Strategy Could Buy as Much as 7% of Bitcoin Supply, Says Michael Saylor

Bitcoin treasury company Strategy’s co-founder Michael Saylor said on Friday that the Nasdaq-listed firm could end up holding upwards of 7% of the leading cryptocurrency’s total supply of 21 million coins. 

But Saylor, who pioneered the Strategy’s Bitcoin treasury plan, said that the company wouldn’t aim to buy all of the digital asset because he wants “everyone else to have their piece,” in an interview with CNBC. 

 “I don’t think we’ll get all of [the Bitcoin],” said Saylor. “I don’t think in the range of 3-5% or 3-7% is too much.” 

“We wouldn’t want to own all of it—we want everyone else to have their piece,” he added. 

Strategy—formerly MicroStrategy—currently owns a little over 3% of the current 19,900,346 supply of Bitcoin. Only 21 million BTC will ever be minted, with the last coin expected to be created in the year 2140. 

The Tysons Corner, Virginia-based firm is the world’s biggest corporate holder of Bitcoin, with 628,791 digital coins worth $72 billion at today’s BTC price of $114,692. The company first started buying Bitcoin in 2020.

Acquiring 7% of the total-ever Bitcoin supply would give the company 1.47 million BTC, currently valued at about $169 billion.

Strategy struggled during the COVID-19 pandemic as inflation depleted its cash pile, so the firm went into survival mode in August 2020, pivoting from software development to accumulating Bitcoin. 

Saylor, who was Strategy’s CEO at the time, has since called Bitcoin the supreme asset because it is scarce, and urged other companies to buy it to preserve capital. 

Strategy’s share price was down more than 6% in Friday trading to trade below $380, the first time it has fallen below that threshold since early July.

But the stock is up over 2,488% since the company’s first Bitcoin purchase in August 2020. 

Strategy now buys and holds Bitcoin, and investors buy its stock—MSTR—to get exposure to the cryptocurrency without having to hold it themselves. The company issues debt to fund its purchases.

Saylor said in a second-quarter Thursday earnings call that the price of Bitcoin could still drop by 80% to 90% and the company would be able to handle the drawdown without selling its BTC.

Myriad users broadly believe that Strategy will not dump any Bitcoin in the coming months, giving the firm a less than 8% chance of selling any BTC before the end of 2025. (Disclosure: Myriad is a product of Decrypt‘s parent company, DASTAN.)

Benchmark analyst Mark Palmer on Friday raised the firm’s price target for MSTR to $705, an 85% increase from its current share price.

A number of smaller Nasdaq-listed companies have adopted the Bitcoin treasury plan. But some experts have warned that the crypto play can’t help every company, and is inherently risky.