MicroStrategy’s Unconventional Bitcoin Bet Now Worth $10 Billion

In the midst of the Covid-19 crisis, MicroStrategy Inc.’s Michael Saylor made the then little-noticed decision to invest the enterprise-software maker’s cash into Bitcoin.

Before the shift in the middle of 2020, the Tysons Corner, Virginia-based company Saylor co-founded had about $500 million mostly invested in short-term U.S. government securities. At the time, Saylor said he began to question that conventional strategy when yields tumbled in the wake of the pandemic. He called his cash hoard a “melting ice cube,” predicting accurately that inflation would surge after the Federal Reserve relaxed policy.

Now, almost four years later, Saylor is one ...