Is a speculative attack on USD coming soon? If it does, it's going to be a crazy sight to see. Every institution that can borrow will and essentially short the dollar by going long Bitcoin. The dollar will begin hyperinflating and there will be a lot of unhappy rent-seekers that will want some blood. It may in the end create calls for a CBDC to control the lending/printing of money, which is currently in the hands of too many banking institutions. But we're getting ahead of ourselves. Let's start from the godfather of the speculative attack: Michael Saylor.
For those with assets, loans are really easy to get. In a fiat economy, loans have no opportunity cost so banking institutions are incentivized to lend as much money as possible to qualified borrowers. More loans, more interest payments, more profit. And the rich borrow. A lot. Loans are how Cantillionaires stay rich. They use the newly printed money to invest in all sorts of stuff and as long as their investment returns higher than the minuscule interest rate from the bank, they come out ahead, sometimes my many multiples.
Using these loans to buy Bitcoin is what we can call a speculative attack on the dollar. That's essentially what Michael Saylor has done with every kind of loan he could get. He's used unsecured loans, secured loans, and stock issuance, among other things, to acquire as much Bitcoin as possible. I'm sure he'd take out more loans if he could and I have no doubt in my mind he's looking into more ways to add more to the incredible Bitcoin position he has.
What's going to be even crazier is that he will soon be able to use the Bitcoin itself as collateral. Wall Street isn't that comfortable with this idea yet, but at some point, they're going to because there's too much free money in it for them. And then the real leverage games can begin. He's in deep profit on his Bitcoin position and as the price goes up, there will be more loans available. But at least at the moment, banks aren't loaning out with Bitcoin as collateral just yet.
As such, he has to wait for more stock issuances to buy more Bitcoin. With almost 1% of all BTC in his treasury, there's a lot of demand for his stock and with additional issuances, the market now knows he'll buy more BTC. As a result, he can keep issuing stock and buying Bitcoin this until he's saturated market demand. The result is that MicroStrategy right now trades like a 2x Long Bitcoin ETF.
But here's where it gets fun. What happens when there are more companies besides MicroStrategy that use this strategy? You really just need one more CEO with this level of conviction to take this strategy to the next level. The stock's returns have been so insanely high that some company will mimic it. Heck, even someone that doesn't have a company right now could, perhaps, buy up a small cap stock with some cash on its balance sheet, buy Bitcoin with it and then issue more shares to buy even more Bitcoin. It would be slower, of course, but there's no reason why it won't work. The key is a large cash position and a way to get lots of debt. This hypothetical alternative to MSTR would have to have some differentiation of course, and perhaps they'd use more or less leverage than MSTR.
For that matter, could we see a mining infrastructure company go in this direction? Keep lots of Bitcoin on the balance sheet and use USD loans to mine more. If the treasury is in BTC and the acquisition strategy is mining, then it could very well use its line of credit to become something like MSTR, only a bit more related to energy production.
How about one of these zombie companies? A visionary CEO could turn a zombie company into a living one by making it into a Bitcoin substitute. A company like IBM has lots of assets to get loans with. Use those assets to put Bitcoin on the treasury. It can quickly become another stock that's a store of value. Speaking of which, the reason MSTR is doing so well is because it's taking the store of value premium away from other stocks. Stocks have functioned as a de facto store of value for a long time, the premium is now leaking towards something that holds its value better.
The presence of Bitcoin on the balance sheet turns the store of value premium in these stocks into Bitcoin substitutes. And it really won't take many companies to do these things for the entire market to expand USD and complete the monetization of Bitcoin.