Under executive chair Michael Saylor, Strategy (née MicroStrategy), the software firm turned bitcoin treasury vehicle, has often felt like corporate finance’s version of reality TV: loud, lurid and addictively compelling. Since the company’s pivot to bitcoin accumulation in August 2020, it has been almost impossible to look away, and as the stock price soared over twentyfold, the audience only grew in size and passion.
Lately, however, investors seem to be reaching for the remote.
At its height in late 2024, the formula worked like magic. Saylor’s prolific online activity — complete with AI-generated posts and quasi-messianic claims about bitcoin’s civilisational role — fuelled a self-reinforcing feedback loop that seemed almost too good to be true. Bitcoin went up, and in turn Strategy’s stock went up. A higher stock price meant the company could issue more shares at a massive premium to net asset value and buy more bitcoin. Those purchases pushed bitcoin higher, which lifted the stock again. It felt, for a time, like the company had discovered El Dorado or, as others put it, an “infinite money glitch”.
That magical spell has broken. The shares have fallen about 70 per cent from their November 2024 peak and, more importantly, have lagged bitcoin by an enormous margin. For a company whose central proposition is “amplified bitcoin”, trailing the asset you’re supposed to track and outperform represents a damning indictment. It raises the basic question of what value Strategy adds.
