Tech billionaires Peter Thiel and Michael Saylor are establishing crypto firm treasuries, however some monetary observers word that their methods may pose important danger.
Each Thiel and Saylor have poured substantial capital into cryptocurrencies by their respective companies and funding automobiles: Saylor, along with his software program agency Technique’s frequent Bitcoin (BTC) buys, and Thiel, by enterprise capital investments in crypto companies, and his alternate, Bullish, which went public earlier in August.
Every shouldn’t be solely in search of to increase his holdings but additionally how the cryptocurrency trade is formed and controlled. However there are nonetheless important variations of their respective methods and outlooks concerning crypto, and firms that determined to kind crypto treasuries might be inviting a “demise 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 by what has been dubbed an “infinite cash glitch.”
The “glitch” refers to Technique’s strategy 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 giant Bitcoin purchases enhance BTC’s worth, subsequently rising Technique’s valuation and permitting it to situation 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 frequent within the monetary world, with 174 public corporations reportedly holding Bitcoin, in keeping with BitcoinTreasurys.internet.
Saylor’s crypto technique concentrates solely on Bitcoin, particularly, accumulating the most important portion of the cryptocurrency as attainable, and accommodates a virtually 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 stated Bitcoin was a “Newtonian community,” the management of which was mandatory for the US to keep up international energy.
He additional urged that an aggressive Bitcoin accumulation technique from the US authorities may erase the nationwide debt and urged in different interviews {that a} nationwide Bitcoin reserve is “manifest future for america.”
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 strategy
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 remodeled into an Ether funding automobile, in addition to a 9.1% share in BitMine Immersion Applied sciences, which Founders Fund helped elevate $250 million in ETH.
Thiel has additionally backed a cryptocurrency alternate, 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 house and is optimistic about its development, however Thiel has additionally proven some extra measured skepticism, notably concerning Bitcoin. Removed from Saylor’s “swarm of cyber hornets serving the goddess of knowledge,” Thiel beforehand questioned whether or not the asset isn’t no less than “partially 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 more durable questions on precisely how that works.”
Briefly, Thiel’s strategy provides 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 current weeks, the Bitcoin treasury mannequin championed by Saylor has been shedding steam.
The mannequin’s thesis of “elevate capital, convert to Bitcoin and look ahead to appreciation” could also be pretty simple, but it surely leaves the corporate susceptible to the infamous volatility of Bitcoin markets.
If the value of BTC dips too near the Bitcoin-per-share metric, or internet asset worth (NAV), of an organization’s inventory, that inventory loses the valuation buffer that was alleged to elevate its inventory worth.
This may result in a supposed “demise 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’t increase its holdings or refinance present debt. Ought to a mortgage mature or a margin name come, compelled liquidations will observe.
Technique’s NAV at present 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 instructed Fortune, “There’s no rational rationalization for that distinction.”
Technique traders, subsequently, face danger not solely from fluctuations in Bitcoin’s worth however from “no matter is driving this distinction between the web asset worth and the value of the shares … That further element is an additional supply of danger.”
In current weeks, the Technique inventory worth has slumped together with BTC, however Saylor’s BTC-buying runs proceed unabated. The corporate purchased 3,081 BTC for $356.9 million over the week ending Aug. 24.
Market circumstances could also be comparatively regular for now, and coverage from the White Home stays firmly pro-crypto. However crypto winters at all times come, and after they do, the market will see which technique survives.
Journal: The one factor these 6 international crypto hubs all have in frequent…
