Latest / Simply Bitcoin / Saylor Just Broke Bitcoin’s Golden Rule, Here's Why It's Genius! | Truth Block
Transcript
- 0:00You do not sell your Bitcoin. Thank you.
- 0:03For years Michael Saylor turned never sell your Bitcoin into
- 0:06gospel, and this week on AQ1 earnings call he told the world
- 0:10that Strategy is going to sell Bitcoin.
- 0:12The media ran it like a confession and Bitcoin Twitter
- 0:15spiraled into civil war and almost no one stopped to look at
- 0:18the math underneath. Today I'm going to show you why
- 0:20this controversial announcement is actually the most bullish
- 0:22thing strategy has ever announced and why the data
- 0:25behind it is confirming the Bitcoin super cycle.
- 0:27This is truth Block. I'm Hurley.
- 0:30That's mind truth. OK, so let's be honest.
- 0:39It's funny. The man stood on stage at
- 0:41Bitcoin 2022 crowd going absolutely wild and said you
- 0:45never sell your Bitcoin like it was carved in stone.
- 0:48He tweeted it a dozen times. He made it his thing and now
- 0:52he's selling. Next he's going to say there is
- 0:54a second best. The memes were immediate, they
- 0:57were savage, and they were deserved.
- 0:59But here's where the laughing stops and the logic begins.
- 1:02Because the panic this week was about a headline, not a policy.
- 1:05No Bitcoin has been sold. Not a single SAT.
- 1:08This was a forward-looking announcement on AQ1 earnings
- 1:11call. And the actual policy, when you
- 1:13read it, is the opposite of what the headlines would suggest.
- 1:16So what did Sailor actually say? Let's go right to the most
- 1:19important clip from the call. Strategy holds over 818,000
- 1:23Bitcoin. That's roughly 3.9% of all the
- 1:25Bitcoin that will ever exist. They bought their stack at an
- 1:28average cost north of $75,000 US.
- 1:31They've raised $8.5 billion through STRC alone in nine
- 1:34months. And on this call, Sailor
- 1:36introduced a new word for what he's about to do.
- 1:39Yeah, we'll probably sell some Bitcoin to fund a dividend just
- 1:43to inoculate the market, just to send the message that we did it.
- 1:48Look, the company's fine, the bitcoin's fine, The industry's
- 1:52fine. The world didn't come to an end.
- 1:54And if you're a short seller and your thesis is the company's got
- 1:58to sell equity in order to fund the dividends, I would like
- 2:01nothing better than to, you know, rip your wings off.
- 2:06He's not describing a liquidation, he's describing A
- 2:09vaccination. Sell a tiny amount, prove the
- 2:13business survives and kill the narrative that strategy must
- 2:16dilute equity to pay its dividends.
- 2:18It's a reaction to the mainstream narrative from
- 2:20normies that strategy is trapped, that they have to keep
- 2:23selling stock and diluting shareholders just to keep the
- 2:25lights on. And what Sailor is saying is
- 2:27watch me fund this with Bitcoin instead, and then watch how much
- 2:31more I buy on the other side. And then he laid out the model
- 2:34in the simplest terms he's ever used.
- 2:36Sometimes we will sell a Bitcoin derivative because it's in the
- 2:40best interest of the company, but it's not necessary.
- 2:44This chart really illustrates that you can strip the business
- 2:47down to something very simple. You buy Bitcoin with credit, you
- 2:51let it appreciate and then you sell Bitcoin to pay the
- 2:55dividend. And as long as you're you're
- 2:58issuing credit and access of the break even point, then this
- 3:02business works and and grows forever.
- 3:06That's the whole model in about 30 seconds.
- 3:08Buy the Bitcoin with credit, let it appreciate and sell a tiny
- 3:11fraction to pay the dividend and the break even point. 2.3%
- 3:15annual Bitcoin appreciation. That's it.
- 3:18If Bitcoin grows more than 2.3% a year, strategy can fund its
- 3:21dividends forever without selling a single share of stock.
- 3:24They're not betting on a moon shot.
- 3:25They're betting on Bitcoin doing what it's done every single year
- 3:28of its existence. Now here's the part that got
- 3:30buried in all the noise. Strategy has roughly $2.2
- 3:33billion in unrealized tax losses from Bitcoin they bought above
- 3:37current prices. Selling those specific coins
- 3:39let's them harvest the losses, offset gains elsewhere, and
- 3:43lower their effective cost basis.
- 3:44Sailor called it, picking up $2.2 billion lying on the floor.
- 3:48That's definitely not panic selling.
- 3:49That's a guy who built an $8.5 billion capital machine in nine
- 3:53months optimizing his treasury. And then he dropped the mask
- 3:55entirely. But the bottom line is if
- 3:59Bitcoin, if, if macro, if the macro environment turns risk on
- 4:05and expands and Bitcoin rallies are equity rallies, it's go
- 4:09time. We're going to go and we're
- 4:13going to go with the credit like we're going to use the credit.
- 4:17Make no mistake about it. We want to see the M NAV, the
- 4:20the equity is undervalued. We want to see the M NAV expand
- 4:23to 2345 or 6. And it would.
- 4:25Nothing would make me happier than to RIP the faces off of all
- 4:29the skeptics and the shorts and drive the equity to the moon.
- 4:34That's the conviction underneath the strategy.
- 4:36He's not hedging, he's hunting. And right now we're in peak bear
- 4:40and short season now. Sailor's always been the
- 4:42showman. CEO Fong Lee sat down with Mark
- 4:45Moss and walked through the balance sheet in a way that
- 4:47makes the too good to be true objection very hard to sustain.
- 4:50And some numbers from this interview tell you who's
- 4:52actually buying this thing. According to Fong, STRC is 80%
- 4:56retail owned and the average position size is 1000 to
- 4:59$10,000. Most of these buyers likely
- 5:02don't know much about Bitcoin at all.
- 5:03They're just looking for the yield.
- 5:05They're on ramping to the Bitcoin ecosystem without ever
- 5:07understanding it. And Fong Lee thinks that's
- 5:09exactly the point. And this is the part I think
- 5:12people don't quite understand is behind the ability to pay that
- 5:16capital. We have $2.25 billion of cash
- 5:18that we put on our balance sheet to make people feel comfortable
- 5:21that there is an ability to pay the principal beyond just, you
- 5:25know, depreciation in Bitcoin, which is unrealized and issuing
- 5:29shares above a net asset value, right?
- 5:32So we have that. And then behind that, we have
- 5:34$60 billion worth of Bitcoin. So you ask yourself, am I going
- 5:38to get paid the principal right back?
- 5:42Well, we have literally $60 billion of Bitcoin on what is
- 5:46now about an $8 billion asset class, right?
- 5:49So I think you're pretty, at least at this point in time,
- 5:53pretty secure that we'll pay the principal back.
- 5:55And then are you going to pay 11 1/2 percent?
- 5:58Well, we have $2.25 billion, which at this point is about 18
- 6:02months worth of dividends. And beyond that we can also sell
- 6:06our Bitcoin if we need to, to pay the dividend.
- 6:09So there there's a, there's this idea that that that 11 1/2
- 6:14percent is too good to be true. What are the risk?
- 6:17The risks are fairly well disclosed, but we also have a,
- 6:20what I would call a pretty bulletproof balance sheet behind
- 6:23it, right? And and so you got to peel back
- 6:25that layers of the onion for sure.
- 6:26But when you peel it back, we're pretty transparent about what's
- 6:30behind it. So I don't think it's too good
- 6:31to be true. Yeah.
- 6:33And as you said, though, you could choose not to pay it, but
- 6:36that would sort of be the death of the company.
- 6:38Yeah, there, there are a lot of things we could choose.
- 6:40You know, companies pay dividends, they could choose not
- 6:43to pay it. But when they do that, then the
- 6:45stock price goes down, the equity value is down.
- 6:47Like why would we? The only reason we would choose
- 6:50not to pay it is if we're in some Black Swan.
- 6:54The world is ending. Bitcoin is exploding kind of a
- 6:57situation right when I tell people is what's you know, what
- 7:01would be that that situation if Bitcoin was to be draw down 90%
- 7:05and sit there for five years, there would be a situation where
- 7:09we will probably not pay the dividend, right.
- 7:13And if you think Bitcoin is going to go 9 down 90% and sit
- 7:16there for five years, that means you pretty much think Bitcoin is
- 7:19going to zero. It would have.
- 7:19To fail it. Would fail, it would go to zero.
- 7:21And if you think Bitcoin is going to fail, don't buy
- 7:24stretch, don't buy MSTR, don't buy Bitcoin, right?
- 7:28Like don't buy digital capital, don't buy digital securities
- 7:31equity, don't buy digital credit, right.
- 7:34And for those who think that, you know, we could argue till
- 7:37we're blue in the face, it's OK. You're, you're, you're welcome
- 7:41to have your views, but then you're also welcome not to buy
- 7:43any of our securities. So he's not hiding the risk,
- 7:46he's naming it. If you believe in Bitcoin, the
- 7:49balance sheet is bulletproof. Strategy has $60 billion of BTC
- 7:53backing an $8.5 billion instrument, plus 2.25 billion in
- 7:56cash that covers 18 months of dividends.
- 7:59But if you don't believe in Bitcoin, none of these numbers
- 8:01matter or will convince you. Then Fong Lee zoomed out 10
- 8:04years. And this is where Strategies
- 8:06ambition gets real. Now let's talk about 10 years
- 8:08out, 10 years out, we have a finance world that is fully you
- 8:15know, decentralized finance has eaten up traditional finance and
- 8:20Bitcoin becomes the digital reserve asset of the world,
- 8:25right? It'll be as important as AUS
- 8:27dollar. Governments around the world
- 8:29will be owning Bitcoin. They'll own gold, they'll own
- 8:31the US dollar and we'll be the largest holder of Bitcoin in the
- 8:34world That that's sort of the world I see in 10 years.
- 8:38And you know what's happened in the last two years And next year
- 8:43called the three years 20252627 we'll look upon as the most
- 8:48transformative time. It'll be the digital revolution,
- 8:52right? 10 years from now, people look
- 8:53back and and think it's just what do you think about the
- 8:56Internet today? You don't think about it, it, it
- 8:58is this this revolutionary product.
- 9:01You just think about it as its existence.
- 9:03The Internet is the Internet wasn't invented.
- 9:06It just is. People think about that about
- 9:08AI. 10 years from now, nobody will be debating whether AI is
- 9:12good or bad. AI will just exist. 10 years
- 9:15from now, people won't be debating is Bitcoin good?
- 9:17Is Bitcoin bad? It'll just exist like the US
- 9:20dollar. And if that's true, we'll be the
- 9:25largest holder of Bitcoin in the world, yeah.
- 9:27So here's why all the panic over strategy selling is so
- 9:29completely backwards. They're not getting smaller,
- 9:32they're getting bigger. They're selling a fraction to
- 9:34fund a dividend, buying multiples more through new
- 9:36issuance, and building a capital machine that accelerates the
- 9:40more Bitcoin appreciates. The selling headline misses the
- 9:42entire point, and there's actually a deeper irony here
- 9:45that I think the Bitcoin community should sit with for a
- 9:47second. Never sell your Bitcoin has
- 9:48turned into a kind of gospel. And I get it.
- 9:50Everyone, especially those under 60, should be saving in Bitcoin.
- 9:54But money that can never be spent isn't money.
- 9:57It's a relic. Nobody plans to die with their
- 9:59keys in a vault and their Bitcoin unspent.
- 10:02Or at least very few of us do. Bitcoin is peer-to-peer digital
- 10:05cash. It's both the world's best store
- 10:07of value and the world's best medium of exchange.
- 10:10The goal is to save more than you spend.
- 10:13But never using the network, never using Bitcoin as money
- 10:16defeats the whole purpose of money.
- 10:18Right now, every time you spend Bitcoin, you trigger a capital
- 10:21gains event. That's a real friction.
- 10:23Strategy is dealing with the same thing, except they're smart
- 10:25enough to use it in their favor with the tax loss harvesting.
- 10:28But if Bitcoin is ever going to function as money, people
- 10:30actually use capital gains on it have to go to zero.
- 10:32I do think that will happen eventually.
- 10:34You can't tax people for spending their money.
- 10:36And when that happens, one of the biggest never sell excuses
- 10:39will disappear entirely. Strategy using Bitcoin to fund
- 10:42STRC, deploying it as money to build the biggest digital credit
- 10:45product in history. That's not a betrayal of the
- 10:48thesis. That's the thesis working.
- 10:50We should actually want this. We should want Bitcoin being
- 10:52used as money. That's the whole point.
- 10:55OK, so that's the strategy story.
- 10:56The selling headline is noise, the math is actually bullish,
- 11:00the balance sheet is deep, and the capital machine is purpose
- 11:03built for exactly 1 kind of market.
- 11:05Which brings us to the bigger question.
- 11:07Are we in it because strategy didn't build this machine for a
- 11:10four year cycle? They built it for a structural
- 11:12bull and strategy is positioning like the Super cycle isn't
- 11:15inevitability. Sailors own words at Bitcoin
- 11:172026 confirm it and Fondly's 10 year vision on Mark Moss
- 11:20confirms it. Everything about the evolved
- 11:22capital structure, the perpetual preferred equity, no duration,
- 11:25no maturity, no forced liquidation, all of it is
- 11:27designed for an asset that goes up structurally over time, not
- 11:30in a perfectly timed boom bust, but in a long grinding repricing
- 11:34of the hardest money ever created.
- 11:36And So what does the data say? I've been saying the four year
- 11:38Cycle is dead since 2025, and when October hit and Bitcoin
- 11:41topped at 126 K and then dumped over 50% over the following few
- 11:45months, it looked like the Cycle was right on schedule.
- 11:47The Cycle Bros definitely had their moment.
- 11:49And I get it when you say the cycle's dead and then the price
- 11:51drops 50% right on schedule. It's a rough look.
- 11:54But here's the interesting thing.
- 11:55Bitcoin doesn't recover like this in a bear market.
- 11:58A bear market doesn't see ETF inflows hold steady even during
- 12:01geopolitical tension and war. A cycle top doesn't see the
- 12:04largest corporate buyer in history accelerate purchases
- 12:07through the bottom. I'm convinced that what we went
- 12:08through was a mid cycle correction driven by macro,
- 12:12driven by deleveraging inside a larger structural bowl.
- 12:15Jordy Visser has been writing about what he calls the Bitcoin
- 12:17IPO moment. The idea that Bitcoin went
- 12:19through a massive distribution like founders cashing out after
- 12:22an IPO. And now that stage is over.
- 12:24The new buyer base, ETFs, retail institutions is structurally buy
- 12:29and hold. Here's what Visser said about
- 12:31the next breakout. Bitcoin kind of tells me that
- 12:34the next time it breaks higher this time if it does.
- 12:36When it does, whatever the case is, I don't think this one is
- 12:40going to stop as quickly. I think you're a lot of people
- 12:43that have been selling for a long period of time that have
- 12:46been moving out. And I know retail and ETFs are
- 12:49buy and hold and they're going to be raising their weightings.
- 12:52And so I've I've wrote a piece on this on the Bitcoin IPOI
- 12:56believe we've had a massive distribution of which makes
- 12:59sense. And I think eventually when the
- 13:01when it breaks higher this time, I don't think it's going to
- 13:03stop. The people who are always going
- 13:05to sell, the miners, the early adopters, the traders, they've
- 13:08sold. What's left is a buyer base that
- 13:11doesn't sell dips, it buys them. Now I want to be careful here.
- 13:14I'm not saying that the breakout is tomorrow.
- 13:16As of recording, we're back below 80 K.
- 13:18There are probably some longs to be liquidated in the 70K range
- 13:21before we start moving higher. As always, we have to have
- 13:23patience. But the structural alignment,
- 13:25the supply side, the demand side, the holder composition,
- 13:29all of it is pointing in the same direction.
- 13:30The four year cycle is dead. And that's where the two halves
- 13:33of this episode snapped together.
- 13:35Strategy didn't build a capital machine for a cycle.
- 13:38They built it for this. The selling headline, the
- 13:40evolved model, perpetual preferred equity funding,
- 13:42Bitcoin accumulation at scale. None of it makes sense if
- 13:45Bitcoin is in a four year boom and bust trade.
- 13:47All of it makes sense if Bitcoin is repricing structurally over
- 13:50the next decade. Strategy and the Super cycle are
- 13:53the same bet and the data is starting to back it up.
- 13:55The stock dropped on the headline.
- 13:57Bitcoin has been mostly flat and that decoupling tells you
- 14:00everything. The market hasn't processed this
- 14:02yet, but it will. But here's what grounds all of
- 14:04it. Bitcoin doesn't care about
- 14:06Michael Saylor. It doesn't care about
- 14:08strategies, balance sheet. It doesn't care about your cycle
- 14:10model or my super cycle thesis or whether the four year pattern
- 14:14is dead or alive. Tomer Strolite put it perfectly
- 14:17this week. He said this market can look
- 14:19like a storm if you try to comprehend the whole thing.
- 14:21And it's hugely anarchic entirety, but there is a safe,
- 14:25calm and quiet eye of the storm, and that is simply holding
- 14:28Bitcoin in self custody. That's it.
- 14:31That's the floor underneath everything we talked about
- 14:32today. Sailor can sell, strategy can
- 14:35evolve, or it can die. The cycle can do whatever it
- 14:38wants. None of it changes the protocol.
- 14:40None of it changes that another block will be created in 10
- 14:43minutes. None of it changes 21 million.
- 14:46None of it changes the fact that if you hold your own keys, you
- 14:49hold the hardest money humanity has ever produced.
- 14:51So sit peacefully in the calm eye of the storm and live your
- 14:55life. All right, that's all I've got.
- 14:57But before we close, I wanted to hear from you.
- 14:59Is sailor selling Bitcoin bullish, bearish or something
- 15:02else entirely? And what's yourself custody set
- 15:04up? Are you in the eye of the storm?
- 15:06Let me know in the comments. And if you enjoyed this one,
- 15:08don't forget to hit the like button and share it with someone
- 15:11who saw the headline and panicked.
- 15:12And of course, subscribe to simply Bitcoin if you haven't
- 15:14already, so you don't miss what comes next.
- 15:16We'll see you next week.