MicroStrategy, the world's largest Bitcoin (BTC) corporate holder, has seen its market capitalization climb from $1.5 billion to over $40 billion in just four years. Co-founder and executive chairman Michael Saylor attributes this rapid growth to the company's approach to integrating Bitcoin with traditional financial markets.
"MicroStrategy is pioneering a new market; we're issuing securities backed by digital capital," Saylor told The New Zealand Herald in a recent interview. He explained that the firm’s “investors are Bitcoiners," and that "if you are a Bitcoiner, you think Bitcoin is going to go up forever with some volatility [...] so what you want is more Bitcoin per share.”
“The real MicroStrategy business is to be the leading issuer of securities in order to acquire Bitcoin, and as we acquire Bitcoin, we’re driving up the scarcity of the Bitcoin,” Saylor concluded.
Originally an enterprise software firm, MicroStrategy now holds 252,220 Bitcoin—over 1% of all Bitcoin that will ever be mined—valued at approximately $16 billion. MicroStrategy has since recast itself as a Bitcoin development firm, working on a decentralized identity protocol while finding new ways to merge Bitcoin with traditional finance.
Despite some traders shorting the stock due to the company’s valuation being 2.5 times the value of its Bitcoin assets, Saylor remains unconcerned.
"When I was a younger man, I would have been concerned about people shorting my stock,” he said. “Now I'm not, because MicroStrategy is really just providing a set of institutional investments that institutional investors can use to tailor a portfolio that's long, short, or hedged.”
Saylor further emphasized the role that MicroStrategy plays in bridging traditional finance and digital assets. "If we didn't exist, then billions and billions of dollars of capital from the traditional finance markets wouldn't be invested in Bitcoin," he added.
The company has issued convertible note offerings using its Nasdaq-listed stock to finance additional Bitcoin acquisitions. While some have dubbed this strategy an "infinite money glitch," Saylor refuted the characterization.
"It's not a money glitch; it's a digital transformation of the capital markets," he said.
Earlier this month, Saylor also said that MicroStrategy aims to become a “Bitcoin bank” with a potential trillion-dollar valuation. He explained that the firm would create capital market instruments tied to Bitcoin that can be offered to investors.
Edited by Andrew Hayward