When it comes to its business practices, online retailer Overstock and its CEO Patrick Byrne have a history of being unconventional. From being the first major retailer to accept Bitcoin as a form of payment, to creating a subsidiary which uses the blockchain and related technologies to build services that can track the exchange of financial securities, to Byrne’s relentless crusade against Wall Street, all the way to being a quasi prepper (recall “Overstock Holds 3 Months Of Food, $10 Million In Gold For Employees In Preparation For The Next Collapse“).
So it is only fitting that when Patrick Byrne unexpectedly announced he would take an indefinite leave of absence for medical reasons this morning, that he would do it the way he does everything else. Unconventionally.
Here is the full press release:
“Dear Owners,
‘I myself never surrendered. But they got my horse, and it surrendered.’
– Chief Dan George in Outlaw Josey Wales
I must take an indefinite medical leave of absence. The proximate cause is that for over a year I have been gutting it out through a Stage IV diagnosis of Hepatitis C, contracted (to save awkward questions) in 1984 in Xinjiang when a barefoot doctor sewed up a head wound under less-than-ideal conditions. I have finished treatment and think I have it beat but only time will tell.
Your firm is doing and will do well: I believe that in 2016 we will make $40 million GAAP Net Income (pre-tax) excluding net effect of blockchain efforts and the risk of declared recession.
I have recommended Mitch Edwards as Acting CEO. Mitch is an outstanding full-spectrum entrepreneur who has serving as our general counsel for six months and has learned our business, and understands our t0 efforts to revolutionize the capital markets.
I am intensely proud of my nearly 2,000 colleagues for having built a consistently profitable $2 billion e-tailer (on a fraction of the capital afforded our competitors).
Selah,
Patrick M. Byrne”
via Zero Hedge http://ift.tt/1oQEGgs Tyler Durden