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196 sats \ 11 replies \ @grayruby 2 Nov \ on: Strategy’s Proud Return to Junk (Financial Times, Craig Coben) econ
I don't think Strategy should have a junk rating they aren't really a default risk but they do need to present the market with a "strategy" beyond perpetually issuing more shares to buy Bitcoin. I think if they ran a large lightning node, even though it would be an infinitesimally small amount of their Bitcoin holdings, the market would see it as them doing something with their Bitcoin and treat it favourably. Plus it would bring more attention to the lightning network and use case of Bitcoin as money for the internet.
I've wondered why they don't actually do anything or contribute anything other than financial engineering. They tried some kind of distributed identity something something based on btc years ago, but it didn't go anywhere.
Given that Saylor is obviously very smart, I have to assume this is on purpose, and the purpose I suspect is that he doesn't want to be seen meddling in the ecosystem, since whatever he did would both create precedent and get massive scrutiny. Even contributing $1m/year to OpenSats seems potentially fraught.
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I don't know how smart Saylor actually is. On the tizz / rizz scale I think he's more rizz than tizz
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I'm convinced he's very smart. He has an astounding command of a broad range of material that he synthesizes fluidly and creatively.
I've spent waaaaaaay too much time around people trying, w/ varying degrees of success, to mimic the surface trappings of intelligence, and I think I have a good eye for that con. (The btc space is chock full of exemplars, surprise surprise.) Saylor has not tripped the alarm in me, whatever his other faults. One can gripe that he gets over his skis and overextends a metaphor (e.g., the "monetary energy", among others) but I have zero doubt that the guy is legit brilliant.
Of course, it's possible this reveals more about me than about the truth of Saylor.
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He's clearly smart. He's well read and can talk circles around many of his critics. For one thing most of his critics in tradfi don't even understand bitcoin and the kicker is they don't know that they don't get it.
But, smart men can make mistakes and be wrong. Allow arrogance to cloud their thinking. But he's no dummy.
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Well, I'm not saying he's dumb, and he's obviously an order of magnitude smarter than the typical talking head on CNBC
but over time listening to him, some of the stuff he says seems slightly off... like it's directionally correct but wrong on some nuanced technical levels, and I'm not even referring to his clearly exaggerated metaphors (swarm of cyberhornets, etc.)
that's why I still think he's still rizz > tizz. he's probably smart in the sense of being able to synthesize a lot of broad, high level ideas, but he probably doesn't spend much time thinking about the nuances of technical details anymore
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I expect you'd find similar things, in anyone whose principal job is fundraising / boosting a company, and who's given ten million hours of speeches over five years aimed at diverse audiences in diverse circumstances.
I'm not accusing you of this, but there's a lot of people who don't like what Saylor is doing and their brains can't allow their "enemy" to have any good qualities, and need to transform him into some imbecile monkey. It's such a lazy way to think, and a stupid one, since now you've forced yourself to operate in a skewed reality just to enjoy the sweet pleasures of name-calling.
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Nah, I've felt this way about him since long before his bitcoin treasury days. I think it came from listening to some interviews and debates, I definitely think he's fast and loose with his words, which again is a sign of rizz > tizz
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He graduated from MIT with a degree in civil or aviation engineering
He started Microstrategy in 1989
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beautifully put
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I think it comes down to focus. He has talked many times about being laser focused in a couple things and anytime he tried to put his hands in too many buckets he hasn't been successful. I would like to see them use their capital might to support the ecosystem though even if they just created an investment arm of the company to fund bitcoin companies.
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I think that's a fair critique (I've also taken note of his focus on focus, over the years) but would giving $1m to un-sexy btc infra causes really be such a distraction?
Literally: "Here's a check, enjoy bros."
I'm not the world's highest achiever but I think I could manage to write a check once a year without it driving my other productivity into a wall.
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