someone else already shared this in ~bitcoin and ~podcasts, but alas no convo and no zaps?! (#1409910), and since my remarks are econ-related I'll just go here anyway.
Saylor losing the plot
I hadn't watched the interview yet, but two different people had messaged me and said WATCH IT, OMG HE'S IMPLODING! So there was obvs some promise of fireworks
I only made it to about 40 minutes before I had to (Swedish expression) puke out of myself a bunch of thoughts. (And the first ~24 minutes were kind of OK, with a neat reflection on when we had bitcoin ATH... less than 100 days ago... and all the good things that happened in 2025 and maybe we should just have longer time horizons and stop being so goddamn myopic. FAIR. POINT.)
"What's with all the hate?""What's with all the hate?"
Well, because your ilk -- well, not necessarily you, but most of your copy-cats -- are out here DESTROYING CAPITAL (#1291642), and undermining the ethos/point of bitcoin (decentralization, non-sovereign, censorship-resistance, etc). (and giving bitcoin a pretty bad rep, but fuck that; nobody cares.)
- Go bother other companies that don't hold bitcoin... yes, for sure, but those aren't the topic and more important NOT RUN BY BITCOINERS WHO GET IT. Everyone's got a journey etc, and yeah while it's cool to get the vote before Microsoft it matters not when a microscopic portion of that company and its shareholders even get bitcoin. But in the sample conditional on getting bitcoin, why ought we be happy about/put up with loss-making businesses destroying capital to play financial games?
- The point Danny missed on the question of "what ought these companies do?" = SHUT DOWN! The profit-and-loss system is an elaborate value-adding information check... if you take components— economic resources — and transform them into something that is worth more than what you started with, you've benefited society. If you combine them and transform them into something that is worth less than what you started with, you've destroyed stuff.
Here's a weird suggestion: Don't destroy stuff!Here's a weird suggestion: Don't destroy stuff!
Their example [of -10m in net income but 100m in bitcoin appreciating at 30%] is pretty ridiculous... just get rid of that loss-making entity? Bitcoin appreciates at 30% inside or outside the company structure, no need to "purchase" a corporate charter for 10 million in annual losses, jezus.
There's no moral or economic obligation to keep going as a business just because you're a business. If you're losing 10m a year, you shouldn't buy back shares... you should EXIT! Close down shop, return money to owners, and let those owners find better things to do with the money.
- Isn't there room for more than one bitcoin company?
Yes-ish... but this is a stupid rhetorical device (I'm at least glad he stopped saying "uhg, there's 5,000 banks in the U.S" and "10,000 insurance companies" — yeah, and they don't sell the same thing and most of them exist because of local/regional/anti-monopoly regulations keeping away financial gravity). What bitcoin treasury companies sell is the same thing, the market they angle for the SAME audience. There's no value-add to the world to have yet another Saylor copycat. Yes, yes, maybe some specific jurisdiction with better access, and maybe there could be operating businesses with slightly different flavors — and ultimately, with bitcoin as the world's money, EVERY business has bitcoin on the balance sheet — but silly, financial-engineering business plays that rival a much better and safer one (=Saylor's own, #1409654, #1406899) without doing anything new and valuable AND is burning through investor money and Ponzi-style roll their debts (cough, NAKA)... yeah, no. NOT NEEDED.
Can't people and investors spend money on whatever they want, even if it's a bad idea?
OF COURSE, they can, and to the extent I'm wrong, it's a good thing they did. Speculation, money-where-your-mouth-is etc, but I'm not therefor obliged to like it!
Well, there's another hour-plus left of this podcast. We'll see if I survive.
(But yes, I'm starting to come around to the view that perhaps Saylor has been a net-negative to Bitcoin's progress and success.)
I saw this yesterday and I skipped it and now I don't need to watch it. Thank you for your sacrifice.
TOTALLY!
I'm willing to take one for the team, suffer for y'alls -- like a total Jesus character
i havnt watched it , but how pissed was he? all the comments making it seem like he went nuts?
i had a chuckle when you wrote - If you're losing 10m a year, you shouldn't buy back shares... you should EXIT! Close down shop, return the money to owners, and let those owners find better things to do with the money.
I agree, but a lot of the business owners would never close down until the whole operation was in the ground because to close a business means to admit defeat; there's a lot of ego involved. plus we live in the magical world of fiat where banks can destroy the economy and get a bailout and bonus too
On a personal level, I sort of get that. But then an outsider observer like Saylor should be honest that Bitcoin is just another fiat-magical Hail-Mary type savior for a business that's structurally bad/doomed. Instead of ANGRILY defending that every company, even the shit ones, is good with bitcoin.
I thought this ep was about the most fascinating thing that's happened since I've been in the space for what it reveals sociologically about the state of btc and its likely future. Will remark w more details later.
One doesn't have to like it, but it's high signal, imo.
I listened earlier and I think it could have been a few things.
Maybe Saylor was just having a bad day. Possibly Danny might have said something on Twitter (unlikely as I believe he's an investor or consultant in one treasury company). Or Strategy is in trouble if Bitcoin doesn't start going up again.
That I don't think is true. Magic is sort of over and free lunch isn't there anymore, but they're fine (unless weird-af thing... Mr. Orange Man is confiscating coins, custodian lost them etc)
Of those options, I'm gonna go with bad day
I'm also only a quarter of the way through it.
I think Bitcoiners, in general, continue to call dollars "money" and talk about dollar "profits/losses", and continue to treat Bitcoin as ONLY an "investment".
The way we talk about treasury companies exemplifies this. We don't talk about, or criticize, the companies who hold zero Bitcoin. Our community seems to act as though Bitcoin is a speculative investment. That is the backdrop of Danny's questions, and I feel like Saylor is trying to re-frame it so Bitcoin is the money, not dollars. If a company is cash-flow-negative, holding real money is probably the best thing they can do. If they can issue shares to do so, isn't that the smartest possible thing?! Someone is willing to buy their worthless paper with worthless paper, to buy something real.
It seems to me that Saylor is the only logical one here, actively trying to get the world to move to a Bitcoin Standard. While the Bitcoin community, generally, holds on as tightly as possible to their fiat paper.
The unwillingness of Bitcoiners to actually move to a Bitcoin Standard, is really bothering me. Lots of lip-service about it, but zero real effort.
no, shutting down is the best thing they can do. Stop destroying capital
Real economics doesn't stop applying just because, like, we've got bitcoin now
oh thank you! This wasn't the post that SN showed up under "dupes"??
And yes: that's totally the take-away
dups detection only works for links, Wumbo posted it as a 'discussion'.
aaah, I see! Makes sense
I said in a previous post that I felt I was being slowly Saylorized
And I still have a soft spot for Strategy
Much of the interviews with MS are the same, the host is a rabbit in headlights
But I'm going to go away from the pack and say that, while what he's doing looks like using Bitcoin to sell his stonks, I think there's a future in his what looks like reckless financing
Maybe I'm wrong, we shall see, admittedly owning mstr or strf or any of the other instruments, you first have to entrust your hard earned pennies to a ruthless broker and to Saylor's stonk, so that's two potential reasons you won't get your money back compared to just stacking sats in cold storage
So for the purist maxi that's an absolutely ridiculous suggestion but for the majority of pension funds, investment trusts etc this is par for the course
We can argue all day about how money should look away from the hands of the fiat institutions and how a world of pure Bitcoinization should look
All that aside, this I paraphrased from Saylor at the end and it's clinically honest and is exactly a perfect summary of what is happening to some western democracies
When Danny talks about m-Nav, he's talking about DOLLARS.
I think this is what's so offensive to Saylor.
We continue to frame Bitcoin as though it's just an investment, and we don't use it for trade or real-world transactions. Then, we wonder why the price is so suppressed and the retail public has given up on the premise.
Bitcoiners need to start living what they preach. Stop obsessing about the fiat-based macro environment. The fiat based metrics. The fiat itself. Start using Bitcoin, and the world will improve.
The irony of the last 16 years is how Bitcoin has rewarded so many for doing so little. People built businesses and systems around Bitcoin but only a handful outperformed and then even on only cherry picked time-frames. In this way Bitcoin has shown us our personal, and if you're a business commercial, irrelevance. Bitcoins S-curve is still superior as an investment.
Meanwhile the legacy system of finance and government have responded adequately to relegate Bitcoin to be a financial game. Only after the price in terms of real value does another 10x or two will holding fall to similar opportunity cost as investment in business and lifestyle.
We're early. Entertaining as he is, don't have to care what Saylor says. It's still the phase of adoption to hold, live healthy and chill out.
The core economic critique you’re raising is valid. A business’s first obligation is to create value in excess of the resources it consumes. That is the basic accountability mechanism of profit and loss. If an entity is persistently destroying capital while holding Bitcoin, the Bitcoin holding does not absolve that inefficiency. It is not a moral shield. The Bitcoin position performs identically outside of that structure without the drag of operating losses.
This is where a sober look at the “more Bitcoin companies is better” trope is necessary. In markets with differentiated products or services, multiple players make sense. In a narrow niche where the offering is essentially identical and the only distinguishing factor is leverage to Bitcoin’s price via balance sheet exposure, duplication simply fragments capital. Worse, it invites copycat strategies from weaker operators who have neither the discipline nor the market access to sustain the model. That erodes trust in the concept itself.
In some respects Saylor’s public stance attracts opportunists and financial engineers who want to mimic his play without the long term discipline or the scale advantage. That’s not on him entirely but it is the unintended consequence of a highly visible strategy. The problem is that his interviews tend to blend genuine long term vision with rhetorical devices that gloss over why capital efficiency and actual value creation matter.
It is worth separating the evangelist role from the operator role. As an evangelist Saylor helps Bitcoin. As an operator his specific corporate moves may inspire distorted imitations that hurt Bitcoin’s reputation with capital allocators. That is a tension the Bitcoin ecosystem will need to resolve if it wants sustained institutional respect rather than repeated boom bust cycles driven by flashy but unsustainable plays.
It's simple. The more of us who only accept Sats to settle B2B receipts, the easier it gets for other companies to justify holding Sats, even through rough times.
Every time a Bitcoiner goes out of their way to support a Bitcoin-only business, they reinforce the idea that Bitcoin deserves to have "sustained institutional respect".
As long as the Bitcoin community continues to use fiat (cuz muh convenience, bro), there will be "repeated boom/bust cycles driven by flashy but unsustainable plays".
The tension you speak of will not be resolved until the community itself decides to be pioneers and revolutionists. After all, if we can't even do it, I think it's safe to say the rest of the world will never do it either, and this is the most bearish thing for Bitcoin I can think of.