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This year, the National Center for Public Policy Research (NCPPR) — a D.C.-based group and McDonald's shareholder known for asking companies like Microsoft and Amazon to adopt Bitcoin — asked McDonald’s to consider adding Bitcoin to its treasury during its 2025 annual shareholders’ meeting, set for next month.
"McDonald’s seems to have long ago understood what many other corporations have yet to: that a company’s value, especially during inflationary times, is measured not only by how profitable its primary business is, but also by how wisely it invests its assets and protects its profits from debasement," the NCPPR said.
The NCPPR added that companies like MicroStrategy, now known as Strategy, have seen massive growth since adding Bitcoin to their balance sheets, claiming that Strategy's stock has surged 2,360% more than McDonald's across the past 60 months.
However, lawyers for McDonald’s reached out to the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) in a letter to confirm that they could exclude the proposal from the annual shareholders’ meeting without triggering an enforcement action. McDonald's lawyers asserted that the Bitcoin proposal fell under ordinary business operations, or investment strategies that were best-suited to a decision by the board, not shareholders.
The SEC agreed. “There appears to be some basis for your view that the company may exclude the proposal," the SEC said in late March. "In our view, the proposal relates to the company’s ordinary business operations. Accordingly, we will not recommend enforcement action to the commission if the company omits the proposal.”
Last December, the NCPPR has also pursued a similar initiative asking e-commerce juggernaut Amazon to allocate 5% of its portfolio to Bitcoin. In that case, the group argued, “Though Bitcoin is currently a volatile asset – as Amazon stock has been at times throughout its history – corporations have a responsibility to maximize shareholder value over the long-term as well as the short-term.”
Overall, the NCPPR's shareholder activism to promote Bitcoin has gained limited traction. Last December, Microsoft’s shareholders rejected a similar proposal to invest in Bitcoin from the NCPPR. The Microsoft board cited the cryptocurrency’s volatility as a major deterrent, and highlighted the importance of “stable and predictable investments to ensure liquidity and operational funding."