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They Called Saylor's Bitcoin Strategy a Ponzi | Here's The Math That Proves Them Wrong | Bitcoin Simply · Simply Bitcoin

• 0:00
  Something happened 19 hours ago and that shocked the Internet.
• 0:05
  What was it? I'm very famous for saying never
• 0:07
  saw you Bitcoin and that's why the Internet went crazy when we
• 0:11
  said we might sell it. But if I was being more precise,
• 0:15
  I'd say never be a net seller of Bitcoin.
• 0:17
  In this interview with David Linn at Consensus 2026, Sailor
• 0:22
  breaks down what he really meant when he coined the maxim.
• 0:24
  You do not sell your Bitcoin. Never sell your Bitcoin became
• 0:28
  the theme for the Bitcoin movement worldwide, but that's
• 0:30
  not exactly what he meant. Sailor breaks down the strategy
• 0:33
  of how they plan to be a buyer of Bitcoin forever, and exactly
• 0:37
  what conditions need to be met in order for that to happen.
• 0:39
  And as of today, well, the thesis still holds up to
• 0:43
  breakdown whether strategy is a Ponzi scheme or not.
• 0:45
  It's something even important that you might be missing on
• 0:48
  this holiday. This is Dante Coco Bitcoin.
• 0:50
  Simply, let's go. So rumor came out that Michael
• 0:57
  Saylor is entertaining, possibly selling Bitcoin.
• 0:59
  What do you mean he's entertaining selling Bitcoin?
• 1:01
  Isn't he the one that micro strategy keeps buying, buying,
• 1:03
  buying? Yes, he said he would never sell
• 1:07
  Bitcoin. Now he's saying he might.
• 1:10
  This was a talk of Twitter all this week.
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  I thought micro strategy would never sell sailor coin.
• 1:15
  The phrase Does this mean the Bitcoin movement is over?
• 1:18
  Was this in fact the Ponzi scheme all along?
• 1:20
  Look, the, the knock on strategy was always that the numbers
• 1:24
  don't add up. Like if, if he has, if he has
• 1:27
  trouble raising funds through all of his creative ways of, of
• 1:31
  raising funds, liquid cash to be able to pay back all those
• 1:36
  investors and pay the dividends that needed to be paid.
• 1:39
  Eventually he was either going to have to bring in new
• 1:40
  investors or he's going to have to start selling Bitcoin.
• 1:42
  That was always a knock on him. And he always said, no, we'll
• 1:45
  never have to do that. Everything's fine.
• 1:47
  I love how he kind of spinning it here and saying that, oh,
• 1:49
  we're doing this for the benefit of the market.
• 1:51
  We're just going to test it out some CC so that you can see that
• 1:54
  everything is good. But I have to I, you got to, you
• 1:57
  got to give it to the critics here, because I think they, it's
• 1:59
  the numbers are not adding up the way that they're supposed
• 2:02
  to. And this is potentially
• 2:04
  something more substantial and of course he's going to want to
• 2:06
  downplay it, but it like I said, the knock on this has always
• 2:10
  been they don't have the cash flow to pay off the investors
• 2:12
  and the rates of return that they were giving new investors
• 2:15
  were just astronomical. How is that?
• 2:17
  It's not. And how is that sustainable?
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  That was the argument. It was not sustainable.
• 2:20
  That was a clip from Patrick Bet, David and Jeff Snyder, and
• 2:23
  they're both credible guys and this isn't a knock on them.
• 2:26
  But in no way does him saying that he might sell Bitcoin in
• 2:29
  order to fund dividends that are promised as the credit
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  instrument for Stretch mean that this is a pond scheme or somehow
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  the model is unsustainable. This does not invalidate the
• 2:38
  credit engine that he's created. Look, I'm not an investor in MSR
• 2:42
  or STRC, so I have no horse in the race.
• 2:45
  But like Sailor, I was a finance guy before a Bitcoin guy.
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  And there's a rationale and a logic and a reason behind
• 2:51
  everything that this guy does. I mean, he's the longest active
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  publicly traded officer. He's been in the market for
• 2:58
  almost 27 years running ABI firm out of Washington, DC.
• 3:02
  When so many companies have fallen and gone by the wayside,
• 3:05
  this guy continues to create shareholder value, and he's done
• 3:08
  it from nothing. So no, this isn't some random
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  thing that he's doing haphazardly.
• 3:12
  Let's hear what Sailor has to say about it.
• 3:14
  There's been a bit of confusion in the market about where the
• 3:17
  dividends come from. You know, how do we pay the
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  dividend? And for most of the history of
• 3:22
  the instrument, we sold common equity, MSTR equity to pay the
• 3:26
  dividend. MSTR equity is a derivative of
• 3:30
  Bitcoin. It normally trades at a premium
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  to Bitcoin. And so we were selling a Bitcoin
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  derivative, but some people worried that we wouldn't be able
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  to sell the equity in the future.
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  And then there are short narratives that that we have to
• 3:41
  sell the equity. And then there are other
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  narratives that the company won't sell its Bitcoin and that
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  kind of metastasized to, well, if they're not going to sell
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  their Bitcoin, it must not have any value and they can never
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  sell it. And if they can't sell it, then
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  we can't count the Bitcoin as an asset on the balance sheet.
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  So if you had $65 billion worth of something and people wanted
• 4:01
  to value it at 0, it's not very good, right?
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  The We don't want the credit rating agencies to think the
• 4:08
  company has $0.00 of assets. We want the credit rating
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  agencies to think we have $65 billion of assets.
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  In order to issue a credit back instrument into the marketplace,
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  well, there are these agencies that rate your credit instrument
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  called credit agencies. They value and dictate the
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  quality of the instrument that you're selling to the public.
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  And so therefore making them happy is important.
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  If you have an asset with no flows that isn't valued by
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  anyone in the market that you just continue to hoard and say
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  has value, but in the actuality of the marketplace has no value
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  while they then your credit rating is probably going to
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  slip, which dictates the terms and the dividends that they
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  would be able to issue for STRC in the 1st place.
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  That's real world finance, not Bitcoin, opium.
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  So 1 he has to entertain credit agencies as step number one.
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  But also this is just standard business practice.
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  There are these things out there called Reit's real estate
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  investment trusts that have been around for a long time where
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  they value the underlying assets of the holdings in the cash
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  flows from the rental agreements that they have to issue you a
• 5:06
  dividend on a monthly basis. And when a property gets valued
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  and they sell some, well, that's part of what covers the dividend
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  that they offer to you in this public instrument.
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  It's no different in bitcoins case.
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  This is what Sailor says. The analogy is like a real
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  estate development company raises capital by issuing a
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  credit instrument. Buys land at $10,000 an acre,
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  develops it. It's worth $100,000 an acre.
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  And then they monetize that capital appreciation.
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  You could sell the land at $100,000 an acre.
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  You could rent the land after you fully developed it.
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  You could refinance the land. But nobody questions a real
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  estate development company that makes a capital investment with
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  a credit income. What we're doing is the same
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  thing with Bitcoin, and we want to make sure that the market
• 5:54
  understands that. I'm very famous for saying never
• 5:56
  sell you Bitcoin, and that's why the Internet went crazy when we
• 6:00
  said we might sell it. But if I was being more precise,
• 6:04
  I'd say never be a net seller of Bitcoin.
• 6:07
  It just wouldn't have been so viral or so catchy to say.
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  Never be a net seller of Bitcoin.
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  I think that in these periods, even if we were to sell one
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  Bitcoin, we'd be buying 10 to 20 more Bitcoin.
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  So you're really talking about a situation where we buy 10
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  bitcoins, sell one Bitcoin, buy 9 net Bitcoin, and continue to
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  create Bitcoin? It's it.
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  It should be a non issue after people understand it, but right
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  now it's a colorful area of commentary.
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  You're right, never being a net seller of Bitcoin doesn't sell
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  as well as never sell your Bitcoin.
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  Bitcoin is meme money, money with memes and ideas attached to
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  it that help it spread virally across the world in the digital
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  realm. MicroStrategy or Strategy
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  MSTRSTRC will always be net buyers of Bitcoin and so the
• 6:53
  ratio of him selling Bitcoin isn't 1 to one.
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  He's buying 10 Bitcoin for everyone that he sells.
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  Is it possible for you to comment how do you sell on
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  Bitcoin and buy 10? Yeah.
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  So the number one Bitcoin accretion engine is stretch.
• 7:09
  We sold $3.2 billion of STRC in April.
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  So we bought $3.2 billion of Bitcoin.
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  The dividend is about 80 to 90 million.
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  So in the month when we're raising 3 billion where we need
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  to come up with 80 or $90,000,000 to pay the dividend.
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  So you would be in essence you would be buying 30 bitcoins,
• 7:34
  selling one Bitcoin, right? Our our break even rate is 2.3%.
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  So what that means is that if we sell stretch, if we issue
• 7:48
  stretch credit equal to 2.3% of our Bitcoin holdings, then that
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  means we will be a net buyer of Bitcoin forever even if we sell
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  Bitcoin to pay the dividend. Another point is that if Bitcoin
• 8:00
  appreciates 2.3% a year, we can pay the dividends forever,
• 8:07
  right? And and continue to grow value,
• 8:09
  right? And we can do it without selling
• 8:11
  any, any common equity. So the break even is 2.3 right
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  now. We're, we've sold about $5
• 8:19
  billion of STRC in the first four months of the year.
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  So we're running on a pace to have an issuance rate of 15 or
• 8:28
  20% this year, 2.3% is the break even.
• 8:33
  So you buy 20, you sell 2, you net 18, right.
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  The, the company as long as it grows is going to buy more
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  Bitcoin than it sells. I expect we'll be a net buyer of
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  of Bitcoin in every month and every quarter going on forever.
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  If their Bitcoin per share increases just 2.3% a year,
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  well, they're going to be able to fund this infinite money
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  glitch machine forever. And so far, that's their North
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  Star metric. In the old financial world, it
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  was earnings per share. In the Bitcoin standard, it's
• 9:01
  Bitcoin per share and that's what they measure against, let
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  alone Bitcoin being an asset that is appreciated. 30 or what
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  Michael Saylor says, 40% a year. This is going to allow them to
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  cover their dividends at infinum.
• 9:13
  But more importantly than all of the stuff going on about Michael
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  Saylor and MicroStrategy and STRC being a Ponzi scheme, this
• 9:20
  isn't the most important thing we need to focus on today.
• 9:23
  We need to focus on the mothers and the women in our life it's
• 9:27
  Mother's Day after all one great thing that we always do in
• 9:30
  Bitcoin land as we look at the price of Bitcoin on Mother's Day
• 9:33
  and as we could see OK 2026 did break the trend was at 104 K
• 9:38
  last year and it's an 80 K today but it still looks pretty
• 9:41
  daggone good from a few mothers days ago pretty nice gift to
• 9:44
  give your mother. In the Bitcoin world, there's no
• 9:46
  greater display of a mother's love than Lynn Olberg, the
• 9:48
  mother of Ross Olberg who served 11 years being the founder and
• 9:52
  creator of Silk Road. He was released under pardon by
• 9:55
  Trump about a a year ago. Lynn is a hope and an
• 9:57
  inspiration to all of us because it lets all of us know that
• 10:00
  there's always somebody, someone in your corner who's willing to
• 10:05
  fight for the death for you. She helped raise awareness and
• 10:08
  raise millions of dollars in order to fund all the legal
• 10:11
  battles and bring about the release of her son.
• 10:14
  She brought the situation to the White House.
• 10:16
  She put herself in uncomfortable situations.
• 10:19
  This is one of the best conversations from Bitcoin 2026.
• 10:22
  A conversation between Efret, Janice McAfee, Lauren Rodriguez
• 10:27
  and Lynn Ulbricht. When she talked about what she
• 10:29
  did, the lengths that she went to to defend her son.
• 10:32
  Lynn Ross's home. Finally, yay Ross's home.
• 10:39
  So good. Does the fight feel different
• 10:41
  now, and is it harder or easier to keep people's attention once
• 10:46
  the personal emergency is resolved?
• 10:49
  Yeah, well, the fight is different because, like, my main
• 10:53
  prize was going to be Ross being out.
• 10:55
  And it happened. Oh, my God.
• 10:56
  Thank you, God. And thank you, President Trump
• 10:59
  and everyone here who helped so many people from the Bitcoin
• 11:02
  community couldn't have done it without you guys.
• 11:06
  And so my life is not as intense or as desperate.
• 11:10
  It was, you know, adrenaline filled like before.
• 11:15
  I would force myself to do pretty scary stuff.
• 11:19
  You know, I'm like, I'm going to force myself to talk to this
• 11:21
  famous person or whatever. And one time it really stands
• 11:25
  out is what someone got me into Mar a Lago at a table.
• 11:29
  And Trump came and he was sitting at his private table.
• 11:33
  It has a red thing around it. You know, it's his table.
• 11:37
  And I went to the restroom and was coming back and I saw there
• 11:41
  was kind of a gap in that rope. And he was just sitting there on
• 11:44
  his iPad controlling the music. And I thought, there he is.
• 11:48
  I'm going to go talk to him. And so I went up to him and, you
• 11:53
  know, said a few words and he was very kind.
• 11:57
  He was very nice. And then I started talking about
• 12:00
  Ross and all of this stuff as I felt myself slowly being moved
• 12:04
  and kind of lifted by these two giant people and Secret Service.
• 12:09
  And I was taken away to my table.
• 12:13
  They didn't. They weren't horrible or
• 12:14
  anything, but I couldn't believe I did it actually.
• 12:19
  But, and there were other times when there were people that I
• 12:22
  really wanted to talk to. So I forced myself to do a lot
• 12:26
  of things and go a lot of places and keep going when it was for
• 12:29
  my son. Before we go any further, let's
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  simply to get started the Bitcoin way.
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  Well, they're leaders in helping you to stay sovereign, which
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  privacy is not a crime. Self sovereignty is not a crime
• 13:17
  in building tools around self sovereignty should not be a
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  crime. I mean, the mob uses Excel.
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  They're not being held liable from creating open source tools
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  that everybody uses. Sovereignty is part of what
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  makes America, America and the team at the Bitcoin Way is
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  bitcoinway.com/partner/dante Dash Cook.
• 13:45
  I want to end with a few thoughts for us who get to
• 13:47
  celebrate friends and family on a day like today.
• 13:50
  Don't take the women or the freedom that you have for
• 13:53
  granted. I love this clip from my friend
• 13:55
  Tarantula. They talk about what's actually
• 13:57
  going on with what happened with Ross Ulbricht in the past and
• 14:00
  what's currently happening with the team at Samurai.
• 14:03
  Keep thinking about conversations happened the other
• 14:05
  day about my brothers, Samurai, Walt, Death Bill and Keon.
• 14:11
  No, they didn't cage our brothers because they armed
• 14:14
  someone. They caged them because they
• 14:17
  wrote code that made free men harder to control.
• 14:22
  I said again and again, privacy is not a crime.
• 14:26
  Self custody is not a crime. Building tools for sovereignty
• 14:31
  is not a crime. Keoni Rodriguez went to prison
• 14:35
  last December. He's at the beginning of a five
• 14:37
  year sentence and it's been part of his life journey and life
• 14:41
  mission with him and four other guys who created open source
• 14:44
  privacy based tools for us as bitcoiners to have some
• 14:48
  semblance of anonymity and the ability to keep our transactions
• 14:52
  free from other people peering in, it's no different than cash.
• 14:56
  He wrote a note from prison in West Virginia just a day ago,
• 14:59
  sharing about the struggles that they've had as a family, how all
• 15:02
  of the legal fees have wiped their bank accounts out
• 15:05
  completely in the hope that he has to always be someone who
• 15:08
  swims upstream, who fights for what's right despite what's
• 15:12
  going on in front of him. And so as we celebrate with our
• 15:15
  mothers or we're celebrating or mourning the loss of a mother,
• 15:19
  because I know how hard Mother's Day can be, holidays sometimes
• 15:22
  remind you of the people that meant most of you in life who
• 15:25
  are no longer there. You're looking at a plate,
• 15:27
  you're looking at a seat, you're smelling food, you're smelling
• 15:29
  the things that remind you of them.
• 15:31
  And so I just want to encourage you on a day like this, don't
• 15:34
  take your freedom or your mother's, your daughters or the
• 15:36
  women in your life for granted. If you have a daughter like me,
• 15:39
  I've got three. Hug them and kiss them because
• 15:42
  they're going to be the future mothers and the people who will
• 15:44
  fight for you when no one else will.
• 15:46
  Our thoughts and prayers today are with Lauren Rodriguez and
• 15:50
  the Samurai movement. We love you and we thank you for
• 15:53
  all that you do for us, all of the sacrifice.
• 15:56
  We don't take it for granted. Happy Mother's Day and this is
• 16:00
  Dante Coke with Bitcoin. Simply happy stacking.
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  today. Thank you mothers, and I hope
• 16:27
  you enjoy today. You deserve it.