Criticising the slumping Bitcoin treasury space? Well, Michael Saylor wants to have a word.
On a January 12 What Bitcoin Did podcast, Strategy’s founder and the creator of the digital asset treasury trade went berserk when the interviewer, Danny Knowles, asked him whether the market can handle the more than 200 treasuries that are currently tagging themselves as treasuries — and if their model of issuing debt to buy Bitcoin is actually sustainable.
“Who are you to say that they are just issuing debt to buy Bitcoin?” replied Saylor. “That’s just an ignorant and offensive statement on your part.”
Saylor’s outburst comes at a troubling time for treasuries. Nearly 40% of the top 100 Bitcoin treasuries are trading at a discount — the key metric that permits them to raise more capital to fund their Bitcoin buys — and more than 60% have bought Bitcoin at higher prices than today.
Some have even had their stock prices tank by 99%.
Strategy’s business model
Saylor’s company’s business model is pretty much just issuing debt to buy Bitcoin.
According to Strategy’s own filings, over the first nine months of 2025, the company generated $125 million in operating cash flow, almost entirely from its legacy business intelligence software.
During that same period, however, the firm raised more than $50 billion through equity, preferred stock and convertibles, and spent nearly all of it buying Bitcoin.
That means over 99% of the capital behind Strategy’s treasury came from issuing securities, not from operations. The software business is cash-flow positive, but at its current scale it is economically irrelevant to funding Bitcoin purchases or servicing the company’s dividend and interest obligations.
Adding insult to injury, in Strategy’s own earnings deck, roughly 90% of slides are devoted to the Bitcoin treasury, while only two or three even mention the legacy software business — and none frame it as a driver of growth or capital allocation.
Strategy is the largest corporate Bitcoin holder in the world by a factor of 12. The company owns more than 650,000 Bitcoin.
The trade
Since Saylor began buying Bitcoin by issuing new shares of Strategy in 2020, the trade took off.
His company’s stock soared more than tenfold, and by 2024, a plethora of companies from around the world began taking note — Strategy’s stock price was a siren song simply too alluring to ignore.
Soon enough, companies were foregoing their entire business models for a pure-play treasury trade — in hopes of squeezing more shareholder value not by creating new services or products but instead by means of a neat financial gimmick.
Nowadays there are more than 200 companies who own Bitcoin on their balance sheets. They have accumulated nearly 1.1 million Bitcoin, amounting to nearly $100 billion, according to BitcoinTreasuries.net.
Take Metaplanet. Hailing from Japan, the company used to be a budget hotel operator with dozens of properties sprawling the length of the country.
Today Metaplanet has zero properties and its entire business model is predicated on issuing debt to sell more shares and then use the proceeds to buy more Bitcoin.
And just like Metaplanet, there are scores of other companies that are simply convoluted share wrappers for Bitcoin exposure. Nakamoto, for instance, was created explicitly as a Bitcoin treasury for Bitcoin treasuries. Then there’s the Bitcoin Standard Treasury company, Strive, Brazil-based OranjeBTC, and the list goes on and on.
Just level up
Questioning whether hundreds of firms can sustainably issue securities to buy Bitcoin, Saylor argued, is akin to doubting whether companies should adopt electricity.
“How is it irrational for a company to adopt a new technology which is better than the previous technology?”
Saylor’s central move lies in reframing treasury adoption as inevitable progress. To be sure, electricity adoption didn’t require perpetual equity issuance nor fancy financial contrivances.
Moreover, in Saylor’s perspective, any company — profitable, struggling, or outright loss-making — is rational to lever itself into Bitcoin.
He argued that even money-losing companies benefit from buying Bitcoin. If a company loses $10 million a year but makes $30 million on Bitcoin appreciation, it’s now making $20 million a year.
Not competing
When Knowles suggested treasury companies might be competing with each other, Saylor bristled.
“We’re not competing with each other,” Saylor said. “That’s the ignorant part of the question. There’s room for 400 million companies to buy Bitcoin.”
Yet, critics aren’t saying companies shouldn’t buy Bitcoin. Instead, they’re asking how many companies can survive when buying Bitcoin is the business.
Strategy didn’t immediately return a request for comment.
