Byrne Sells Overstock Stake to Buy Crypto and Battle ‘Deep State’
Danny Nelson, 20 September 2019
In a blog post at his DeepCapture.com, Byrne said that, by the end of the week, he will have reinvested all of the proceeds into “investments that are counter-cyclical to the economy.”
“Gold, silver and two flavors of crypto,” he wrote.
A longtime proponent of cryptocurrency — Overstock was one of the first companies to accept crypto payments, launched the tZERO security token trading platform and acquired the company behind Ravencoin — Byrne was ahead of the curve, but perhaps too much so, as the external pressures against him compelled his resignation from the company last month.
Byrne’s final gambit – a crypto dividend approved in July – worked to lift Overstock’s share price to a 52-week high last week, but the value of the shares fell by half as his plan unraveled.
Yesterday, after the market closed, Byrne filed a statement with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) that he had sold 4.7 million Overstock shares worth $90 million. The transactions were over the previous three trading sessions, as the stock price fell from a high of $29.38 on Friday to $15.65 today.
Byrne’s blog post followed a statement from Overstock, announcing a halt to the crypto dividend policy after a New York Post report detailed the behind-the-scenes maneuvering – due to what Byrne described in his post as a leak from “the Deep State’s pets at the SEC.”
