Had you glanced too quickly at the crowd packed into Michael Saylor’s Tuscan-style Miami compound, you might have assumed it was just another rich dude’s party. There was all-you-can-eat jamón Ibérico, an ample Versailles-style ballroom where a D.J. spun electronic music and a row of friendly attendants collecting shoes at the entryway to a docked yacht, one of at least three that Mr. Saylor owns.
Matters got considerably weirder at dinnertime, however, when fluorescent green lasers shot out of the host’s eyeballs, or so it appeared to hundreds of guests seated around giant screens erected on the billionaire’s lawn on New Year’s Eve 2024.
The screens plopped Mr. Saylor’s visage into famous films, such as “Gladiator” and “The Lord of the Rings.” He was edited into the action as a hero whose eyes blasted wealthy cryptocurrency skeptics including Bill Gates and Jamie Dimon, the bank executive.
Bitcoin has attracted plenty of prophets, braggarts and flat-out baddies. Of late, though, no one in the industry is attracting more attention and scorn than Mr. Saylor, a would-be magnate and accused tax scofflaw who in six short years has transformed his also-ran technology company, Strategy, into a Bitcoin betting machine.