Michael Saylor went from ‘sell a kidney’ to $20 billion loss at Strategy

When bitcoin ($BTC) was above $84,000, Strategy (formerly MicroStrategy) founder Michael Saylor said, “sell a kidney if you must, but keep the bitcoin.” Yesterday, $BTC hit $63,000.

Since his February 27, 2025 advice, $BTC has crashed by $19,000, and his company has lost $20 billion in market capitalization.

Strategy’s February 2025 holdings (499,096 $BTC) have declined in value by 22% and incinerated $9 billion of his shareholders’ wealth.

Another $11 billion in market capitalization evaporated as Strategy raised more capital for acquisitions, and investors paid less premium for MSTR relative to its $BTC holdings: 1.5x then to under 0.9x today.

Incredibly, Saylor’s loss of $9 billion by deciding “keep the $BTC” is a better number than the company’s actual market cap losses of $20 billion over the same time period.

Read more: How would Michael Saylor refinance Strategy’s $8.2B debt?

Saylor was wrong to have kidney-selling conviction

Rather than refrain from adding leverage to his already risky enterprise when $BTC was at $84,000, Saylor insisted on purchasing more $BTC.

$BTC has responded by relentlessly declining.

Strategy now owns 717,722 $BTC for which it paid over $76,000 apiece. Its entire treasury and the Rube Goldberg machine of convertible debt, preferred stock, and common stock offerings has lost at least $7.9 billion dollars for investors.

Those investing losses are in addition to the cost of operating the Rube Goldberg machine itself.

In fact, the loss for Strategy investors is substantially higher after adjusting for the compensation of executives, bankers, lawyers, consultants, contractors, event planners, compliance officers, operations personnel, media liaisons, assistants, and everyone who helps Strategy capitalize itself.

For example, Strategy has to pay $896 million every year just to service its interest and dividend payments.

It also pays tens of millions of dollars for executive compensation, and has paid for the rest of its loss-generating, $BTC-focused enterprise at additional losses for over five years.

Specifically, it’s lost $7.9 billion dollars buying all of its $BTC and shedding $20 billion in market cap as investor confidence has waned.