Few tales in corporate finance are as audacious, bewildering, or downright entertaining as that of the company formerly known as MicroStrategy. This once-humdrum business-software vendor has transformed into a high-octane bitcoin investment vehicle under the flamboyant leadership of Michael Saylor, its co-founder and executive chair. The company, now called Strategy, holds nearly 500,000 bitcoins, equivalent to 2.38 per cent of the total supply, acquired at an average price of around $66,000.
What captivates markets isn’t just the scale of Strategy’s bitcoin accumulation but the relentless financial engineering underpinning it. The latest manoeuvre is the announcement last week of a $21bn “at-the-market” (ATM) offering of STRK, a convertible perpetual preferred stock currently yielding more than 9 per cent (payable at the company’s discretion in cash or common stock). The proceeds will be used, predictably, to buy more bitcoin.
At today’s bitcoin price of around $80,000, Strategy could amass another 262,500 bitcoins, bringing its total holdings to 3.6 per cent of all bitcoin in existence. According to JPMorgan research, “MicroStrategy’s bitcoin purchases alone accounted for 28 per cent of last year’s record capital inflow into crypto markets.” It’s no exaggeration to say that Strategy is not merely a major player but the market itself — a blue whale consuming all the available krill in the bitcoin ocean.
