After Michael Saylor’s software company Strategy stockpiled hundreds of thousands of bitcoins, he was hailed as an alchemist. Then things went awry. By John Cassidy What’s the best way to make a great deal of money? The most reliable method is to come up with something that people can’t resist buying—such as Coca-Cola or Birkin bags or the “Harry Potter” books. Of course, that’s not easy. Another option is to purchase something that’s rising in value and hold on to it. Real estate or a broad basket of stocks are obvious choices. Since 1900, the S. & P. 500 has produced an average annual return of about seven per cent, even after adjusting for inflation, which translates into investments doubling in value every ten years or so. Based on that record, if you started socking money away into the market during your early twenties, each thousand dollars you invested then would be worth about twenty thousand by the time you reach retirement age. That’s pretty good. But forty-odd years is a long time, and stock-index funds are kind of old hat. What about getting in on something newer and more exciting that seems to defy gravity? Or even better, what about inventing a tool to enable other people to do this, then marketing it to the masses? If you could pull that off, you really would be in the money. In July, 2020, Michael Saylor, the head and co-founder of the business-software company MicroStrategy, announced that the firm would use some of its cash to buy bitcoins. The following month, MicroStrategy bought 21,454 bitcoins for two hundred and fifty million dollars, paying about $11,650 for each. The company didn’t need bitcoins to conduct its software business, but Saylor said they represented “an attractive investment asset with more long-term appreciation potential than holding cash.” Later that year, MicroStrategy borrowed about six hundred and fifty million dollars to buy more bitcoins. By April, 2021, the firm held more than ninety thousand coins, and the price of the digital currency had risen to more than fifty thousand dollars; MicroStrategy was sitting on a big gain. | 
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