New Delhi, July 13 -- NEW YORK - When Strategy, once known as MicroStrategy, began issuing shares above the value of its bitcoin holdings to purchase even more cryptocurrency, the market greeted it as financial engineering at its most creative. Investors who bought at that peak now hold a position worth roughly 20 cents on the dollar. The company has fallen around 80 percent from its high, its premium to net asset value reduced to nearly zero.

The decline is not the story. The story is that it mirrors, almost exactly, what happened to investors who bought Sandisk (SNDK) at the top of its 4,000 percent year-over-year rally, and to funds that accumulated silver positions as the metal pushed past $120 an ounce in January before surrendering...