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We continue the standing, recurring order of OldFi journos shitting on bitcoin treasury companies. (Bitches, that's my job!). It is the hottest story of the year, of the cycle, and maybe even of all Bitcoin times. Who saw this coming?!
Also a little bit hyperbolic: The BTCs hold like 3-5% of outstanding BTC(!), depending on how you count: #1004175.

"Companies around the world are on a bitcoin buying spree, as executives — often in industries that have nothing to do with cryptocurrency — mimic a stockpiling strategy that has produced explosive share price growth."

A total of about 130 listed firms hold a combined $87bn of bitcoin, according to data from BitcoinTreasuries.net
Many of these firms — like Strategy — are worth much more than the value of the crypto they own. That premium is a sign of investors’ faith that these companies can raise money to buy bitcoin, drive their stock prices higher and raise more money
Yes, that we know: we're wondering why, and getting better and better answers from the bitcoin treasury peddlers on Twitter. #1007029, #1010082, #984224, #991218, #1003308
But bitcoin treasuries are yet to be tested by a prolonged downturn in the cryptocurrency’s price, which could leave some firms struggling to repay debt they have taken on to build up their stockpiles.
Yep, that'd all be fun.
Few took Michael Saylor, co-founder and then chief executive of MicroStrategy, seriously when in August 2020 he said his company would sell new equity to buy and hold bitcoin as its primary reserve asset. To the surprise of many, Strategy’s market capitalisation soared faster than bitcoin itself as its bet paid off.
Yeah, agreed... and:
bitcoin treasuries are yet to be tested by a prolonged downturn in the cryptocurrency’s price, which could leave some firms struggling to repay debt they have taken on to build up their stockpiles.
Yup, double-agreed. (Saylor "has said he was confident that Strategy would not collapse even if there was a 90 per cent fall in the bitcoin price and it then stayed around those levels for four years.")
Metaplanet,
... has inspired other small companies to use new shares to accumulate bitcoin, including KindlyMD, a US firm that is merging with BTC Inc to form Nakamoto Holdings.
Some very nice charts (in order: Strategy, Metaplanet, XXI, Tesla, Block)
Some I've never heard of here, like Chinese Next Technology.
It's very nice to see neutral, normal stuff about bitcoin in the premier finance newspaper of the world. Inevitable.

archive linked: https://archive.md/QjIa5
As I ponder this, the two answers that seem most plausible are 1) trapped capital, and 2) crazy financial bubble.
Otherwise, I can’t wrap my head around people who don’t believe in bitcoin enough to YOLO HODL, like us, simultaneously believing in it enough to drive up the treasury company valuations.
If you believe in bitcoin, you hodl. If you don’t, then you don’t believe in bitcoin treasury companies either.
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247 sats \ 9 replies \ @Scoresby 9h
Here's an anecdote: my dad knows about bitcoin. Despite my offers to set him up with cold storage he never decided to do it. Here comes MSTR and he's buying it like crazy in his Fidelity or Schwab or whatever he uses. Doesn't want to talk about bitcoin. Wants to talk about MSTR.
A group of investors I know meet once a month to talk about potential deals they have heard about. They talk about bitcoin every single month. Nobody went further than one guy who holds it on an exchange. Here comes MSTR and now several of them are gobbling it up.
Both cases people knew about bitcoin, bitcoin self custody, and a general idea of the risks of not your keys...yet it wasn't accessible to them until they could buy it in something like this. Honestly, they weren't even as interested in the ETFs.
At least for retail, it's got something to do with making bitcoin accessible in a way these guys feel comfortable with. Maybe?
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Doesn't want to talk about bitcoin. Wants to talk about MSTR. That's funny because at this point, what's the difference??
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34 sats \ 0 replies \ @Scoresby 7h
in the case of my dad, he's heard me hammer on about censorship resistance, digital freedom money a little too much perhaps. MSTR is sweet gains, baby.
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That was one of my hypotheses too, but are these people enough to move the market? Does retail really have that much influence? But I definitely think your observation is common, I know some people like that too
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42 sats \ 0 replies \ @Scoresby 7h
are these people enough to move the market?
That's the thing: surely they aren't, right? I mean, there can't be that many couch potato old guys with extra money hanging around to play the stock market (but who are not serious enough to bother learning what real self-custody looks like or to be concerned about actually using money the state can't wreck)!
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21 sats \ 0 replies \ @optimism 9h
Their bull market comfort, our bear market cheap sats.
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That’s basically a cousin of the trapped capital idea, right?
There are bitcoin believers who command a lot of capital that can’t easily be put directly into bitcoin, so they pay Saylor to do it for them.
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More like custom/custody/bitcoin-wrapped-in-SEC-regulated-equity
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47 sats \ 1 reply \ @Scoresby 9h
Yeah. But it doesn't explain the premium, because they could buy more "bitcoin" for their buck through the ETF.
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Then it might belong in my bubble category. Time will tell.
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I'll propose a 3rd possibility: automated trading bots that trade on historical correlations. All they can see is that these companies look like leveraged bets on bitcoin's price and so if you expect bitcoin to go up, you expect these companies to go up more, not for any fundamental reason but just because that's what the data shows.
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That probably goes in category 2.
If that’s what’s happening, then there should be examples of this happening with other assets, right?
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I'd argue that there probably are. It's not something I ever studied, but I wouldn't be surprised if there is some research out there about macro effects of trading bots.
I already know that the stock market is getting increasingly self-referential because of passive ETFs that just trade based on deterministic rules, but the rules they trade by actually affects stock performance in the aggregate
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I’ve really only read about this during the rise of high frequency trading.
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152 sats \ 5 replies \ @Aardvark 10h
Degenerate gamblers?
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52 sats \ 0 replies \ @optimism 10h
Yep. They call themselves "wall street".
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Wouldn’t they go further and buy a bunch of Fartcoins or whatever?
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Speaking of which, you reeeeaally gotta take two minutes here and watch Remy's latest for Reason
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Obviously I already have. I love Remy.
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man, I laughed. Watched it like 3x on repeat last night LOL. epic
Accelerate bitcoin adoption? Institutionally short global capital and long bitcoin?
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But fundamentally they're just paying someone to accumulate bitcoin with a promise to share the gains, when they could accumulate it themselves. Why trust GameStop to manage this asset for you?
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GameSTop, no -- but Saylor? Metaplanet? probs
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42 sats \ 1 reply \ @seashell 6h
Owning BTC makes you that bitcoin guy, buying MSTR makes you just another investor chasing gains. Social camouflage matters more than people wanna admit.
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Just buy bitcoin and tell people you bought MSTR then, or stop feeling the need to disclose all of your investments to anyone.
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There are more options.
  1. Stocks are always priced for future growth, services, products.
  2. Index ETF inflows
  3. Most stocks are overpriced considered their book value (see 4: passive investing)
  4. The BTC yield has a future discount (de novo P/E ratio)
  5. The converts and perpetuals trade at a premium (free bitcoin basically)
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Most stocks do more than hold an underlying asset.
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54 sats \ 12 replies \ @grayruby 8h
Stacker Sports is hoarding Bitcoin. Our treasury is up over 110k sats now. Although almost all of it is ear marked for contest payouts. But we are hoarding. Buy our stock! You can have some of @Undisciplined's shares.
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Only if you leverage it, issue some equity, do some clever financial engineering and achieve like 1.3:1 backing against your treasury stack
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55 sats \ 10 replies \ @grayruby 7h
Congrats you are the new CFEO (chief financial engineering officer). Welcome to the team.
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Hmm, it seems like I have insufficient votes to veto anything.
I'm onboard, but only if he's paid entirely in the make-believe assets he invents.
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I have a mini miner, so I'm technically making ("unleashing") bitcoin. PAY ME SATS, BITCH #936913
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I suspect you have technically not made any new bitcoins.
42 sats \ 0 replies \ @grayruby 7h
Deal. I suggest an initial 3 month contract to determine how much finance a chief financial engineering officer could engineer if a chief financial engineering officer could engineer finance.
After that we can reevaluate and potentially offer him a permanent role and a seat on the board of old men yelling at clouds if he really engineers the shit out of those finances.
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AWESOME! THank you kindly(!), I accept. What's my signing bonus?
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I just sent you 100 sats. After tax that’s 70.
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