When you're hunting for crypto's brightest minds at a conference in Abu Dhabi, apparently you just need to find Michael Saylor and snap a selfie. That's exactly what SkyBridge Capital founder Anthony Scaramucci did on Wednesday, declaring the Strategy Inc. (MSTR) Chairman the "smartest person" in cryptocurrency.

The Smartest Guy In The Room

Scaramucci didn't hold back on social media, posting his selfie with Saylor from the Bitcoin MENA conference with the caption: "Was looking for the smartest person in crypto here in Abu Dhabi and I think I found him! Saylor will be right."

A Long History Of Support

This isn't exactly new territory for Scaramucci. He's been cheerleading Saylor's Bitcoin vision for a while now, consistently praising the way Strategy has built its balance sheet through what he calls "smart" Bitcoin purchases combined with equity sales. The relationship runs deep enough that Saylor wrote the foreword for Scaramucci's book "The Little Book of Bitcoin." When someone writes your book's foreword, you're probably not going to call them anything less than brilliant.

The Reality Check

Here's where things get interesting. Not everyone shares Scaramucci's enthusiasm for Saylor's approach. Bitcoin skeptic Peter Schiff has made a habit of criticizing Saylor's plan to accumulate as much Bitcoin as possible and transform it into BTC-backed digital credit.

And the numbers tell a complicated story. Strategy's market value currently sits at $55.54 billion, which is actually lower than the value of its Bitcoin holdings at $59.66 billion. That's an unusual situation, to put it mildly. The stock has shed more than half its value over the past six months, closing down 2.30% at $184.64 during regular trading and sliding another 1.49% to $181.89 in after-hours action.

Bitcoin itself wasn't helping matters, trading at $90,347.36, down 2.20% over the previous 24 hours.

The Growth Problem

Strategy showed a very low growth score, which measures a stock's historical expansion in both earnings and revenue across multiple timeframes. That's not exactly the profile you'd expect from what some consider the smartest play in crypto. The question investors might ask is how it stacks up against other cryptocurrency-linked stocks like Coinbase Global Inc. (COIN).

So is Saylor the smartest person in crypto, as Scaramucci claims? The market seems to be having some doubts at the moment, even if Scaramucci remains convinced that Saylor will ultimately be proven right. Time will tell whether this is visionary thinking or just an expensive bet on Bitcoin's future.