Continuing To Explore More Companies That Mention Bitcoin In Their Annual Financial Reports to SEC

Yesterday, I wrote about how to programmatically download 10-K, 10-Q, and other SEC filings using easy to use python module sec_edgar_downloader. I only tried this on two companies: Tesla and MicroStrategy to see what they reported about bitcoin as related to their company strategies and financial activities.

Now, I wanted to do a similar thing but with thousands of publicly traded companies to see if any of them mentioned bitcoin. I already had my old stocks tickers list of 1365 companies. The list is from last year that I used for various trading strategy backtesting purposes. But list is long enough for this initial experiment. I will update this list to include more companies and more accurate ticker symbols in the near future.

When using sec_edgar_downloader, it downloads folders with couple files for each company. One file is in html format about usually 5Mb in size and another file in xml format with about 24Mb in size. So, each download would take about 29Mb of space. If we download files for a thousand companies it would take 29Gb of space. For five thousand companies it would be five times that.

Since filtering out companies that mention certain word or words would be done later, it seemed to me not necessary to download all files if they don't fit the criteria.

Luckily, sec_edgar_downloader already had a solution for that. Its get() function has a query parameter that takes a string as a value and only downloads files for companies that mention the word specified in query in their reports.

Out of my list of 1365 companies, only 15 mentioned bitcoin. Their ticker symbols are: ABQQ, RCAT, CBOE, CME, DE, EBAY, ICE, NDAQ, ON, OSTK, PYPL, SIVB, SLM, SQ, TSLA.

Red Cat Holdings says:

The most recent change occurred in May 2019 when the Company changed its operating business from the bitcoin industry to the drone industry.

CarrierEQ, Inc says:

The Company obtained Ether and Bitcoin (collectively referred therein as the “Digital Assets”) in August 2017 through early October 2017 from those interested in obtaining AirTokens. The Company raised approximately $15.4 million for the purpose of developing the AirToken Project.

On Track Innovations LTD:

OTI continually strives to discover the technology of the future and keep abreast of new developments in the fintech marketplace. At this time, we are trying to develop Bitcoin capability in the Crypto-currency marketplace and we intend to become Bitcoin acceptable in transactions via NFC, Bluetooth or QR code.

Overstock.com, Inc:

In January 2014, we began accepting bitcoins as a form of payment for purchases on our website. Bitcoin is a cryptocurrency that uses cryptography to control the creation and transfer of the currency between individual parties. Bitcoin is not considered legal tender or backed by any government. Since inception in 2009, bitcoins have experienced price volatility, technological glitches and various law enforcement and regulatory interventions. At present we do not accept bitcoin payments directly, but use a third party vendor to accept bitcoin payments on our behalf. That third party vendor then immediately converts the bitcoin payments into U.S. dollars so that we receive payment for the product sold at the sales price in U.S. dollars.

and

We also hold bitcoin and other cryptocurrency directly. Consequently, we have exchange rate risk on the amounts we hold as well as the risks that regulatory or other developments may adversely affect the value of the cryptocurrency we hold. In the future, we may transact in cryptocurrency directly or increase our cryptocurrency holdings. This will subject us to additional exchange risk and other risks as described above, which may have an adverse effect on our results. There is also uncertainty regarding the future legal and regulatory requirements relating to cryptocurrency or transactions utilizing cryptocurrency. These uncertainties, as well as future accounting and tax developments, or other requirements relating to cryptocurrency could have a material adverse effect on our business.

SVB Financial Group says:

We are also expanding our payments capabilities to better serve our clients, including innovating new electronic payment processing solutions, developing new payments technologies, and exploring new evolving payments systems, such as virtual currencies known as “bitcoin.”

Some are interesting and some are boring.

I was also experimenting with other word mentions like cryptocurrency, crypto, blockchain, decentralization, decentralize, decentralized, etc. Those gave interesting results too, like we can see Facebook using words like blockchain and decentralization in their reports.

Below is the code if you would like to try yourself. I have short list of companies in the code below. I didn't want to put long list of 1365 ticker symbols there.

from sec_edgar_downloader import Downloader
import os

companies = ['TSLA', 'MSTR', 'MSFT', 'TWTR', 'SQ', 'FB', 'AAPL']
report = '10-K'
mentions = ['bitcoin', 'cryptocurrency', 'crypto', 'blockchain', 'decentralization', 'decentralize', 'decentralized']
downloaded = []

for mention in mentions:
    for company in companies:
        if company in downloaded:
            continue
        path = f"{os.getcwd()}/Desktop/edgar/"
        dl = Downloader(path)
        res = dl.get(report, company, amount=1, download_details=True, query=mention)
        if res == 1:
            print(company + ' --- ' + mention)
            downloaded.append(company)

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