Vanguard becomes top shareholder in Michael Saylor’s MicroStrategy
Vanguard becomes top shareholder in Michael Saylor’s MicroStrategy originally appeared on TheStreet.
The Vanguard Group is the largest institutional shareholder of Michael Saylor-led Strategy (MSTR).
Data from the investment research platform Intel revealed that Vanguard holds 20.5 million MSTR shares, accounting for 8.55% ownership of the company.
While Vanguard is the world's second-largest asset manager after BlackRock (NYSE: BLK), Strategy, earlier known as MicroStrategy, is the world's largest publicly listed corporate holder of Bitcoin.
BTC, the world's largest cryptocurrency, hit an all-time high (ATH) of $123,091.61 on July 14.
However, Vanguard had once referred to Bitcoin as "an immature asset class." When leading asset managers such as BlackRock and Fidelity began to offer spot BTC exchange-traded funds (ETFs) in January 2024, Vanguard didn't jump in.
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Janel Jackson, then serving as Vanguard's global head of ETF Capital Markets and Broker & Index Relations, had called crypto more of a speculation than an investment. She had remarked:
"It’s an immature asset class that has little history, no inherent economic value, no cash flow, and can create havoc within a portfolio."
With an investment worth $9.26 billion in Strategy, the asset management firm is now the largest shareholder in a company that holds 601,550 Bitcoin, valued at $74 billion at the time of writing, on its corporate balance sheet.
BlackRock, on the other hand, is the largest issuer of a spot Bitcoin ETF with net assets worth more than $84 billion.
Vanguard, however, is still skeptical of direct exposure to Bitcoin. On July 10, CEO Salim Ramji said in an interview with ETF.com that Vanguard doesn't make bets on "speculative assets like Bitcoin."
As per Kraken's price feed, Bitcoin was exchanging hands at $118,459.87 at press time.
Vanguard becomes top shareholder in Michael Saylor’s MicroStrategy first appeared on TheStreet on Jul 16, 2025
This story was originally reported by TheStreet on Jul 16, 2025, where it first appeared.
