At a recent keynote delivered at the MIT Bitcoin Expo, Phong Le, CEO of Strategy (NASDAQ: MSTR), made a bold case for Bitcoin as a core component of modern corporate treasury strategy. With over 528,000 BTC on its balance sheet, Strategy has become the most visible—and arguably the most successful—public company to adopt Bitcoin as a primary reserve asset.
“We outperformed the entire Nasdaq, the entire S&P 500, the entire Mag Seven… and we outperformed Bitcoin,” Le told the audience.
While Strategy Chairman Michael Saylor laid the philosophical foundation for Bitcoin’s corporate use case starting in 2020, Le’s keynote drove home the executional and financial results. The talk, which was part challenge and part case study, urged corporate leaders to question everything from their education to their financial assumptions—and to reimagine their balance sheet in the Bitcoin era. On Day 1 of the MIT Bitcoin Expo, Le opened with a breakdown of corporate America’s performance problem. Of the 35 million companies in the U.S., only the top tier—primarily S&P 500 firms—are meeting market expectations. The rest are stagnating. “Almost every other company is not performing,” Le said.
He pointed the finger at entrenched financial orthodoxy. MBA programs, elite consultancies, and Wall Street firms continue to teach the same playbook: optimize the income statement, reinvest in traditional assets, and stick to quarterly thinking. The result is systemic underperformance. “All they can do is the S&P 500,” he said, noting even private equity, venture capital, and hedge funds rarely beat that benchmark.
Le’s thesis: it’s not a lack of talent—it’s a lack of imagination.
