The Hitchhiker’s Guide to MicroStrategy’s Bitcoin Bet

You could be forgiven for missing, amid the onslaught of tech company earnings news lately, what may be the most startling business story of the week. That would be the plan by enterprise software and bitcoin investment firm MicroStrategy to raise a massive $42 billion over the next three years to buy more bitcoin, using equal parts debt and equity. The total raised would nearly double MicroStrategy’s size, given that it has an enterprise value now of about $50 billion.

Close watchers of the company may not be surprised. Since 2021, what was an aging software firm with steadily declining revenues has reinvented itself as a bitcoin investor,  reflecting executive chair Michael Saylor’s belief that bitcoin is the “Facebook of money.”