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In 2020 They Laughed at Saylor; Today, His Bitcoin Investment Tops $10 Billion
- MicroStrategy’s Bitcoin holdings are now valued at around US$10 billion, with US$4 billion in profits.
- The company, co-founded by Michael Saylor, began accumulating BTC at the height of the COVID crisis after Saylor learnt about it during lockdown; it now holds 190,000 BTC.
- BTC has been the best-performing investment of all major asset classes in 10 of the past 13 years, according to analysis from Fox Business.
At the peak of the COVID crisis in August 2020, Micheal Saylor’s decision to sell his TradFi holdings—mostly in short-term government securities—and go all-in on Bitcoin raised some eyebrows.
When the crypto market crashed in 2022 many believed the MicroStrategy founder might’ve made a monumental mistake, possibly imperilling his company’s future. But now it’s starting to look like he made a very wise bet.
In the wake of the launch of the Bitcoin spot ETFs last month, the OG crypto has taken a bullish turn, topping US$50,000. According to MicroStrategy’s most recent investor presentation the company holds a whopping 190,000 BTC, which is now valued at around US$10 billion—with a profit of approximately US$4 billion.
Saylor Moon: Rise Of The HODLer
MicroStrategy’s Q4 2023 investor presentation shows its average Bitcoin purchase price is $US31,255—making the cost basis for its 190,000 BTC approximately US$5.9 billion. The investor presentation listed the company’s Bitcoin profit at around $US2 billion in December, but that figure has since doubled as the price of Bitcoin has surged on the back of strong interest in the new spot ETFs.
Saylor’s interest in Bitcoin began after he spent a lot of his time in COVID lockdown studying cryptocurrency. “I went down the rabbit hole,” he said in September 2020.
It was quite a turn-around for a man who’d been a total crypto sceptic until then. “I wish I knew then what I know now,” Saylor said, referring to his scepticism of Bitcoin when it was in the US$600 range.
MicroStrategy first bought Bitcoin in August 2020, when it made an enormous purchase of US$250 million dollars of BTC, following that with another US$175 million buy just hours later—signalling to the world the company had gone all-in on BTC.
Since then, Saylor and the company he founded have been both praised and mocked for their unorthodox strategy, depending largely on the price of Bitcoin:
- During the 2022 crypto collapse Microstrategy’s stock price, which now behaves as a virtual Bitcoin proxy, plummeted almost 90% from its 2021 bull-market highs.
- Today, Microstrategy’s stock price sits at US$718, up around 500% from its crypto winter lows in 2022.
BTC Best Investment Of The Past 13 Years
According to analysis from Fox Business, Bitcoin has been the best major asset class to invest in in 10 of the past 13 years since 2011. It’s also been the worst major asset class in three of those 13 years, reflecting its huge volatility compared to other major asset classes.
Still, that’s pretty good performance for an asset which has been declared dead at least 400 times since 2012.
Author
Jody McDonald
Jody is a Brisbane-based freelance writer who specialises in writing about business, technology, and the future of work.
