Saylor’s Billion Dollar Bitcoin Loss Is a Big Win, Argue Crypto Proponents

The billion dollars that MicroStrategy has lost on Bitcoin is actually a big win, according to Michael Saylor and numerous other crypto insiders.

While mainstream media outlets such as the Wall Street Journal have been quick to highlight the near $1 billion Bitcoin impairment loss suffered by MicroStrategy this quarter, Saylor argues that this is only a short term view.

Saylor on strategy

Appearing on Fox Business Saylor appeared in good spirits. As show host Charles Payne pointed out, MicroStrategy’s quarterly financial reports generated a wave of “brutal” headlines with media outlets lining up to “dunk” on Saylor and his firm.

Payne invited Saylor to give his version of events.

“First of all, it’s a non-GAAP impairment charge,” said Saylor, “and so it makes for a colorful headline, but our shareholders, the officers and the directors of the company and the customers look through it all.”

The MicroStrategy chairman, who announced that he was leaving his long-held position of CEO to focus on promoting Bitcoin, went on to argue that his company was outperforming the rest of the market.

“MicroStrategy is now at the two-year point in its Bitcoin strategy, and after two years of exercising our strategy our stock is up 123%, Bitcoin is up 94%. We’ve outperformed every major asset class, all big tech stocks, all enterprise software stocks,” said Saylor.

Saylor conceded that the “financials look a bit ugly,” but argued that the enterprise value of MicroStrategy had grown by 730% over the past two years from around $700 million to over $5 billion.

Those facts did not protect MicroStrategy or Saylor from the mockery of the mainstream press.

WSJ provokes crypto Twitter ire

Bloomberg and the Wall Street Journal (WSJ) were among the major publications to draw significant ire for its reporting on Saylor. Bloomberg dubbed Saylor “blind” while the WSJ drew a link between the impairment loss and Saylor’s departure from the MicroStrategy CEO hot seat, running the headline, “Michael Saylor Bet Billions on Bitcoin and Lost.”

Almost immediately, however, crypto proponents shot back.

“And by ‘lost’ you mean more than doubled the stock price, to the benefit of every shareholder, & outperformed pretty much every stock and every asset class since adopting bitcoin,” said Family Office Manager Eric Weiss. “Remarkably disingenuous take; you clearly had an agenda with this article.”

Preston Pysh, of The Investor Podcast, added, “Just because there’s volatility in the market price doesn’t mean you need to ignore the to-date performance. Was that by choice or negligence?”

Lyn Alden, of Lyn Alden Investment, took the evidence-based approach to debunking the criticism saying that “Value and price are not always (or even often) the same thing.”