Saylor Brings Bitcoin to Goldmans Table
Michael Saylor, executive chairman of Strategy Inc. (Nasdaq: MSTR), used a late-June appearance at Goldman Sachs‘ Digital Assets Conference in London to press his case that bitcoin is evolving from a treasury reserve asset into the backbone of a new credit market. He said he discussed “ Bitcoin, digital credit, and the future of capital markets” with the bank’s clients.
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“The best way to build a billion-dollar finance company today is digital credit,” Saylor has argued in recent months, and he carried that thesis into one of Wall Street‘s most established institutions. The booking itself was notable as Goldman Sachs, featuring the world’s largest corporate bitcoin holder as a headline speaker, signaled how far digital assets have moved toward mainstream client coverage and product development.
Saylors core idea is that companies can borrow against bitcoin holdings to issue yield-bearing instruments, turning a volatile asset into a source of durable income. By his logic, bitcoin becomes both “digital capital” for balance sheets and “digital credit” for investors who want exposure without owning the coin outright.
An $11 Billion Market Built From Zero
The numbers behind the pitch have grown quickly given bitcoin-backed digital credit has expanded from effectively zero a year ago to more than $11 billion today, according to Saylor, financing that he says helped fund roughly 175,000 $BTC in purchases by Strategy through the current bear market.
Strategy itself now holds 847,363 $BTC, worth roughly $50.9 billion as of late June, cementing its position as the largest corporate holder of the asset. Saylor has spent six years transforming the company from an enterprise-software vendor into a bitcoin-acquisition machine, and its MSTR shares are up more than 800% over five years.
The centerpiece of the credit strategy is STRC, a perpetual preferred stock tied to the company‘s bitcoin holdings. Bitcoin.com News reported that STRC has become the world’s largest preferred stock, reaching about $8.5 billion in issuance in under a year. The company recently raised the instruments annual dividend rate from roughly 11.5% to 12% to keep it attractive to income investors, part of a broader “digital credit” framework that lets Strategy monetize bitcoin to fund dividends, interest and buybacks.
Pressure Beneath the Pitch
Saylor‘s latest message arrives at a strained moment given that earlier this week, Strategy’s enterprise value briefly fell below the market value of its bitcoin holdings for the first time (a milestone that erased the premium investors had long paid for exposure to Saylor‘s stack). The shift also sharpened questions about whether the company’s financial engineering can keep outrunning bitcoins volatility.
Skeptics, including longtime bitcoin critic Peter Schiff, have warned that Strategys newer capital framework could eventually force bitcoin sales to cover obligations if markets stay weak, a scenario Saylor has repeatedly downplayed. Even so, the company has kept buying, adding coins in small tranches during the downturn to reinforce its long-standing mantra of “steady accumulation”.