The Globe and Mail reports in its Saturday edition that Michael Saylor, a cryptocurrency evangelist never short on hyperbole, once described bitcoin as "a swarm of cyber hornets ... feeding on the fire of truth, exponentially growing ever smarter, faster and stronger behind a wall of encrypted energy." The Globe's John Heinzl writes, however, that as investors in his "bitcoin treasury" company discovered, those hornets have a nasty sting. Mr. Saylor's plan was as simple as it was reckless: Issue boatloads of common shares, preferred shares and convertible debt, and use the proceeds to buy billions of dollars' worth of bitcoin -- a speculative asset with no intrinsic value and stomach-churning volatility. The wager worked fine as long as bitcoin kept rising and Strategy could comfortably service the dividends and interest on all that freshly minted equity and debt. But once bitcoin began to wobble, Strategy's share price buckled. From its July peak of $457.22 (U.S.) to its December trough, the stock is down 66 per cent. In the end, the company admitted it may have to sell part of its enormous bitcoin hoard. Turns out the hornets were not feeding on the fire of truth after all. They were feeding on investors' gullibility.