This analysis was first published in SvD Näringsliv, in Swedish, on December 6th, 2025. This piece was translated from Swedish by Claude. Some phrasing may differ from a human translation.

The crypto market’s central protagonist is called Michael Saylor. As one of Bitcoin’s biggest buyers, the outside world is wondering whether the unthinkable could happen. Will Saylor start selling? The answer could trigger an enormous crash.

Not every listed CEO would survive a stock price fall of more than 99 percent.

But Michael Saylor is not just any corporate leader. The share price in the company Microstrategy fell from 313 dollars in March 2000 to 0.45 dollars two years later.

Twenty years later, he was still at the company — but now with a new idea.

Microstrategy would start buying Bitcoin. That is where the next great upward journey on the stock market began. As the ever-rising Bitcoin price took hold, Saylor’s company came to be about nothing else. But now — with the Bitcoin price having turned downward — the risk is that the company has found itself in a trap. One that could drag the entire crypto market down with it.

The share price curve for Strategy — the new name for Microstrategy — looks gloomy this year. Since January it has fallen 37 percent. The equivalent fall for Bitcoin is around 15 percent down. Strategy has therefore lost considerably more, even though in all material respects the business consists of nothing other than Bitcoin itself. Why?

To understand that, you need to look at the innovation Strategy nonetheless performs. Unlike Apple, which invents new phones, or OpenAI, which makes AI chatbots, Strategy’s innovation is a financial one. If you have a company that almost exclusively buys and owns Bitcoin — how do you pay for it all?

Strategy’s answer is a series of financial products. With names like STRF, STRD, and STRE, Strategy has created new share classes that appeal to different investor strategies. In simplified terms, they pay a guaranteed dividend of around 10 percent, across various time horizons. By issuing new shares of this kind, they have brought in many billions which they have then used to buy more Bitcoin. They currently own 650,000 Bitcoin — roughly 3 percent of the 21 million that will ever be able to exist.

Does that sound complicated? That is probably part of the point.

Rarely have I read such diametrically opposed analyses of how a company actually works as I have with Strategy. It has generated both a long tail of enthusiasts and fierce critics.

This attractive share dividend must be paid out regularly. But Bitcoin is not an asset that generates any new income. Like gold, it is traded at a certain price that goes up and down — but no new money is created simply from owning either gold or Bitcoin. And it is a great deal of money that needs to materialise. Strategy currently has around 7.5 billion kronor in interest and guaranteed dividends that need to be paid annually.

Strategy therefore recently sold more shares and created an internal fund of 13 billion kronor. With this money they can pay for all the share dividends — at least for longer than the coming year. And they can do so without being forced to do what everyone in the crypto market fears: that they will start selling some of their Bitcoin.

The key metric here is called MNAV. You arrive at Strategy’s MNAV by dividing the company’s enterprise value (EV) by the total value of all the Bitcoin it owns. If that figure is above 1, Strategy’s shares are valued higher than the Bitcoin it holds. If the figure drops below 1, the opposite is true — the market values the company at less than its Bitcoin holdings. This has happened, for example, to Japan’s Metaplanet, which also buys Bitcoin as its primary occupation.

When MNAV falls below 1, it becomes cheaper for the company to sell its Bitcoin than to issue new shares. But the sheer size of Strategy has made this peculiar little metric something that everyone in the market now watches like a hawk. They are one of the world’s largest owners — and buyers — of Bitcoin. Should they start selling, the price could fall quickly. That in turn could lead to enormous cascade effects across the entire crypto market. A potential crypto financial crash, in short.

Strategy has said it will only sell Bitcoin if all other ways to finance the company have disappeared. But the ability to raise new money as the Bitcoin price continues to fall could become considerably harder than before. And money must come in regularly. The spiral that enabled Strategy to buy all this Bitcoin has now reversed direction.

Bitcoin — which was intended as a decentralised asset — now has an extremely centralised dependency. Should Strategy be forced to sell Bitcoin, for whatever reason, it is hard to see there being enough buyers to prevent the price from falling sharply.

The crypto market is now holding its breath.

But Michael Saylor does not give the impression of being worried.

Of the new money the company just raised, he put over 250 million kronor as a down payment on a new private jet.

It seems he sees himself in the driving seat of the Bitcoin economy for quite some time yet.