What I'm watching... 👀

Priced in gold, the last time MSTR was as oversold (in RSI terms) on the weekly charts as it is today was during the deep valley of the flash Covid recession in March of 2020 (see vertical green lines).

At that harrowing time, MSTR reached as low as $9 per share.

For a long-term investor, this may be a proverbial "blood in the streets" moment for MSTR shareholders.

Not investment advice... but interesting to note.

Thoughts?

Congratulations on yet another Bitcoin ATH 🎉.

FUN FACT: In 2017 Harvard said Bitcoin is more likely to hit $100 than $100K.

2025: Harvard buys $116 Million worth of Bitcoin

All roads lead to Bitcoin.

A big conservative political podcast (seven figure YouTube subscribers) asked me to come on and talk about bitcoin (sat next to them on the plane out of the May conference in Vegas, which sparked their request).

Last week when I went on the show, they decided to emphasize a talking point of why tariffs are great and will usher in a golden age, and some questions about bitcoin.

When asked about tariffs, I generally disagreed that they would be bullish or usher in a new golden age, mentioned that the past three months of data doesn’t show a decline in import prices which means it has been a tax on Americans, and eventually we moved to discussing bitcoin.

They ended up not airing the talk, and instead ran the clip with someone else who agreed on the tariff points. Waste of time, basically.

It’s a reminder that a big percentage of what you see in heavily politicized media is about narrative framing and talking points rather than genuine attempts to discuss or explore. It reminded me why I normally decline to go on political shows; I had only agreed to this one because the catalyst was in person and so the agreeable side of me was like “sure, why not”.

Well, that’s why not.

pov you are about to hear a retarded take. I should stop opening X

10k Sats up for grabs.

First reply gets it.

Strategy had their earnings call today and I was one of the analysts able to participate in the Q&A with the executive team.

Although most people are focused on bull market stuff, I decided to aim my question more toward bear market scenarios and stress testing.

Here's the transcript for that portion if you're interested:

________

Lyn Alden, Research Analyst: So, thank you for the opportunity. So, Strategy navigated the 2022 bear market successfully. And so my question is going to relate to stress testing as it relates to these mid-term BTC ratings. Given that Strategy’s credit products are backed more by assets and capital access than operating cash flows, are there certain bitcoin bear market assumptions or thresholds, either such as in terms of drawdown magnitudes or lengths of time where capital markets might become inconducive for new capital issuance, that you’re planning for as you design these forward leverage ratios, and for your overall capital structure? Thank you.

Michael Saylor, Executive Chairman, Strategy: You know, I think that if we if we equitize the convertible bonds and we go to all preferreds, you can imagine, for example, you have a $100 billion of Bitcoin. You have $50 billion of preferred in an extreme like, the extreme case of 50% leverage case. And if that $50 billion was a debt liability coming due in three years, that would be a lot of risk. And if it was a debt liability coming due in twenty five years, it’d be less risk, but it’ll still be something. But if it’s an if it’s actually equity, if if it’s $50 billion preferred equity, it never comes due.

And so now you have a different kind of risk. In that particular case, Bitcoin can draw down 80%, and you’re fine. It can draw down 90%. So I actually think if you look at our our structure, as we migrate to preferreds, we end up with this clock, you know, very, very robust antifragile capital structure where the principal never comes due. And then you have to ask the question, well, where is the liability?

And the liability is in the dividend. You notice when Andrew showed the the liabilities, he showed you three tranches. He showed you the interest liability, the cumulative liabilities, and the noncumulative liabilities. That’s because the interest has gotta be paid or you’re in default. The cumulative doesn’t have to be paid, but if you don’t if you suspended, it accumulates, so it’s still a liability.

And then the noncumulative, you could suspend it, and it isn’t a liability. So when you add all that up, you know, you you imagine that you’ve got $50,000,000,000 and you have even if you had a 10% dividend, that means you’re down to $5 billion. So on a $100 billion of assets, you’ve got $5,000,000,000 of dividend liabilities, but some of them are more collapsible than others of them. But so you say to yourself, well, what happens if Bitcoin falls 95%? You’d still make you’d still meet those liabilities most likely.

You you might in you know, you might in a 95% drawdown, you might suspend something. But you can see, you know, for the most part, no one really contemplates, you know, more than the 80% extreme craze case of the crypto well, I guess the crypto winter is, like, 75% or something. You would know. $66,000 to 16,000, I guess, was, like, the peak to trough. Call it 80%.

I think that our structure is is smooth, and we wouldn’t miss a single dividend payment on an 80% drawdown. On a 90% to 95% drawdown, in theory, you might suspend something for a little bit of time, but you would eventually get back current on it. So, you know, so I think in terms of robustness, it’s it’s pretty robust. And if you compare it to the fragility of a credit conventional bank, you know, we’re think about the leverage we’ve got in order to generate our earnings. We’ve got maybe 1.2 leverage.

Typical banks got ten, twenty x leverage to get their earnings. So this model is is orders of magnitude less less risky than a conventional banking model. Phong, Andrew, do you guys have anything to add on that?

Phong Le, President & Chief Executive Officer, Strategy: I can add, Lyn. We we we we’ve had the benefit of being a Bitcoin treasury company for five years. We went through a crypto winter in 2022 with a much more fragile debt structure and capital structure. We had a Silvergate margin loan, that was Bitcoin backed. We had a secured note that had onerous, you know, clauses, and and and so, we learned a lot from that.

You know? And and at that point in time, our most pristine debt were our convertible notes. And now I think we’re much more prepared for a Bitcoin drawdown because over time, we won’t have we already don’t have, secured notes. We don’t have a margin loan. Over time, we may not have convertible notes.

And to Mike’s point, we we will be relying on perpetual preferred notes that don’t ever, come due. So, I think we learned a lot, during this period of time, and and we hope to to share that with everybody out there.

Lyn Alden, Research Analyst: Thank you.

Michael Saylor, Executive Chairman, Strategy: And, of course, the point is we did survive the 80% drawdown with a much weaker capital structure. So, so this capital structure is is bulletproof compared to that one. So, so I think we’re good to 90%. And if it goes below 90%, then we’ll shuffle a few things around. It’ll be colorful.

Thank you. Your definition is similar to my definition. But if someone HODLs bitcoin (doesn’t sell) and doesn’t have that mindset/definition (like perhaps Trump and most who own bitcoin), they also help the network, and they probably consider themselves bitcoiners.

Someone who sees Bitcoin as freedom money and as the end goal, aligned with the ethos of a permissionless, p2p universal money that frees you from the fiat control system. Not someone who buys and hodls Bitcoin in order to have more fiat.

Owning bitcoin, does not make you a bitcoiner

There should be a name for when the market overvalues your company so much that you print new shares to buy bitcoin to justify that crazy paper valuation with real assets. Is that some type of shareholder valuation insurance? People have done this with land/gold/etc, but they never had a name for it. Isn't that how holding companies usually operate? Maybe it is just the same old "arbitrage". It's just too generic. AI doesn't seem to know a name.. so.. perhaps we need to choose one for these newer times.

Owning bitcoin, does not make you a bitcoiner

It should be all setup! (Or at least it was!) I will double check. Thank you so much!

So explain the 180 on the SBR.

BTW, I was against the SBR from the start. I’m in favor of governments owning zero bitcoin, for the record.

I don’t think we can. His interests are aligned with himself. Have you been sleeping for the last few decades?

It doesn’t.