Saylor and MicroStrategy then spent two decades mostly under Wall Street’s radar. Not that he was suffering. MicroStrategy kept plugging away, developing software for businesses. Saylor lived in a Miami Beach, Fla., mansion that looks like a Spanish colonial palace. A recent visit by a CoinDesk reporter revealed painted cherubs on the foyer ceiling, gold paneling and crimson-red wall paper in the dining room, a stage beyond the office library stocked with guitars, drums and whatever else a band might need, and a portrait of Saylor styled like an old English sailor – with laser eyes. A yacht was floating out back, where a crew lived full-time so Saylor could travel whenever he wanted.
What brought Saylor back to center stage was bitcoin. His fear of inflation drove him in 2020 to start investing MicroStrategy’s cash in the original cryptocurrency. The company’s cash flows started getting routed to bitcoin. He lined Wall Street bankers’ pockets by selling debt to raise money to buy bitcoin. In the process, he audaciously turned his sleepy software company into a bitcoin vault. In all, MicroStrategy has spent about $4 billion on digital assets. MicroStrategy’s stock became a proxy for holding bitcoin. The stock price moves up and down in lockstep with bitcoin’s movements.
Source: Michael Saylor Lost Big in the Dot-Com Bubble and Bitcoin’s Crash. Now He Aims to Rebound Again
