Michael Saylor to Elon Musk: Buy Bitcoin

It turns out Elon Musk won’t actually be rescuing the suffering fans, and investors, of Manchester United. Michael Saylor still wants him to do something for bitcoin, though.

Mr. Musk got everybody riled up Tuesday night when he cracked that he was buying the famous U.K. football club, which currently sits 20th in Premier League standings and has seen its ownership recently booed. The club is also a publicly traded company, and its shares surged before Mr. Musk hours later said the quip was “a long-running joke on Twitter.”
Among the more than 40,000 responses to the original tweet was one from Mr. Saylor, who recently stepped down as CEO of MicroStrategy. That company reported a $1 billion quarterly loss in the second quarter.

“We would prefer that you buy some more #bitcoin.” he wrote.

Last year, Mr. Musk and Mr. Saylor were two of bitcoin’s biggest heroes. MicroStrategy has bought about 130,000 bitcoins over the past two years, turning the business-software company into more or less a bitcoin investment fund.

Mr. Musk has also been a vocal proponent of cryptocurrencies. Tesla put about $1.5 billion worth of bitcoin into its corporate reserves, to the delight of “bitcoin maxis” (i.e., true believers) like Mr. Saylor.

The purchases have cost both companies. MicroStrategy recorded a nearly $1 billion impairment charge on its holdings this past quarter. Tesla sold 75% of its bitcoin holdings in the quarter, raising $936 million, but also recording a loss of $170 million on the remaining stake.