Can someone explain the discrepancy between the market capitalization of XXI (formerly CEP) (USD 143 million) and the value of its Bitcoin holdings (USD 4 trillion)? Thank you.

Ultimately, Bitcoin and Nostr are not the goal, but rather the tools that empower us to pursue and reach our goals.

Yeah. Why, though? Why do they shut down?

No one ever understands when I try telling them about China (in the US). China has an actual free market. You must see it to grasp how not-free America's market it. People there... Get this, this wild, man... People there **_start businesses._** In fact, everyone I knew there had a business, even if they had employment somewhere else. Everyone, not one exception. You can walk into actual businesses, little shops that have nothing to do with franchises or government. Shop after shop after shop... And a couple streets over, its factory after factory after factory. They're not uptight about you just walking into a factory and looking, either. Would that fly in the US? I doubt it, if you could even find one.

If you're in the US, look around and see how many businesses or friends are employed by the government, or who's employment would disappear if the government stopped paying somewhere in the chain. Even dog sitters would lose their income if the government stopped paying the business the dog owner is employed at. Small businesses are forced to franchise - that's basically a business on top of a business that only exists to manage the layers of compliance and regulatory burden. Franchises don't exist in free markets. Got some economic reason to disagree? GFY, I know my econ. The whole facade of "free market" in the US is more entry barrier than market.

The town I'm in is "growing" - there's "progress" here, as the boomers call it. That's only for one reason - there's a university with several tens of thousands of kids there basically being employed by government policy to sit there and grow their debt. That's their job. Every year there's over ten thousand 18 year olds showing up who signed a thing that exchanges their productive potential for a giant pile of debt. That debt is the only reason there's roads being built here, after several layers of corruption where bureaucrats or companies that are paid by government take a cut. And after the road is built, all the businesses that appear are franchises. You know who they pay rent to? The university. The town is owned by the university, literally. And it takes one or two **_years_** to build anything here. Nothing takes that long in China. Nothing. Free markets are wild!

Oh but China's BAD!!! Orange man : "CHIIIINA!!" There is one reason for all this anti-china rhetoric and protectionism, and its not geopolitics or containment. Its debt. Not that China owns our debt - that's the usual thought stopper when I talk to "conservatives." Without inflation, our debt can't be serviced. The payments on American debt **_at all levels_** require inflation, or the payments stop. Even your mortgage and those kids' student debt. But especially the $37 trillion of federal debt. Inflation makes payments manageable because if everything costs more after the debt is taken, including wages, then its like you borrowed less. This is why it's smart to use debt - take as much as you can, cuz you're fucking the lender. That's the game. But that also means that anything that's deflationary is the enemy of America. China's gazillion factories are deflationary : that makes China the enemy. You buy cheap shit from China : debt doesn't get devalued as fast as the corrupt class would like. Even American factories are America's enemy. Anything, anywhere, that allows supply to meet demand and prices to not rise, is deflationary, and thus America's enemy. That's it. That's the whole story, from why you can't afford groceries up to why a carrier fleet parks in some other country's waters. The beast is driven by hunger ; the hunger of the beast is debt.

I **_wish_** I knew one person in real life who could understand this. Its not even particularly complicated... But people are too busy with their side gigs to think about stuff. I **_almost_** had a conversation about it with a biologist over Thanksgiving. Almost!!! But they thought I was too radical, like maybe I'm a Commy or something, **_because I wanted the government to do less._** lol. We're so fucked.

Bitcoin is the safest thing you can hold for the long term.

USD is the safest thing you can hold in the short term.

Bitcoin is subject to short term volatility risk.

USD is subject to debasement risk.

Having some USD makes sense if you have short term obligations.

$MSTR

By raising margin requirements for MSTR shares being used as collateral, failing to deliver MSTR shares in a timely manner, and de-banking @jackmallers, it is clear that JP Morgan is threatened by bitcoin and the industry growing around it.

Good. They should be scared.

nostr:naddr1qvzqqqr4gupzq3e0gs8jnmued6f2rp4c6vs07xqvs4vs8zpwt82smcdch4txjvq7qys8wumn8ghj7cnfw33k76twd4shs6tdv9kxjum5wvhx7mnvd9hx2tcpzemhxue69uhk2er9dchxummnw3ezumrpdejz7qqkdfcz6mt0wfnkzm3dwd68y6ttv4ej6cnpvd4sfwqe9t

Confessions of a MicroStrategy Investor

A letter no one asked for, but everyone should read before handing their Bitcoin dreams to a man in an orange tie.

—

Dear Fellow Bag-Holders, Future Therapists, and Anyone Still Pretending This Was “Strategic,”

I write to you today not as a proud MicroStrategy shareholder, but as a man who has stared directly into the mirror and whispered the words:

“Bro… what have you done?”

Look—I’m not embarrassed that I invested in Bitcoin. Magical internet money is fine. It’s pure. It’s incorruptible. It’s literally math wrapped in electricity. Beautiful.

I am, however, deeply embarrassed that I gave a company with salaries, leases, marketing teams, HR reps, and a snack budget my money… so they could buy that same magical internet money at a premium, wrap it in a corporate costume, and then somehow—somehow—turn it into something that trades at a discount.

A discount.

On Bitcoin.

In a Bitcoin bull market.

Amazing. Inspirational, even. If there were an Olympic event for turning alpha into coupons, MicroStrategy would sweep the podium.

Do you know how helpless you feel when your investment thesis boils down to:

“I believe in Bitcoin so much I outsourced it to a business with overhead.”

That’s like loving organic vegetables so much you hire a Fortune 500 company to grow them for you under fluorescent lights, at 4× the cost, while their interns eat half the crop.

And yes, yes, I get it—leverage, strategy, blah blah blah. But when your CEO has to juggle debt payments, stock issuance, Twitter theatrics, and a line item called “orange tie dry-cleaning,” you start to wonder:

Was I investing in Bitcoin… or in the world’s most complicated meme account?

At this point, even my Bitcoin-hating uncle respects me more than my financial advisor does. At least the uncle says he bought gold once because “it was shiny.” My excuse? I thought buying a corporate wrapper around Bitcoin was “efficient.” Efficient at what? Converting sats into operating expenses?

If I wanted discounted Bitcoin, I should’ve just bought Bitcoin.

If I wanted chaos, I could’ve bought a shitcoin.

Instead, I bought a stock that somehow blended both worlds. A schrödinger’s tradfi-wrapped-Bitcoin derivative that lives in a simultaneous state of premium and embarrassment.

So here I stand—an MSTR shareholder.

A man who believed.

A man who delegated.

A man who now understands that true self-sovereignty means never relying on a corporate board to stack for you.

Godspeed to us all.

And please—next board meeting—cut the marketing budget before the coupons.

Sincerely,

A Recovering MicroStrategy Apologist

P.S. If anyone needs me, I’ll be buying the underlying asset directly like a grown adult.