If you’re researching Bitcoin exposure, or tracking the increasingly popular “Bitcoin treasury company” model, hold onto this one line first: Strategy (formerly MicroStrategy) runs the only moat in this entire book that isn’t held by the company itself — it’s priced daily by market sentiment.

The company currently holds 847,363 BTC (per its own disclosures), and its old software business is now barely a footnote. Understanding this company isn’t about how many coins it holds — it’s about what actually powers the money printer.

The mechanism in one sentence: as long as the stock trades at a premium to the net asset value of the Bitcoin it holds (tracked as mNAV — above 1 means a premium), every new share or bond it issues to buy more Bitcoin increases the Bitcoin backing each existing share instead of diluting it. It’s a self-reinforcing flywheel — the premium makes capital cheap, the capital buys more Bitcoin, the purchase reinforces the “Bitcoin proxy” narrative, and the narrative props the premium back up. Across all of 2025, this flywheel alone raised the company roughly $25.3 billion.

But the fuel for that flywheel — the premium — doesn’t sit in founder Michael Saylor’s hands. It sits in the market’s hands. That’s the single most fundamental thing separating Strategy from every other leader in this book. Its mNAV peaked at 3.89x in November 2024 (the market was willing to pay $3.89 for every $1 of Bitcoin it held); by the time of writing it had fallen below 1 — the market is now valuing the company at less than the Bitcoin sitting on its balance sheet.

Once the fuel burns negative, the printer stops being a printer and turns into a balance sheet carrying billions in convertible debt that needs defending. The offensive posture flips to defense, and the slogan “never sell Bitcoin” is about to face its real stress test.

Buried in here is a framework that applies to every “treasury company” trying to copy this model — does this business need the market to keep handing it a premium just to function? If yes, its fatal weak point isn’t operations. It’s sentiment. In a bull market, the premium recovers and the flywheel restarts. In a choppy market, the premium flattens to zero and strategy shifts to defense. In a bear market, a deep and sustained discount forces a real debt-servicing reckoning.

Strategy has proven that using capital-markets leverage to amplify Bitcoin exposure is a genuinely effective money printer — in a bull market. But it’s also a warning to everyone who wants to copy it: you can build the flywheel, but you can’t manufacture the premium that spins it. That premium is on loan from the market, and the market can call it back anytime.

Is the Bitcoin treasury company model financial innovation, or a leverage trade that only works in one specific bull market? You decide.

— Adapted from Crypto Sector Leaders, Chapter 2: Bitcoin and the Digital Gold Ecosystem

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