Strategy (NASDAQ: MSTR, formerly MicroStrategy) is the world's largest publicly-listed Bitcoin treasury. Its 1998 Nasdaq IPO was originally that of an enterprise business-intelligence software company, but on August 11, 2020 executive chairman Michael Saylor announced the company would convert its entire corporate treasury into Bitcoin. From that day forward, MSTR has effectively been the market's most leveraged, publicly-listed Bitcoin proxy.
Strategy raises capital through low-coupon convertible notes and at-the-market equity offerings and uses it to buy more Bitcoin, accumulating the largest corporate BTC position on any public balance sheet. The company formally renamed itself "Strategy" in 2025. Its legacy BI software business still generates cash but is now a small footnote next to the treasury.
Bitcoin treasury (the primary reason to own the stock), convertible-note and equity issuance (the built-in leverage mechanism), the legacy business-intelligence software business, and the explicit BTC-per-share KPI that guides all capital-allocation decisions.
MSTR trades like a leveraged long-dated Bitcoin call option — when BTC crashes, MSTR usually falls much harder. It regularly trades at a premium to its Bitcoin net asset value (mNAV); if that premium compresses, shareholders lose twice. Ongoing convertibles and equity issuance dilute shareholders, and spot Bitcoin ETFs (IBIT, FBTC and others) offer cheaper, purer exposure — a persistent headwind to the premium narrative.
If Bitcoin appreciates over the long run, MSTR compounds via both leverage and rising BTC-per-share. Nasdaq-100 inclusion already drove passive buying; potential S&P 500 inclusion would open a much bigger institutional pool. Management has formalized "BTC Yield" as a KPI and continues to grow Bitcoin owned per share through financial engineering.
Strategy is the most extreme expression of the "public-company-as-Bitcoin-treasury" idea. For investors with a strong long-term Bitcoin thesis and a high tolerance for volatility, MSTR is arguably the most direct leveraged BTC exposure available in a normal brokerage account. But that same leverage means MSTR's drawdowns can be far deeper than BTC's, and the mNAV premium adds a second moving part.
Note: MSTR does not currently pay a common-stock dividend; total return is driven entirely by price change and reflects the leverage effect of the Bitcoin-treasury strategy. Past performance is not a guarantee of future results. Data updates daily.