My understanding of hedging is a long term thing, so it is based on differing concepts.  So for example, historically gold has been considered as a hedge against the dollar in terms of sound money principles, but surely gold has not been performing very well as a hedge because partly it has been manipulated a lot in terms of almost converting it into a dollar product - but if shit hit the fan with Armageddon, and the only means of currency was various hard assets, then gold could well ending as a very decent medium of exchange in those kinds of circumstances

NOT everyone is going to agree that bitcoin is a better hedge than gold, but in late 2013, one of my initial reasons to get into bitcoin was because I considered it as a better than gold hedge.. and likely that investment thesis regarding bitcoin is stronger than it was in 2013.

Of course, we might not always know why one asset goes up against another, but sometimes if we zoom out longer term, we can  have a lot of better ideas regarding what is going on.. but even if you zoom out, you might not get it right or even understand what the fuck is going on (not referring to you specifically, pharmacist), so for example in March 2020, bitcoin fell in value more than the dollar and more than equities and even more than gold and gold was performing better than bitcoin for a few months, until it did not.. so a lot of people were spouting out about bitcoin lacking in hedging properties, and they can believe their nonsense hopes all that they like, seems to me that bitcoin already has been eating golds lunch and will continue to eat gold's lunch as well as absorbing value from a lot of other storage of value assets, because bitcoin is a superior product, whether you recognize it or not.. and whether it takes 10-50 years for the whole matter to play out.. including that we can also see a lot of hedging properties in bitcoin in shorter time frames, but sometimes it can be difficult to either understand or to appreciate what is going on when caught in the middle of it..





Seems that MSTR specifically is in a pretty decent position and they will neither sell and it seems quite likely that the market is not going to force them in that direction.  There might be other companies who play their cards differently and might get caught on the wrong side of trades... that then force them to do even dumber things...

Of course, public companies are going to have to be a bit more transparent than other kinds of companies, so even if the information might appear to go all over the place regarding what they did, what they are doing or what they plan to do, there is going to be some information better than other information too, and frequently, short term exaggerations of market movements can be opportunities for regular peeps and smaller players to take advantage of the information disparities and some of the pure nonsense that is being spouted out as if it were true.


Even though the information is different than previously, and sometimes the exaggerations can attempt to make the situation seem worse than ever or "unprecedented" many of us are still going to recognize either buying opportunities or at least HODLing opportunities rather than getting frustrated, selling, or failing/refusing to buy because expecting the price to drop more and such further drop might not happen.  Frequently failing to prepare for UP can be almost as bad as overly preparing for DOWN.


I still believe that "this week? is too short of a time horizon, and seems to me that MSTR will likely disclose at some point that it bought $10 million or $20 million or $30 million or maybe even more bitcoin.. .. but even if they did not buy this week or during this particular dippening (or announce that they bought)... so what.

Of course, Microstrategies has created financial instruments and even various public disclosures that provide them with a pretty much blank slate in terms of being able to do what they want (at their discretion) to be able to sell their bitcoin, but at the same time, MSTR is a bit of a unique beast in terms of mostly being controlled by Saylor and Saylor pretty clearly and unambiguously that he does not consider bitcoin as a kind of thing that you fuck around with in terms of trading - so he has clearly and unambiguously stated that he is "in" bitcoin for the longrun, and he has backed that up with rationale and various sound money talking points - so he really seems to be quite an exception in terms of not ONLY getting what bitcoin is about, being well able to articulate what bitcoin is about and largely putting his money where his mouth is.

I understand that many of us have become jaded about trusting what any politicians or corporate leaders or other "thought leaders" say in terms of what they are going to do and in what circumstances that they are going to do it, so I will agree with any assertion that we need to take statements with a certain grain of salt and not get too reliant upon what someone like Saylor says he is going to do.  However, at the same time, I would not be presuming that he is going to sell at $100k or $200k or even any higher price either (even that is something that you would do or something you believe that he should do.. blah blah blah), because you are merely attributing the opposite to him than what he said that he was going to do with absolutely no evidence to back it up beyond speculation that he is going to do the opposite merely because people will sometimes do the opposite or whatever other jaded perspective might have been embedded into your thinking through the years.. hahahahahaha.

Personally, I consider it to be way more reasonable to consider and presume that Saylor is going to do what he said that he is going to do, and if Saylor ends up backing out of what he said or NOT doing what he said, then cross that bridge at that time.. It is not going to be the end of the world, if Saylor ends up being a liar or a person that speaks out of both sides of his mouth, but we surely do not have a scant of evidence to suggest that he is that kind of person.. as far as I have seen so far to date. 

Furthermore, none of us should be putting anyone (whether Saylor or any other long term bitcoiner) on a pedestal.. even though at the same time, we surely can (and probably should) appreciate various contributions that some of the longer term bitcoiners have made to the space, but if they start to talk gobbledy gook shitcoiner nonsense or seem to be acting like personal opportunists that you cannot rely upon what they say to be honest, then of course, they should be called out on those kinds of things...and sometimes we might not even agree about what is good behavior or bad behavior.. and I suppose that some issues might escalate regarding disagreements.. and sure, we can respect what Saylor has done so far in his ONLY about 10 months of publicly speaking about bitcoin and we can even agree with him on a variety of the positions that he has taken in regards to bitcoin, but we should not be afraid to lecture him or to call him out if he does end up getting on the wrong side of things from our own perspective(s).. and he has been called out on a few things so far by some bitcoiners (such as his seemingly friendly posture towards the need for regulatory clarity in the BTC space)... which I see absolutely no problem with people expressing differing opinions on that particular topic.. but from my perspective, still those kinds of differing opinions should not rise to the level to consider that Saylor is a sell out regarding core bitcoin values or that he is going to sell his bitcoin merely because his portfolio went up 5x or 10x in terms of its fiat value, merely because some of his views seem to be contrary to the views of other respected bitcoiners in the space.

I wouldn't be too sure of that.  There have been companies that have kicked out the founder from the CEO position before, and if you think a CEO isn't accountable to his shareholders you'd be surprised what can happen when those shareholders begin to make noise.  It might look like Saylor has the board in his pocket, but he'd better watch out if bitcoin (or MSTR's share price) keeps dropping.  Mark my words.

Fortunately for him, bitcoin hasn't continued to sink even lower (yet), and if it recovers to $40k or so then all will probably be well--but we'll see.  It's too soon since bitcoin's price got chopped in half, and right now it looks like it could go either way.  I happen to think the bull market is nowhere near over, but I've been wrong so many times that I wonder why I even bother to predict what's going to happen with bitcoin.

If MSTR were shrewd, they'd hedge their bitcoin position in the futures market.  I don't know if they actually did that, but that's something a lot of corporations do with their investments.

Surely there are needs for fine balancing whenever attempting to predict anything - especially when it involves the future and bitcoin


So far I have not heard anything about MSTR participating in any future's markets, and sure it could be within parameters of what they are already authorized to do, but they might have to disclose that too... especially if it might go beyond certain value numbers.. but if it is just small numbers they may not need to disclose because I think with any regulations there is going to be some discretion when working with values that do not constitute large percentages of overall value...

but you, The Pharmacist, seem to be suggesting that it would be prudent for MSTR to take even larger future positions to hedge against the seemingly large (out of this world range) long positions they already have taken, and if MSTR were taking the kinds of future positions that you seem to be suggesting to be prudent, then they would likely have to disclose such positions.  I am thinking that Saylor considers levels of prudence a wee bit differently than you, The Pharmacist.  For example, he has made pretty damned strong ass statements against diversification and hedging to assert that those are NOT smart moves once you have identified the winner (or leader) of a category, and surely Saylor has quite vigorously asserted that he believes bitcoin to be and above and beyond any other potential competitor in its area, and therefore there is no need to hedge in that kind of a way, which would also likely affect his thinking about futures, too... and sure, time will tell if he ends up being correct about the currently seeming strong positions that he has so far been taking in terms of bitcoin.


Surely the facts seem to be on your side, fillippone, with this claim about pretty much unipotent (or is it omnipotent?) Saylor power in terms of his company, and probably the BIGGEST loophole that could undermine Saylor's position or put him in jeopardy would not be from various ways that votes might be conjured up whether talking about shareholders, investors, workers or any other category of stakeholder, but there is just the amorphous public company category that requires full and adequate disclosures to the public, which kind of gives me the sense that Saylor goes overboard on his public disclosure practices because he realizes that lacking in public disclosures would likely be his weakest link (achilles heel) if anyone were to attempt to play gotcha with him whether it were to be a shareholder, regulator or some other stakeholder trying to undermine him.

Regarding CLASS A and CLASS B Microstrategy shares:

A lot of information can be found in the 10K Annual Report


In one paragraph you read:

This slightly differs from my computation but bear in mind that the data they are referring to is at EOY2020, while my computation reflect the most recent available data.

Well if you had read various aspects of this thread, you would have seen that $250million was the initial purchase that was made by MSTR.. and their subsequent buys of BTC add somewhere in the territory of 2.2 billion in total...   And, not just strict buys but other involvements of both MSTR and also their CEO, Michael Saylor in terms of the bitcoin space including his own personal stash of BTC that he had disclosed at some point and also his various efforts to attempt to get other corporate treasuries to follow similar strategies of accumulating BTC with their treasuries.. maybe even some of the ideas and rationale behind buying and HODLing BTC to be rubbing off upon individuals, too.

MSTR has recently disclosed that they have more than 92k BTC that were purchased at an average price of more than $24k.. so that adds up to $2.2 billion that they invested into BTC.. and at today's prices their approximate current BTC stash is now valued at somewhere in the ballpark of more than $3.5 billion.. which would be 92,000 multiplied by $38,600... which yeah, surely is no drop of water.. and it adds up to some real value stashed away in BTC... and the story of MSTR and Michael Saylor's involvement is not going away and is not merely a product of a few actions, but several creative efforts that go beyond the parameters of the initial headline of this thread.

Your lumping together of various business leaders and even not really specifying which kind of business you are talking about comes off as a bit confusing, oHnK.

Of course, this thread is mostly about MSTR and even Michael Saylor is a pretty dominant leader in that business, so surely when this thread started in August 2020, Saylor was pretty damned new to bitcoin, but he had gotten into bitcoin fairly aggressively and fairly openly with a lot of appearances on podcasts and various other seemingly bitcoin evangelizing type activities.  In the past, week or so I have not seen any announcement from him regarding further bitcoin purchases, yet I would imagine that such an announcement is pending - especially given that he had announced several purchases in the supra $50k territories in the past couple of months on about a monthly basis, if not more frequently sometimes... so surely this time around - if their cash has still been coming in or if they have any extra cashflow for the month of May or June or however they calculate their timeframes for BTC purchases, I would expect quite lower lower than $50k per BTC purchases and an ability to have acquire more BTC per dollar.. maybe in the mid to lower $30ks.. which would still end up being higher than their overall average price per BTC which is currently a bit over $24k from the latest announcement that I had seen on the topic.

Now your mentioning of CZ of Binance seems to be a bit of a different comparison, even though surely CZ and Saylor share several ideas in common in terms of generally being bullish about bitcoin, but CZ runs a kind of unique kind of exchange that both gets involved in a lot of shitcoins, and surely Saylor has so far been bitcoin only.

Your amorphous reference to other CEOs comes off as quite vague too because surely CEOs can be all over the place in terms of both the kinds of businesses they run and whether they understand and/or appreciate bitcoin as either something to involve their business in or to involve their treasuries in.

I have no problem with your statement that most businesses would likely be advantaged by having some kind of bitcoin accumulation approach, but surely even currently there do not seem to be a lot of businesses that are either taking investment into bitcoin seriously in terms of how they think about a possible role of bitcoin in their company or their treasuries nor are many businesses seeming to take actual actions to either involve themselves in bitcoin or to take it on into their treasuries - which largely shows that we are still quite early days in bitcoin that's for sure.

I look forward to seeing his next big purchase.

Microstrategy today priced and sold its new bonds. As they got a 1.6 Billion bid (4x the offering size) they decided to uptick the total size to 500 Millions:

MicroStrategy Announces Pricing of Offering of Senior Secured Notes



As it happened in the past, I doubt they will have to keep the offering open until 14th of June to fill the size.


TWo information here:

• The bitcoins will be held into a new custody company: Macrostrategy
• The proceeds of a 500 Million bond are around 488. A 2.4% cut is not negligible in fixed income during these days. I guess who the arrangers are
• These proceeds will anyway enough to buy an additional 14.500 BTC, totalling a gargantuan 100K+ account held in MSTR.
  
• As soon as my RL will allow, I will compile a list of the various debt issues from MSTR