Michael Saylor and Jack Mallers are having a very public disagreement about math. Specifically, the kind of math that determines whether shareholders in Bitcoin treasury companies are getting a fair deal or slowly getting their stakes watered down.
Saylor, the executive chairman of Strategy (the company formerly known as MicroStrategy), has been defending the use of Bitcoin-per-share (BPS) as a key performance metric. Mallers, the CEO of XXI Capital, thinks BPS is the wrong lens entirely, arguing it can obscure the dilution that comes from issuing new shares to fund Bitcoin purchases.
The tension matters because it strikes at the heart of how an entire category of public companies should be valued. And with Strategy having just raised $2.1 billion, with a staggering 86% of that coming from dilutive stock issuances, the stakes are more than theoretical.
The core of the disagreement
Saylor’s position is that BPS and related metrics remain crucial for evaluating Bitcoin-focused companies. His argument is that traditional fiat-based earnings metrics simply don’t capture the value proposition of accumulating a deflationary asset. If you’re building a Bitcoin treasury, the relevant question is how much Bitcoin backs each share, not what your quarterly revenue looks like.
