The more btc they hold, the easier it is for them to raise the USD to acquire even more. This is only shorting the dollar if everyone else does it. If not, then we get a world where one or a few entities hold all of the power. You may be set up for life because of your savings, but the economy is the billions of transactions every day, the person with no savings asking for a loan to start a business, and then making payments on that loan. If MSTR becomes a bank, all btc flows back to MSTR. They effectively become the government. How is that better than the current world?
Discussion
The dollar is infinite the BTC is not. Who will sell their BTC for dollars in this paradigm? The limit is where MSTR asks how many dollars for your sats and you say no. You are projecting your current view of the dollar onto the worthless digits it will become. If you never sell, and only you and MSTR have BTC you are equally empowered.
I am not the entire economy. I also am not concerned only with myself. I want to be free, and I want everyone else to be free too.
How free are you when you must make payments to a bank? How free are you when one entity has practically infinite buying power while yours is finite?
If the BTC held by mstr and these funds never circulates, but instead only accumulates into a few pools, then btc can only be a reserve asset. It does nothing to empower people.
The finite supply is a genius mechanism to disperse it over time to smaller and smaller utxos. But that doesn't happen if you can pay your bills in fiat. These funds pay salaries in USD. They raise more btc with USD. They never use their btc. It never leaves them.
Right now you can just go buy btc on an exchange. Do you think that will always be possible? I don't. Where's the bitcoin economy when you can't buy btc and you can't work for it because its all held by entities that never sell?
This isn't a problem that we can resolve by simply buying things with btc. That just makes our savings available for mstr or etfs to lock away. When it's all locked away, what's left? Fiat. We'll just be back to fiat.
Or we'll have new masters that are even worse than the previous ones.
A lot of assumptions are made here. I hold BTC (theoretically) unless I trade them for goods I will always have them. Anyone else who abhors fiat as I do will accept BTC in exchange for goods as well. This is an economy. The fact that I can take worthless fiat (in my opinion) and trick an exchange or other BTC holder into giving BTC to me is short lived.
I know eventually people will only exchange BTC for material goods or labor. In that paradigm MSTR has to make a decision:
Start using their treasury for capitalist ventures (loans, MSTR business expansion, buying property) or hold their treasury and expand circulated BTC value.
Loans will carry high risk unless borrowers collateralize with other assets. Even then interest on loans maybe antiquated/obsolete. Instead only staked loans will be given. I.E. someone opens a new business with BTC loan MSTR gets a 10% stake in the business for a term in lieu of interest.
I also don't see how buying assets, goods, or labor with BTC would somehow flow back to MSTR. When BTC is the monetary heavyweight, no one will be exchanging USD for BTC (which is required for MSTR to acquire it.)
So, I hope this assuages the fears. Although I can't logically assuage a feeling of jealously because it is an illogical emotion.
I don't assuage my fears. It amplifies them. You're a smart dude, I already know that. If you can't see the scenario that could play out, then the scenario is even more likely because others also won't see the danger.
I'm not okay with living in a world where everything is owned by mstr. Or 10 mstr-equivalent entities. Bitcoin ownership must be sovereign and unencumbered at the lowest level.
Okay, I'll assume I am wrong. What is the suggested remedy? What flaw is MSTR exploiting? What is MSTR doing that is impeding your or anyone else's sovereignty?
Its not what they're doing now, its an exercise in finding the market tolerance for a risk.
The remedy is they disburse their holdings to holders of mstr because if btc is money, then having the money should be preferable to a stock that represents the money. Short of that, the danger is that btc can't be used as money.
The danger isn't binary - the usability of bitcoin is endangered by it not circulating, which is a progressive danger. My original question was, at what percentage of total btc do we start to see mstr as deleterious to the economy of btc? But the same question leads into the values we champion as bitcoiners. There is some point where mstr's and the etfs' accumulation makes btc unusable for p2p money. Maybe its 100℅. But I think it's less. How do we find the limit?
I'm asking an economics question. I am unfortunately not that great at providing answers to my questions.