One American company called Strategy owns more than 3% of all bitcoin in existence. Its executive chairman, Michael Saylor, is the pioneer of a new business model where publicly listed companies buy cryptocurrency assets to hold on their balance sheet.
Strategy, formerly called MicroStrategy, first bought US$250 million (£187 million) worth of bitcoin in mid-2020 during the depths of the COVID economic slump. As it continued to buy bitcoin, its share price soared, and it kept buying. As of October 2025, Strategy held 640,418 bitcoin, worth around $70 billion.
In the years since, more than 100 other public companies have followed Saylor’s lead and become bitcoin treasury companies, together holding more than $114 billion of…
