Michael Saylor’s big bet on Bitcoin was supposed to lead to its downfall. Instead, it helped him reap a huge windfall from his holdings of cryptocurrency and MicroStrategy stock.
So far this year, MicroStrategy’s billionaire executive chairman has made $370 million by selling hundreds of thousands of company shares in a stock sale plan with the company. last year, according to deposits with the Securities and Exchange Commission.
But that doesn’t include its huge paper profits. As of Friday, the combination of Saylor’s total MicroStrategy shares (excluding those in the stock sale plan) and his last revealed tally of personal Bitcoin was worth about $3.49 billion. Since the start of this year, that represents a gain of about 60%, or more than $1 billion. And since the start of 2023, when the crypto sector began to rebound, his shares and Bitcoin holdings have given him approximate paper gains of just under $3 billion.
MicroStrategy’s stock value has exploded since January as Bitcoin climbed to new heights in part thanks to the launch of new exchange-traded funds that track the token. MicroStrategy shares are up 86% after soaring more than 300% in 2023. Shares closed down 2.8% at around $1,174 on Friday. Meanwhile, Bitcoin is up 46% in 2024 and has surged almost 300% since the start of 2023.
Check out this interactive chart on Fortune.com
Saylor, the A former crypto skeptic became a believer, made MicroStrategy a proxy for Bitcoin’s success. Over the past four years, the company has purchased tokens worth billions of dollars, sometimes using leverage. While he was CEO in 2020, Microstrategy purchased its first Bitcoin tokens, spending $250 million to purchase 21,454 at an average price of around $12,000 each.
Four years and several purchases later, MicroStrategy owns more than 214,000 Bitcoins, or approximately 1% of all tokens in circulation. At Saturday’s price of around $64,000 per Bitcoin, MicroStrategy’s holdings are worth around $13.7 billion. Since Saylor owns approximately 12% of the company’s shares, his shares as well as his personal reserve of more than 17,000 Bitcoins factor largely to his net worth of just under $4 billion, according to Forbes.
MicroStrategy did not immediately respond to Fortunerequest for comment.
But Saylor wasn’t always so lucky. After becoming a billionaire thanks to MicroStrategy during the dot-com boom, Saylor faced his biggest obstacle. In 2000, MicroStrategy revealed that its 1999 revenues were 25% less than he had initially claimed. The accounting scandal cost him dearly 6 billion dollars in one day– the most anyone had ever lost in a 24-hour period to date. The SEC charged him with violating federal securities laws later that year, and he ruler charges, paying $8 million to the agency without admitting wrongdoing.
Later, Saylor’s Bitcoin moves were also considered crazy by investors and analysts. At least one analyst, David Trainer from the research firm New Constructs, said Fortune in 2022, Saylor “grossly misallocated his investors’ capital” with his Bitcoin purchases.
“In crazy terms, Saylor is ‘Elon Junior,’ without the business talent,” Trainer said at the time.
For a while, it seemed like the naysayers were right. After making a killing for MicroStrategy (at least on paper) when Bitcoin hit its previous high in November 2021, the company’s approach turned against him when Bitcoin prices fell. MicroStrategy has been one of the worst-performing large-cap stocks of 2022, largely due to the decline in Bitcoin prices.
Yet Saylor never wavered in his dedication. Last month, Saylor said CNBC that Bitcoin was “going to eat gold,” replacing it as the most common store of value.
It may still be too early to tell how MicroStrategy’s plan to become the go-to proxy for Bitcoin will pan out, especially after several spot Bitcoin ETFs intended to do the same thing were approved by the SEC in January.
Yet Saylor, with his new millions, is not at all worried.
“Is there a company in the world that you wouldn’t want to invest in that could borrow $1 billion at less than 1% interest to invest in your best idea?” he told CNBC.
This story was originally featured on Fortune.com
