MicroStrategy has soared by 477% in 2024, outperforming nearly all U.S. tech stocks. The meteoric rise of the company is built on a bold strategy: buying huge chunks of Bitcoin. The journey started in 2020 when MicroStrategy first embraced the digital asset. Today, it holds 444,262 BTC, worth about $42 billion.
Michael Saylor founded MicroStrategy, and it started trading on the Nasdaq in June 1998. According to recent report, Saylor celebrated his company’s first day of trading by staying at a luxury hotel and closely following his stock’s ascension. Yet despite initial successes, the dot-com crash hit hard, with its stock plummeting from nearly $1,400 per share to less than $7 before slowly rising.
MicroStrategy becomes the fourth-largest BTC holder
In recent years, however, the company’s luck changed. Saylor, 59, emerged as a boisterous Bitcoin bull, relentless in trying to convince anyone who would listen that the cryptocurrency represented the technological future.
In Dec. 2024, Saylor took his pitch to Microsoft shareholders, urging them to invest some of the company’s $78.4 billion in cash reserves into Bitcoin. Though Microsoft rejected the idea, Saylor’s message was clear: Bitcoin is the future.
Since then, MicroStrategy has become the fourth-largest holder of the cryptocurrency, behind only the inventor, Satoshi Nakamoto; BlackRock’s Bitcoin Trust; and Binance.
Its stock has skyrocketed from a market cap of around $1.1 billion in 2020 to $82 billion today. The rise was partly boosted by the U.S. political landscape. A wave of crypto-friendly policies after the election of Donald Trump in 2024 boosted investor confidence.
The road ahead for MicroStrategy and Bitcoin
Saylor has become famous for his ardent Bitcoin advocacy, even publishing a book on the subject. Critics also say his strategy resembles a “Ponzi loop” with the company issuing debt to buy more Bitcoin in order to drive up the stock price.
Despite the criticism, the company continues to buy Bitcoin aggressively. It recently bought 15,350 Bitcoins for $1.5 billion in just six days. According to Saylor, this is just the beginning, and Bitcoin’s value could skyrocket to $13 million by 2045.
Overall, Saylor remains confident. He insisted that Bitcoin would shape a new global economy and that companies all over the world should fall in line behind MicroStrategy. Setbacks aside, Saylor insists that every day is a good day to purchase Bitcoin.
