Michael Saylor faced obstacles before successfully adding bitcoin to MicroStrategy's balance sheet in 2020.
Speaking at the Abundance360 Summit 2024 this week, Saylor revealed how he offered to buy MicroStrategy shareholders' stake in a Dutch stock when they decided to first acquire $250 million in bitcoin.
The comments come after Saylor and his company announced earlier this week that they had purchased approximately 9,245 bitcoins for around $623 million. This latest acquisition brings MicroStrategy's total holdings to approximately 214,246 btc.
In a video from the conference, Saylor explained how he offered MicroStrategy shareholders the option to tender their shares to the company while purchasing bitcoin.
“We announced that we would do a Dutch auction and buy back $250 million of the shares at a premium. The shares were worth between $121 and $122. We offered to buy our shareholders for $140. We gave 20 days to think about it.” Saylor explained.
He said his philosophy was to “buy bitcoin” and that he was willing to do whatever it took to accumulate more. At the time, the price of bitcoin was about $11,000, down from the all-time highs of $20,000 set in 2017.
Saylor's aggressiveness in acquiring bitcoin for MicroStrategy has made the enterprise software company one of the largest corporate owners of bitcoin. The company currently holds over $13.7 billion worth of btc, making bitcoin its largest corporate treasury asset.
MicroStrategy has since funded its bitcoin purchases through debt offerings and equity issuances, even as the bitcoin market has fallen, and has made clear that it has no plans to sell its stockpile anytime soon.