Strategy (Formerly MicroStrategy): The Company That Started the Bitcoin Treasury Model

Every idea in this series about Bitcoin treasury companies traces back to one company. Understanding its story properly explains why the model exists at all, and why it's since spread well beyond its original home.

Strategy, in one sentence

Strategy (known for most of its history as MicroStrategy) is a US-listed software company that became the world's largest corporate holder of Bitcoin, after adopting a treasury strategy that reshaped how public companies think about holding it at all.

From business intelligence software to Bitcoin pioneer

MicroStrategy was originally, and remains, a business intelligence and analytics software company, listed on the Nasdaq exchange for decades before Bitcoin entered the picture. In August 2020, under the leadership of co-founder Michael Saylor, the company made an unconventional decision: to hold Bitcoin as its primary treasury reserve asset, instead of simply leaving its cash reserves in the bank. The reasoning centred on concerns that cash was quietly losing value over time, and a belief that Bitcoin's fixed supply made it a stronger long-term store of value than currency alone. The company has since rebranded simply to Strategy, reflecting how central this approach has become to its identity.

How did the strategy actually work?

Rather than funding Bitcoin purchases entirely from existing cash, the company raised fresh capital specifically to buy more (through equity offerings, convertible notes, and various preferred stock structures over time) aiming to grow Bitcoin per share as it went, using the kind of accretive approach we've covered earlier in this series. It became, by a wide margin, the largest corporate holder of Bitcoin anywhere in the world.

Why did this matter so much?

Before this, no major public company had built its identity around holding Bitcoin at scale. Strategy proved a genuinely new institutional playbook was possible: ordinary stock market investors could gain a form of indirect access to Bitcoin through a listed equity, without needing to buy or store it themselves. That proof of concept is a large part of why the broader "Bitcoin treasury company" category exists today, inspiring other public companies, in the US and internationally, to adopt versions of the same approach.

Where does the UK fit into this story?

The model has since spread well beyond the US. In the UK specifically, Smarter Web, trading as The Smarter Web Company plc (ticker: SWC), has built its own Bitcoin treasury using a broadly similar accretive approach, adapted for a London-listed, GBP-denominated audience. It's worth being clear that Smarter Web is an entirely separate, independent company, with no formal affiliation to Strategy, it operates under its own management, its own strategy, and its own distinct risk profile.

Is Smarter Web "the UK's Strategy"?

It's a comparison some readers will naturally draw, given how closely the underlying approach mirrors the one Strategy pioneered, and it's not an unreasonable one to make. But it's worth treating as exactly that: a broad category comparison, not an equivalence. Each company's execution, financial position, and results are entirely its own, and one company's track record says nothing definitive about another's future performance. Nothing in this article is financial advice, and anyone considering an investment should do their own research and consider speaking to a regulated financial adviser.

Next in knowledge base

In our next article, What Does Bitcoin Per Share Mean?, we'll properly explain the metric that's run through everything covered in this article.