Saylor: Bitcoin to outperform S&P by 2–3x as MicroStrategy keeps buying and refuses to sell

Michael Saylor is doubling down. He expects bitcoin to outpace the S&P 500 by two to three times over the coming years and has reiterated that MicroStrategy won’t be selling its BTC. The company continues to expand its stack despite the recent drawdown pushing the treasury’s market value below its aggregate acquisition cost.

The stubborn part of the story isn’t the forecast—it’s the policy. A no‑sell stance turns bitcoin from a trade into corporate doctrine. That single decision reframes everything: how the firm attracts shareholders, finances growth, manages liquidity, and communicates risk.

Why lean into a permanent allocation when the position is underwater? Because a durable commitment shapes reflexivity. When a company explicitly anchors its balance sheet to a scarce, transparent asset, it invites an investor base calibrated to that volatility and time horizon. The message is clear: this is a bitcoin‑levered operating business, not a cash‑heavy software firm. That clarity can reduce style drift, even if it raises beta.

The business logic is straightforward: swap fiat treasury optionality for bitcoin’s convexity. If Saylor’s relative-return view is directionally right—BTC compounding at a multiple of equities—the opportunity cost of holding dollars or low‑yield assets becomes material over multi‑year windows. Staying the course through a pullback and adding coins is consistent with a dollar‑cost‑averaging discipline rather than a price‑target mentality. In practice, this looks less like market timing and more like a treasury policy that ignores interim marks.

There’s a psychological edge in public commitment. By stating they won’t sell, leadership removes the temptation to manage optics around quarterly marks or headline risk. That constraint reduces decision fatigue and can deepen stakeholder trust—until conditions change. The trade‑off is flexibility. A blanket promise may limit future maneuvering if liquidity needs, financing conditions, or regulatory dynamics shift. Credible commitment cuts both ways.

Technologically, bitcoin’s deterministic issuance schedule and global settlement rails still offer clean exposure to digital scarcity without idiosyncratic platform risk. Halving cycles and growing institutional access via regulated venues can create persistent demand, though correlations with risk assets tend to rise in stressed markets. If S&P returns moderate while bitcoin’s supply‑driven and adoption‑driven tailwinds persist, the relative outperformance claim is plausible without assigning a price target. The path, however, will remain jagged.

Key risks deserve sober weighting: - Funding and duration: maintaining a large BTC position requires matching maturities and guarding against refinancing squeezes during risk‑off periods. - Proxy premium erosion: with spot ETFs and other vehicles now live, the “public proxy” valuation premium can compress; the response is to keep growing underlying BTC per share. - Governance duty: a hard “no‑sell” line should coexist with clear contingency frameworks for extreme scenarios to uphold fiduciary standards. - Basis and accounting: mark‑to‑market optics create headline volatility even when operating cash flows are stable.

What matters now is consistency. If the thesis is that bitcoin’s multi‑year return profile will double or triple S&P performance, then policy, financing, and communications need to be architected for that horizon. Continuing to accumulate while below cost signals that the company views volatility as the toll for long‑term asymmetric upside—not a reason to exit. Investors will price that identity into the capital structure, not treat it as a passing trade.