How Bitcoin makes Michael Saylor the world’s first trillionaire by 2025

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—by Protos Staff
MicroStrategy's chief yacht guy Michael Saylor loves Bitcoin. But how much does he need to become the world's first trillionaire?

MicroStrategy’s chief yacht guy Michael Saylor is still spending tons of company cash on Bitcoin.

The maverick billionaire, who this year became a Bitcoin poster boy, just added 7,002 BTC ($395.6 million) to MicroStrategy’s balance sheet.

MicroStrategy now holds a pearl-clutching 121,044 BTC ($6.8 billion).

The Virginia-headquartered data unit’s Bitcoin portfolio is the largest of any public company in the world — nearly three times Tesla’s.

At the moment, MicroStrategy’s market cap sits at $7.31 billion. This means Bitcoin makes up more than 90% of its total value right now.

Forbes ranks Saylor’s personal fortune at $2.6 billion. Saylor himself owns 17,732 BTC, an impressive cache now worth $1 billion. 

Bitcoin aside, Saylor maintains a 23.7% stake in MicroStrategy, which roughly works out to be $1.25 billion after accounting for the company’s debt (he controls 70% of the voting power, however).

MicroStrategy’s wanton Bitcoin buys means it’s now inexplicably tied to the price of the world’s top cryptocurrency. 

In fact, MicroStrategy’s share price surges (and falls) along with Bitcoin, taking Saylor’s wealth along for the ride.

So, we wondered: what conditions must be met for Saylor to become the world’s first trillionaire?

Saylor must keep MicroStrategy buying Bitcoin

Saylor is rich, but he isn’t Elon Musk or Jeff Bezos rich. 

This makes it critical that MicroStrategy continues stacking sats at its current rate, especially if Saylor hopes to eclipse either billionaire anytime soon.

Protos found the company has grown its stash by a little over 0.5% per day on average (since one month after MicroStrategy disclosed its first Bitcoin last August).

Michael Saylor’s personal wealth, visualized over the past two years.

We also analyzed Bitcoin’s daily price movements to determine exactly how much Bitcoin MicroStrategy must acquire to award Saylor the elusive fourth comma.

Bitcoin’s price has appreciated (on average) by less than half-a-percent each day over the past 10 years. 

Of course, predicting price movements with this metric isn’t perfect (past performance is not indicative of future results), however it’s appropriate for this clickbait.

Two things occur by August 26, 2024 when using these formulae:

  • Bitcoin’s price swells to $728,600.
  • MicroStrategy’s BTC stash reaches 5,135,544 BTC ($3.74 trillion).
  • Saylor’s personal wealth exceeds $1 trillion.

On this date, MicroStrategy would itself boast $3.87 trillion in market value (most of it still Bitcoin). It would likely be the largest publicly-listed company in the world (although, Apple is already close with $2.64 trillion today).

Saylor’s stake in MicroStrategy, if left unchanged, would hit an enormous $916.9 billion.

We didn’t attempt to project Michael Saylor’s personal Bitcoin buys, as he said he hasn’t bought any since before MicroStrategy acquired its first.

Saylor’s personal assets, presumed to be made up of yachts, real estate, stock, and the like, also appreciated in this time.

Overall, we calculated Saylor’s personal assets (outside of his Bitcoin and MicroStrategy shares) would be worth $75.4 billion by August 26, 2024 – up from around $326 million today.

Saylor’s Bitcoin would’ve grown to $12.9 billion. This brings his fortune beyond $1 trillion.

Time to sell more bonds

It must be stressed that while MicroStrategy has bought Bitcoin at an extreme pace (its balance went from 38,250 BTC to 121,044 BTC in the past year), it’s almost impossible for the company to keep that up.

MicroStrategy is restricted by the cash it can spend on Bitcoin. Saylor knows this; he boldly sold more than a billion dollars in junk bonds to fund his Bitcoin strategy this year.

Besides, Bitcoin mightn’t keep its historic daily growth average. This would extend the time required for its price appreciation to make Saylor trillionaire-riche.

Bitcoin is eating MicroStrategy’s market value.

The other billionaires might earn more, too, which would hinder Saylor’s chances at the ‘world’s first trillionaire’ moniker.

Last year, one shallow estimate posited that Amazon’s Bezos would be first crowned some time in 2026.

And earlier this year, a Morgan Stanley analyst predicted SpaceX would make Musk the world’s first trillionaire, but didn’t give a specific timeframe.

With our roadmap, Saylor would claim victory by September 2024.

Read more: [MicroStrategy execs dump $175M stock after 8-year hiatus, thanks Bitcoin!]

But for MicroStrategy (and Bitcoin) to make Saylor the world’s first trillionaire, it will need to somehow afford another 5,000,000 BTC (about 25% of the total supply), bought steadily over the next three years.

At current prices, that represents an additional $280 billion spent on Bitcoin — at least.

MicroStrategy sits on about $58.1 million in cash and equivalents as of its latest disclosure, with nearly $2.2 billion in debt. 

Time to raise some more.

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