Bitcoin Price: Michael Saylor Strategy Hype Machine Is Glitching Out

Here’s how Michael Saylor’s Bitcoin treasury company Strategy Inc. is supposed to work: The firm raises funds to buy Bitcoin; that buying drives up the price of Bitcoin; the share price of Strategy follows suit. Rinse and repeat. The trade, helped along by the utter self-belief of Saylor as a hype capitalist on par with OpenAI Inc.’s Sam Altman, has been so lucrative it has spawned dozens of imitators hoping to capture the same “infinite money glitch,” like a cheat code on a video game.

But the glitch is glitching out. Bitcoin’s price has fallen below $90,000, making it harder for Strategy to keep the number-go-up boosterism alive as the cryptocurrency nears the $74,000 average price it paid for its 650,000-coin stash. Copycat firms and investment vehicles are competing away Strategy’s premium, with French entrepreneur Eric Larcheveque the latest to announce a Bitcoin treasury company. As well as their speculative appeal, these Saylor-imitating corporates say they hedge against inflation by plowing capital reserves into apparently safer Bitcoins.