Michael Saylor and Jack Mallers are having a very public disagreement about math. Specifically, the kind of math that determines whether shareholders in Bitcoin treasury companies are getting a fair deal or slowly getting their stakes watered down.

Saylor, the executive chairman of Strategy (the company formerly known as MicroStrategy), has been defending the use of Bitcoin-per-share (BPS) as a key performance metric. Mallers, the CEO of XXI Capital, thinks BPS is the wrong lens entirely, arguing it can obscure the dilution that comes from issuing new shares to fund Bitcoin purchases.

The tension matters because it strikes at the heart of how an entire category of public companies should be valued. And with Strategy having just raised $2.1 billion, with a staggering 86% of that coming from dilutive stock issuances, the stakes are more than theoretical.

The core of the disagreement

Saylor’s position is that BPS and related metrics remain crucial for evaluating Bitcoin-focused companies. His argument is that traditional fiat-based earnings metrics simply don’t capture the value proposition of accumulating a deflationary asset. If you’re building a Bitcoin treasury, the relevant question is how much Bitcoin backs each share, not what your quarterly revenue looks like.

Mallers sees it differently. In January 2026, he announced that XXI Capital would de-emphasize BPS as a reporting metric, citing concerns that it doesn’t adequately account for shareholder dilution. When Strategy’s most recent capital raise landed with 86% dilutive equity, Mallers essentially got the data point he needed to make his case publicly.

Two different playbooks for Bitcoin treasuries

Strategy rebranded from MicroStrategy in February 2025, making its Bitcoin-first identity official. Saylor’s playbook has always been aggressive: raise capital through a mix of debt and equity, buy Bitcoin, repeat.

XXI Capital represents a newer approach. Launched via a SPAC and backed by heavyweight investors including Tether and SoftBank, the company held approximately 42,000 to 43,500 BTC at launch. The key difference isn’t just size. It’s how each company talks about what they’re doing. Strategy leans into BPS as a way to benchmark performance. XXI Capital is signaling that it wants to prioritize metrics that make dilution more visible to shareholders.

What this means for investors

The 86% dilutive figure from Strategy’s recent raise is eye-catching. If you’re a shareholder and nearly nine out of every ten dollars raised came from issuing new shares, your ownership percentage just took a meaningful hit. Whether that’s a problem depends entirely on what happens to Bitcoin’s price over time, and how much of the new Bitcoin purchased exceeds the dilution on a per-share basis.

Mallers’ critique gains force precisely in those scenarios. By moving away from BPS, XXI Capital is implicitly telling investors: we think you should evaluate us on metrics that account for dilution upfront, not ones that rely on future Bitcoin appreciation to justify the capital structure.