Former Overstock.com CEO Patrick Byrne has sold all of his stock in the company in order to avoid the reach of the so-called Deep State and to prepare for a potential crippling recession, he said in an open letter to employees of the company.
Byrne, who resigned after revealing he’d had an affair with convicted Russian agent Maria Butina, said he was concerned that the Deep State would try to punish him for unspecified potential future revelations by going after Overstock. Byrne sold the stock for about $90 million, MarketWatch reports.
“You think me controversial now, but you ain’t seen nothing yet,” Byrne wrote. “I know enough to fry the Deep State to ashes. The Deep State and the oligarchy are entwined, and they won’t die quietly.”
Additionally, Byrne wrote, he wanted to shift his funds to assets like cryptocurrency and precious metals that would do well in an economic crisis. In the event of a major recession, he wrote, he’d be in a position to funnel that money back into Overstock. He’s also taking care to keep the funds out of the Deep State’s reach.
“The gold and silver are stored outside of the United States, in Switzerland, and within two weeks, will be scattered in other locations that are even more outside of the reach of the Deep State, but are places that are safe for me,” he wrote. “The crypto is stored in the place where all crypto is stored: in mathematical mist, behind long keys held only in the memory of someone who is quite good at storing such things in memory (with paper backups in the hands of a priest I met 35 years ago who never sits foot in the West).”
Byrne has long been a big promoter of blockchain tech. Overstock is planning for a special dividend that would give existing shareholders special securities that can be traded on a blockchain-based trading platform affiliated with Overstock.
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