Are MicroStrategy imitators on the way in 2025?

This post is adapted from w3w, my newsletter about emerging technology over on Substack. To receive it in your inbox every Sunday, including additional headlines from around the internet about web3, AI, and more, subscribe here. 😊

MicroStrategy’s stunning bitcoin-fueled rise is about to hit a new milestone as the company is poised to be added to its Nasdaq 100 index effective Dec. 23.

As it happens, MicroStrategy founder Michael Saylor also recently dropped by Scott Galloway’s podcast to discuss his decision in 2020 to begin investing MicroStrategy’s corporate cash reserves in bitcoin.

Over time, that decision has wildly boosted MicroStrategy’s stock price, up almost thirtyfold since the start of 2020. It’s also effectively transformed the company from an old-school tech consultancy into an $80 billion behemoth that now derives most of its value from its crypto-heavy balance sheet.

Over the last few years, Saylor has also become one of the most publicly outspoken bitcoin cheerleaders around. So he’s hardly a stranger to press interviews on the topic.

Still, I would say that Galloway, a venture investor himself who’s also an author and a professor at New York University’s business school, goes into a remarkably detailed exploration of Saylor’s decisions around bitcoin. You get way more nitty-gritty in the “Prof G Markets” podcast episode than when Saylor does a 90-second “hit” on CNBC, for example.

It also helps that Galloway’s co-host Ed Elson asks Saylor a lot of appropriately skeptical questions in the episode about risks and potential downsides of corporate bitcoin holdings, always in context of how such an approach compares to more traditional financial management.

For now, most companies outside the crypto space clearly share Elson’s skittishness about adding bitcoin. An overwhelming majority of Microsoft shareholders recently voted down a proposal to do so, for instance.

But the question is definitely getting harder to ignore, at least. A 30x rise in any public company’s share price is inevitably going to get other CEOs wondering whether they should emulate whatever those other guys did.

Up next: Amazon shareholders will vote on a proposal similar to Microsoft’s in April.