Tech billionaires Peter Thiel and Michael Saylor are establishing crypto firm treasuries, however some monetary observers word that their methods might pose important danger.
Each Thiel and Saylor have poured substantial capital into cryptocurrencies via their respective companies and funding automobiles: Saylor, together with his software program agency Technique’s frequent Bitcoin (BTC) buys, and Thiel, via enterprise capital investments in crypto companies, and his trade, Bullish, which went public earlier in August.
Every is just not solely searching for to develop his holdings but in addition how the cryptocurrency trade is formed and controlled. However there are nonetheless important variations of their respective methods and outlooks relating to crypto, and corporations that determined to kind crypto treasuries may very well be inviting a “dying spiral” when costs crash.
Thiel and Saylor have differing crypto funding methods
Michael Saylor, co-founder and chairman of software program firm Technique (previously MicroStrategy), has created waves within the monetary world via what has been dubbed an “infinite cash glitch.”
The “glitch” refers to Technique’s method to purchasing Bitcoin, whereby it points inventory or equity-linked securities to purchase Bitcoin after which holds the asset on its stability sheet.
Usually, issuing extra fairness would devalue the inventory’s worth, however massive Bitcoin purchases enhance BTC’s worth, subsequently growing Technique’s valuation and permitting it to difficulty extra debt.
And the cycle continues.
The technique has been so profitable for Technique that it has gained a bunch of imitators. The time period “Bitcoin treasury firm” is rising more and more widespread within the monetary world, with 174 public corporations reportedly holding Bitcoin, based on BitcoinTreasurys.web.
Saylor’s crypto technique concentrates solely on Bitcoin, specifically, accumulating the most important portion of the cryptocurrency as doable, and comprises an almost metaphysical characterization of the asset.
In 2020, he wrote that Bitcoin “is a swarm of cyber hornets serving the goddess of knowledge, feeding on the fireplace of fact, exponentially rising ever smarter, sooner, and stronger behind a wall of encrypted power.”
In a speech on the Bitcoin Coverage Institute in March, Saylor said Bitcoin was a “Newtonian community,” the management of which was crucial for the US to take care of world energy.
He additional steered that an aggressive Bitcoin accumulation technique from the US authorities might erase the nationwide debt and suggested in different interviews {that a} nationwide Bitcoin reserve is “manifest future for the US.”
Thiel’s technique, whereas much less groundbreaking, is extra various. In February 2025, Founders Fund, a VC agency co-founded by Peter Thiel in 2005, which backed companies like SpaceX, Palantir and Fb, invested $100 million in Bitcoin and one other $100 million in Ether (ETH).
Which crypto funding technique will show simpler in the long term:
A) Michael Saylor’s Bitcoin-only method
B) Peter Thiel’s diversified techniqueShare your ideas within the feedback 👇👇👇
— Cointelegraph (@Cointelegraph) August 26, 2025
The Founders Fund owns 7.5% of ETHZilla, a biotech agency that reworked into an Ether funding car, in addition to a 9.1% share in BitMine Immersion Applied sciences, which Founders Fund helped increase $250 million in ETH.
Thiel has additionally backed a cryptocurrency trade, Bullish, that went public on Aug. 19, receiving a $1.15-billion valuation settled throughout a number of stablecoins, together with USDC (USDC) and PayPal USD (PYUSD).
He’s clearly invested within the crypto area and is optimistic about its development, however Thiel has additionally proven some extra measured skepticism, notably relating to Bitcoin. Removed from Saylor’s “swarm of cyber hornets serving the goddess of knowledge,” Thiel beforehand wondered whether or not the asset isn’t at the very least “partly a Chinese language monetary weapon towards the US.”
“It threatens fiat cash, but it surely particularly threatens the US greenback, and China desires to do issues to weaken it so China is lengthy Bitcoin, and from a geopolitical perspective, the US must be asking some harder questions on precisely how that works.”
Briefly, Thiel’s method affords a extra cautious and diversified publicity to cryptocurrencies, whereas Saylor takes an aggressive, direct publicity, all-in-on-Bitcoin technique.
Bitcoin treasury corporations on the rise: Is it a bubble?
The crypto trade could quickly discover out which technique will win. In latest weeks, the Bitcoin treasury mannequin championed by Saylor has been shedding steam.
The mannequin’s thesis of “increase capital, convert to Bitcoin and watch for appreciation” could also be pretty easy, but it surely leaves the corporate susceptible to the infamous volatility of Bitcoin markets.
If the worth of BTC dips too near the Bitcoin-per-share metric, or web asset worth (NAV), of an organization’s inventory, that inventory loses the valuation buffer that was presupposed to elevate its inventory worth.
This will result in a supposed “dying spiral” through which, as an organization’s market cap shrinks, so does its entry to capital. With out anybody to purchase the corporate’s fairness or any lenders, the agency can not develop its holdings or refinance current debt. Ought to a mortgage mature or a margin name come, pressured liquidations will observe.
Technique’s NAV at the moment clocks in at 1.4 occasions its share worth. It was practically double the share worth in February, when Carnegie Mellon College finance professor Bryan Routledge told Fortune, “There’s no rational clarification for that distinction.”
Technique buyers, subsequently, face danger not solely from fluctuations in Bitcoin’s worth however from “no matter is driving this distinction between the online asset worth and the worth of the shares … That further element is an additional supply of danger.”
In latest weeks, the Technique inventory worth has slumped together with BTC, however Saylor’s BTC-buying runs proceed unabated. The corporate bought 3,081 BTC for $356.9 million over the week ending Aug. 24.
Market situations could also be comparatively regular for now, and coverage from the White Home stays firmly pro-crypto. However crypto winters all the time come, and after they do, the market will see which technique survives.
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