Wall Street can't beat Michael Saylor's runaway -Crypto engine

(Bloomberg) -Wall Street still finds new ways to drive with digital currencies from ETFs and signed funds to structured products and crypto competitors keep turning. But the trade that still makes the biggest rewards belongs to Michael Saylor. His firm, which is now branded as a strategy, previously known as Microstrategy Inc., was a pioneer in the original capital markets in this era of retail speculation. The Playbook? Sell ​​shares and debt. Use the return to buy bitcoin. Look at the market rip. Then do it again. After big profits last year, its capital market machine is keeping up for now. Strategy shares are rising by about 26% this year, and has beaten Bitcoin’s 16% profit, and is currently one of the best performers in the Nasdaq 100. Traders are still holding a big prime minister on Saylor’s share-far above the value of the firm’s bitcoin holding-a dynamic no ETF. “Saylor was the first, he was the earliest and he got the most leverage,” says Matt Maley, main market strategist at Miller Tobacco Co. “He not only plays Bitcoin, but also his own stock and the stock market to his advantage – and uses leverage at the right times.” That premium acts like rocket fuel in UP markets, which helps to help strategy to darken bitcoin’s returns, but the ETFs designed to keep up. It surpasses all 74 crypto -etfs in the American bar one. It is even excessive ETFs with double leverage that detects the firm itself. MSTX and MSTU – designed to deliver the underlying returns of the stock twice – are each about 1% for the year. These funds re-expose their exposure every trading day, so even in an upward, there can be returns on long-term returns known as the volatility. Strategy, on the other hand, is a self-strengthening crypto engine. As its shares contract, it unlocks more balance sheet, which turns the market momentum into more crypto congestion. As Bitcoin hit records this month, the trade turns on. Wall Street is taking out more diversified products, and the number of strategy competitors is growing with President Donald Trump’s media company the latest to join the battle with a $ 2.5 billion bitcoin agreement. What is difficult to repeat is the mere belief system around Saylor itself. Its firm is not just a bitcoin assistant server, it is a vehicle for crypto-maximalists to express conviction in their faith-a vehicle that is reflection, leverage and narrative-driven. In other words, the stock doesn’t just move with Bitcoin, it feeds it down. For retail believers, the premium is the point, and it is a strategy in a unique category. This means that the strategy is a market story that cannot match ETF, despite the arrival of cheaper, institutional degree bitcoin offers such as Blackrock’s IBIT. The company’s market cap has risen from about $ 1 billion to more than $ 100 billion over the past five years from Saylor for the first time revealed its Bitcoin buying program. Strategy now owns more than $ 60 billion in Bitcoin, by far most of its copies. It also set out plans to raise $ 84 billion to buy more by selling a combination of stock and fixed income instruments. The trade naturally cuts both ways. When Bitcoin dropped in 2022, the strategy plunged more. And that was before it leaned even harder in lever. If the crypto rally reverses, the dynamics that lift Saylor’s stock in good times can fall in the bad. But for the time being, the success has provoked a wave of imitators, with at least 30 companies suffered in the US in the US. Meanwhile, Bernstein analysts are projecting that the digital currency can see $ 330 billion in inflow via corporate treasury before 2030. Saylor welcomed the trend. “It’s a phenomenal story – for bitcoiners it’s a big bull stesis,” says Strahinja Savic, head of data and analysis at Frnt Financial. “If I had to list the top three reasons why I was bullish bitcoin, the corporate adoption is up there.” -With help from Dave Liedtka. More stories like these are available on Bloomberg.com © 2025 Bloomberg LP