Crypto Perpetual Motion Machines – Bloomberg

MicroStrategy Inc. is, among other things, a proof of concept. The concept is: “If you buy $100 of Bitcoin and put it in a pot, you can slice the pot into shares and sell them for $200.” (MicroStrategy owns about $49 billion of Bitcoin and has a market capitalization of about $94 billion, because people will buy its shares for more than the value of the underlying Bitcoin.) This is a very appealing concept, because: free money! A “perpetual motion machine,” I sometimes call it: The more shares you sell, the more Bitcoin you can buy, and the more your shares are worth.

I say “you,” but it’s not clear that you can do this. MicroStrategy can do it. Why? What is special about MicroStrategy? I think the answer is some combination of: