It’s the latest corporate strategy for companies from Tesla Inc. to Square Inc.: shift a portion of cash reserves into cryptocurrencies as digital assets become more mainstream.
Still, few have gone as far as MicroStrategy Inc. Eight months after its first investment, the software firm has a Bitcoin holding worth more than $5 billion.
Shares of MicroStrategy have rocketed almost 600% since mid-July, boosting the fortune of founder Michael Saylor, a billionaire until an accounting scandal in 2000. The chief executive officer is now worth $3 billion, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index, joining the ranks of the world’s richest crypto holders, a list that isn’t definitive since some fortunes can’t be identified or verified.
• Mike Novogratz $4.2 billion
• Cameron Winklevoss $3.3 billion
• Tyler Winklevoss $3.3 billion
• Michael Saylor $3.0 billion
MicroStrategy’s crypto fixation began soon after the pandemic hit when the firm found it had a cash-flow problem: There was just too much of it. After cutting advertising and axing 400 jobs unsuited to home-work, the Tysons Corner, Virginia-based firm was sitting on a cash pile of $550 million with nowhere to put it. Saylor, 56, turned his attention to Bitcoin.
“People still aren’t sure: Are we crazy or are we not crazy?” Saylor said. “The only way to get economic security is to invest in scarce assets that are not going to be debased by the currency expansion. That is the environment that led us to decide we should consider Bitcoin as a treasury reserve asset.”
‘Every Scar’
Not everyone agrees with the strategy.
“Saylor equated Bitcoin to a bank—that’s just ridiculous,” said Marc Lichtenfeld, chief income strategist at the Oxford Club, a financial-research firm that has no stake in MicroStrategy. “When you put your money in a bank, the value of it doesn’t go up or down by 10% a day.”
Saylor has clashed with investors before. In 2000, a shareholder filed a class-action lawsuit against MicroStrategy, alleging it misled investors over the company’s earnings by booking revenue prematurely to inflate profits.
MicroStrategy agreed to restate its revenue figures and Saylor, once dubbed the wealthiest man in Washington, D.C., with a fortune of $7 billion, lost almost all of it in a matter of weeks after shares fell 95%. He and his fellow executives, without admitting or denying the allegations, paid $11 million to the Securities and Exchange Commission in December 2000, including $1 million in fines.
“It’s made us careful and humble and focused,” Saylor said. “Every scar informs you, and I wouldn’t be who I am without having lived through those experiences.”
Steady Revenue
Saylor has continued to run the analytics software business he founded in 1989, and has overseen annual revenue streams of around $500 million for the last decade, though sales have dipped in recent years.
Bitcoin’s price has soared in recent months, hitting a record above $58,000 last month as big investors pile in and the asset class matures.