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So many eyes on me that I didn't even get through dinner with friends before @SimpleStacker had complained that my Bitcoin Magazine piece wasn't plugged on Stacker yet (#1019573).
Shame.
Should have dropped the cutlery and the socializing... and went straight to SN. Maybe vibe-code an auto-publish Bitcoin Magazine articles via den to ~econ??
Then again: Stackers (esp reading ~econ) have this wonderful chance for a front-row seat to what I'm thinking at any given moment. If you've been paying attention to my endless posts about the treasury companies in recent weeks (#984224, #1003228, #1011075, #1010082), it's not exactly surprising that there's now a piece out there aggressively ranting.
Well, not exactly ranting. I'm carefully sassy and purposefully eloquent, taking a step back and asking some flowy questions about what in the world we're doing here.
Simplestacker quoted my financial-history/perpetual motion machines quote already, so I'll pick another few favorites extracts:
Fast-forward a mere three years and we made the Ponzi business great again. Bitcoin 2025 saw announcement after announcement by bitcoin treasury companies launching one daring and aggressive financial engineering attempt after another.
Supposedly, the way bitcoin reaches the heavens or even the plebian masses now is not a mass exodus from financial institutions and a fulfillment of a dreamy cypherpunk destiny, but through heavily speculative, ridiculously complicated financial plays that turn equities and fixed-income securities into funding pools for buying bitcoin.

"For how can a bitcoin, wrapped in a corporate charter, suddenly be worth double, triple, or ten times the most liquid, observable and obviously indisputable price on the planet?"

What extreme value-added transformation does our orange coin undergo the moment you take it under your financially leveraged wings and promise to issue debt, preferred stock, and equity against it — in “waves of credit bubbles,” we hear the ghost of Satoshi faintly whisper.
Bitcoin treasury companies are hardly what Satoshi had in mind when he created a new electronic cash system to make third-party, financial middlemen obsolete. In sixteen short years, we turned Satoshi’s great discovery into the very thing he tried to exit.
aaaand this:
If I’m wrong, and the “capital pump to accelerate the flow of capital from bonds to bitcoin” accelerates hyperbitcoinization, I’ll be the first to celebrate. In the meantime, I implore you, beloved financial engineers of the world, to please explain to me — preferably like I’m five — why all these shrewd shenanigans won’t simply implode.

And yeah, HODL agrees with me. 'NUFF SAID!

P.S., @Car, this was written well before your rant (just delays and fiddling in editorial); you are, once again, cordially invited to spell out your anger with Mr. Bailey. (Use as many depletives as you like.)
P.S.S.: I try to be clever and whatever, but HODL obvs brings the thunder. My god, it's funny:
They're not ponzi schemes, they only take on debt to buy bitcoin. You might think they're overvalued, but that doesn't equate to a ponzi scheme.
Furthermore, a trojan horse is something positive, i.e. disruptive. HODL himself holds $MSTR, and that post probably means he is bullish on treasury companies. I'd say HODL disagrees with you. But whether he agrees with your or not shouldn't matter to your argumentation.
Conversely, you can argue that Bitcoin is undervalued, and the stock market is fair valued. A lot of big players can't buy pure Bitcoin, or the ETFs, hence bitcoin stocks will receive a premium.
Also, the bitcoin/share is increasing on these stocks. How do you price that in?
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If anything I'm currently aware of is going to be this bubble's doorknobs.com it's these treasury companies.
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I wonder if these companies are gonna trigger the next bitcoin bear market
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For my analogy to hold, they'll have to reach a combined market cap greater than bitcoin's.
But, yeah, if people decide that's stupid and trigger a sell off, then a whole lot of bitcoin will hit the market.
Or, more interestingly, the holders of the keys will skip town and set up island citadels in non-extradition locales.
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the holders of the keys will skip town and set up island citadels in non-extradition locales
Now there's a Tom Cruise movie worth my bitcoin to see lets start a geyser and pitch it to Angel studios
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The implication of “not your keys, not your coins” is “your keys, your coins.”
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42 sats \ 1 reply \ @unschooled 1h
certainly none of these companies will have been so foolish as not to use multisig .. or am i too generous?
70 sats \ 2 replies \ @Aardvark 12h
I look at these companies, MSTR being the prime example, and I just don't get it. I hear the term arbitrage tossed around a lot, and I figure I must not be smart enough to understand what the fuck they're actually doing.
Like the article says, maybe this time is different, but for me, if I can't figure out how you're doing what you're doing, I'll just continue selling my fiat for BTC.
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Yeah, that's the safer option.
But when they blow up, they'll puke the coins back out (at any price) and make all of us poorer. Great...
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33 sats \ 0 replies \ @Aardvark 4h
Should I use your favorite "stupid bitcoiner" talking points? Buy the dip, cheap corn, etc....
I'm crossing my fingers that when some of these treasuries implode, it won't cause a large drop in the price. I've seen an argument that the reason bitcoin hasn't gone up higher with all of these companies buying, is that it's primarily bitcoiners reallocating funds from BTC to MSTR.
With any luck, the companies themselves will implode in a spectacular fashion as people funnel their money back into bitcoin. It certainly will be a "buy the dip" scenario, but it could be offset by an explosion of funds leaving these companies.
It's probably mostly wistful thinking at this point, but it's something to consider.
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170 sats \ 1 reply \ @LibertasBR 11h
Yes, they are. Those who celebrate them as hyperbitcoinization just want to exchange their Bitcoin for more shitfiat in the future. If they really want Bitcoin to be money, they need to spread the word among local merchants and actually use it to pay.
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51 sats \ 1 reply \ @OT 13h
Give us the TL:DR
Yes or No?
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Soft Yes
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What is there to implode? This is simply the beginning of tapping into different capital markets. It might be new and volatile, and there will probably be some players not making it who are going into it too aggressively at some point, but overall it's just siphoning capital away from untapped capital markets. Markets that didn't have access to these instruments (btc exposure) before. If not in this way, how else would these markets be accessed in a world that's on a hyperbitcoinization track?