al repression.”output

trategy: The Bitcoin Standard

financial repression.”

Saylor’s goal is to get the world’s largest companies to follow MicroStrategy’s lead and put at least a portion of their cash into bitcoin. “If Berkshire puts 1% of its cash into bitcoin, that’s $3.2 billion. At today’s prices, that’s 30,000 bitcoin,” he says. “If 100 companies did that, you’re talking about a million bitcoin being purchased by corporations in a single year.”

output: MicroStrategy is a publicly traded company that has made headlines for its unique financial strategy, which involves holding a large amount of bitcoin on its balance sheet. The company’s stock price has soared in recent years as bitcoin’s price has risen, leading some to question whether MicroStrategy is a good investment or simply a risky bet on bitcoin.

To understand MicroStrategy’s financial strategy, it’s helpful to take a closer look at the company’s history and the man behind it, Michael Saylor. Saylor, 59, cofounded MicroStrategy in 1989 fresh out of MIT, where he studied aeronautics and astronautics before graduating with highest honors and earning a commission as a second lieutenant in the Air Force. (His dream of becoming a fighter pilot was thwarted by a heart murmur that turned out to be a misdiagnosis.)

After graduating from the Air Force Academy in Colorado Springs, Saylor worked briefly at Bain & Company before launching MicroStrategy with his MIT fraternity brother, Sanju Bansal. The company, which initially focused on data analytics, went public in 1998, and by 2000, its market cap soared past $24 billion. Riding high on the dot-com wave, Saylor became a tech evangelist, heralding a world in which data would flow “like water.”

“We’re going to use our technology to obliterate entire supply chains,” Saylor told Forbes in late 1998. “We’re playing for all the marbles to essentially win the entire industry worldwide, forever.”

But then came the crash. On March 10, 2000, MicroStrategy’s stock hit a peak of $313 per share—more than 60 times its IPO price. Within two weeks it plummeted to $72, following the company’s announcement that it would need to restate its financial results. The SEC later accused Saylor and others of accounting fraud, charges that MicroStrategy settled for $11 million. Within two years its stock price had fallen below $1. Saylor’s $13 billion fortune evaporated.

“It was the darkest part of my life,” he says. “When people lose money because they believe in you, that’s pretty much the worst.”

Undeterred, Saylor remained at the helm of MicroStrategy, which continued to operate a successful data analytics business throughout the 2000s and 2010s. But it wasn’t until 2020, after the government followed years of quantitative easing with trillions of dollars in Covid-19-related stimulus, that Saylor became convinced that the best use for the remaining $530 million in cash and short-term investments on MicroStrategy’s balance sheet was investing in bitcoin.

The U.S. government could print as many dollars as it wanted—and it was hard at work doing just that—but, by design, bitcoin comes with a hard cap: There will never be more than 21 million in existence.

“I invented 20 things, tried to make them successful and really didn’t change the world with any of them,” Saylor says. “Satoshi created one thing, gave it to the world and disappeared. It’s made me more successful than every one of my ideas.”

Saylor’s enthusiasm for bitcoin is evident in everything he does. At Villa Vecchia, a century-old Miami Beach estate that once welcomed luminaries including Margaret Thatcher, Henry Kissinger and Mikhail Gorbachev, Saylor hosts lavish New Year’s Eve parties attended by bitcoin’s biggest names. The bash, which takes place on the estate’s manicured lawns and Versailles-inspired ballroom, features servers gliding around with champagne on silver trays, hors d’oeuvres stamped with the omnipresent B and dancers in golden bodysuits undulating with glowing orange orbs in homage to bitcoin’s signature hue.

At the center of the garden looms a massive playing card, the king’s face replaced with a brazen B. On the water, the party continues aboard the Usher, a 154-foot superyacht that was featured in the 2015 film Entourage and glistens against the Miami skyline. A constant stream of shuttles disgorges an unending parade of bitcoin executives, influencers and, most importantly, institutional investors, all decked out