Ripple CEO Brad Garlinghouse said he remained bullish on Bitcoin but that Michael Saylor’s approach to financing Bitcoin purchases had damaged the broader crypto market, in an interview with CNBC on Friday, as the preferred shares at the center of the strategy model fell to a record low.
“Financial engineering does not generate long-term value,” Garlinghouse said, arguing that the lasting value of any digital asset comes from its utility. “The Michael Saylor team was not focused on the right things and that hurt the market as a whole.”
He separated this from his views on the asset itself, saying he was still bullish on Bitcoin.
Garlinghouse’s target was the machine Strategy used to accumulate bitcoins. For about a year, the company has issued preferred stock, a class of stock that pays a fixed dividend, to raise cash for more bitcoin.
Its STRC stock carries an 11.5% annual dividend and is designed to trade near $100. Garlinghouse pointed to STRC trading around 25% below that level as a “damning indictment” of the strategy.
