MicroStrategy was already one of the hottest stocks on the planet, but the rally intensified after Donald Trump's election victory in November.'With the red sweep, bitcoin is surging up with tailwinds,' MicroStrategy founder Michael Saylor told CNBC. Michael Saylor, chairman and chief executive officer at MicroStrategy, during an interview at the Bitcoin 2023 conference in Miami Beach, Florida, US, on Thursday, May 18, 2023.
in June 1998, founder Michael Saylor stayed in a penthouse suite at the Lotte New York Palace in Midtown Manhattan. Saylor, who was 33 at the time, says it was the most exquisite hotel room he'd ever seen, paid for by lead underwriter Merrill Lynch. The next morning, Saylor went to the floor of the Nasdaq to watch his company's stock open. He recalled seeing a note scrolling across the ticker, warning traders: 'Please do not confuse MSTR with MSFT.' The latter belonged toMicroStrategy shares popped 76% in their debut, joining the parade of tech companies benefiting from the dot-com boom.More than 26 years later, MicroStrategy and Microsoft were again linked together, but for an entirely different reason. In December 2024, Saylor stood before Microsoft's shareholders to try and convince them that the company, now valued at over $3 trillion, should put some of its $78.4 billion in cash, equivalents and short-term investment into 'Microsoft can't afford to miss the next technology wave, and bitcoin is that wave,' Saylor said in a video presentation that heSaylor has gone all in on that strategy. MicroStrategy has purchased 439,000 bitcoin since mid-2020, a stockpile that's now worth about $42 billion and is the basis for the company's market cap explosion to $82 billion from roughly $1.1 billion when the plan was put in place. MicroStrategy's software unit, which specializes in business intelligence, generates just over $100 million in revenue a quarte