MicroStrategy (NASDAQ: MSTR) is raising $42 billion to inflate the price of the BTC token because if founder Michael Saylor doesn’t pump these bags, who will?

MicroStrategy stopped focusing on its software business when Saylor began his campaign to acquire every BTC out there in the wild.

Business intelligence software firm MicroStrategy (NASDAQ:MSTR) is planning to raise $42 billion in a bid to inflate the price of the BTC token, as who else will be left to pump these bags if founder Michael Saylor doesn’t?

On October 30, MicroStrategy unveiled its Q3 financial report card, which revealed a sharp decline in revenue from its (formerly) core business intelligence software business, while expenses and net losses saw significant increases. Software revenue for the three months ending September 30 fell 10.3% year-on-year, while the rising costs of that revenue resulted in a net loss of $18.5 million.

But who’s kidding? MicroStrategy stopped focusing on its software business when Saylor began his campaign to acquire every BTC out there in the wild. As of September 30, MicroStrategy held 252,220 BTC on its balance sheet, worth around $18.3 billion as of October 29, although BTC’s price has tumbled since then due to uncertainty over the U.S. election outcome (which remains undetermined at the time of writing).

Saylor has been funding his BTC acquisitions with billions’ worth of new equity and debt, but his latest plan is one for the ages. On October 30, MicroStrategy announced a plan to sell up to $21 billion worth of its class A common stock. The proceeds of these sales will be used to (duh) acquire more BTC, based on MicroStrategy’s new self-proclaimed identity as “the world’s first and largest [BTC] Treasury Company.” The initials of that identity, in case you missed it, are BTC. (Guess’ Saylor Hypes Inert Tokens’ was taken.)

MicroStrategy’s software business has a slogan of ‘Intelligence Everywhere,’ although ‘everywhere’ evidently doesn’t include Saylor’s office. Turns out that the $21 billion share sale is only half of Saylor’s ’21/21 Plan,’ which will also see the company raise $21 billion worth of fixed-income securities to (duh) buy more BTC.

On October 29, the day before MicroStrategy announced this 21/21 Suicide Pact, its share price was trading at over $258. By November 4, the price had slid below $222, mirroring the slide in BTC’s fiat price, but we suspect many investors are starting to suspect that the cheese has slid off Saylor’s cracker.

That impression wasn’t helped by MicroStrategy CEO Phong Le revealing on the Q3 analyst call that the 21/21 Plan is based on Douglas Adams’ The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, in which “the answer to the ultimate question of life, the universe and everything is the number 42.”

Le said MicroStrategy believes 42 is “a unique number with some special characteristics. It’s the sum of 21 plus 21, and we all know that 21 is a magic and magical number in the world of [BTC],” given the maximum number of BTC tokens is 21 million. (Louis Farrakhan’s numerology obsession is suddenly looking a lot more rational.)

Returning to this planet, Le celebrated the fact that the proposed $21 billion ‘at the market’ (ATM) equity program is “the largest ATM in the history of capital markets.” To make this magical $42 billion, MicroStrategy aims to raise $10 billion in 2025, another $14 billion in 2026, and a further $18 billion in 2027.

Uh-oh, it’s magic

The hyper-concentration of BTC in the hands of a few—MicroStrategy already holds 1.2% of all the BTC that will ever be—may not be the brilliant strategy Saylor thinks it is and will indeed depend on ‘magical’ thinking that this ‘number go up’ will continue to go up forever.

Saylor’s hyperanimated optimism regarding BTC’s growth potential seems to ignore that he’s largely responsible for the gains that BTC has enjoyed this year. As one confirmed ‘gold bug’ put it, Saylor is the ‘Egg Man’ who doesn’t realize he’s practically BTC’s whole market.

Two other factors have combined to keep BTC’s price artificially high. First, block reward miners have begun mimicking Saylor’s ‘HODL’ strategy by borrowing hundreds of millions of dollars to buy existing BTC rather than endure the cumbersome (and increasingly unprofitable) process of actually mining new ones.

Second, the BTC spot-based exchange-traded funds (ETF) have seen record inflows as institutional investors followed Saylor down this garden path, hoping to mirror the sixfold rise in MicroStrategy’s year-to-date share price