver is stored in Switzerland, which will be soon moved to new and safer locations.
The letter further explained why he decided to leave the company and how it was difficult for the company to acquire corporate insurance while he was a part of the company. The former Overstock CEO decided to sell the shares when an anonymous source from SEC decided to leak the information that soon, the digital dividend of Overstock will be doomed. This information was leaked to Goldman Sachs, JP Morgan, and Morgan Stanley.
Patrick has decided to create a hedge for Overstock in case an economic downturn leads to rough times for the company. Overstock was the first company to accept crypto-payments, and it launched the tZERO alternative trading system.