We're sunsetting PodQuest on 2025-07-28. Thank you for your support!
Export Podcast Subscriptions
cover of episode Strategy Executive Chairman Michael Saylor Talks Jim Chanos for Calling to Short Strategy

Strategy Executive Chairman Michael Saylor Talks Jim Chanos for Calling to Short Strategy

2025/6/10
logo of podcast Bloomberg Talks

Bloomberg Talks

AI Deep Dive AI Chapters Transcript
People
M
Michael Saylor
领导微策略公司大规模投资比特币,推动公司股票表现突出。
Topics
Michael Saylor: 我认为Jim Chanos不了解我们的商业模式。我们是全球最大的比特币支持信用工具发行商,通过发行优先股筹集资金,目前有三种公开交易的优先股,不会稀释股权。我们利用价值600亿美元的比特币抵押品发行信用工具,这些工具没有到期日,没有清算风险,甚至没有利率风险。如果Jim Chanos做空我们的股票到低于净资产价值,我们将发行优先股回购股票,为股东赚钱;如果股票溢价较低,我们就卖优先股;如果股票上涨,他将被清算。我们不是控股公司或封闭式信托,而是一家运营公司,可以利用比特币发行优先股和永久股权,并获得溢价。今年前两个季度,我们公司获得了相当于84亿美元的比特币收益,我们的年度目标是150亿美元。Jim Chanos对我们公司创造的84亿美元股东价值的业务估值为零,并希望我们的股票能以净资产价值交易。如果我们能以10%的收益率发行优先股并投资于比特币(过去四年半增长了57%),我们实际上是在为普通股股东无风险地获取47%的套利收益。如果要评估公司价值,必须评估公司产生比特币收益的能力,这超过了公司实际持有的比特币价值。比特币国债公司运营的价值是我们产生的比特币收益的10、20、30或40倍。比特币收益相当于我们的盈利,比特币净资产价值是资产负债表上的资产,你应该用适当的倍数来评估整个企业的价值。我们不是与比特币国债公司竞争,而是与像PFF这样的优先股ETF或在公开市场上交易的公司债券ETF竞争。我们的竞争方式是,我们提供的工具比那些抵押更充分、更透明的工具高出400个基点的收益率。我欢迎摩根大通的竞争,我们的优势是100%比特币,所以我们发行的优先股具有比特币的性能和波动性。Strike上涨了29%,而其他优先股市场下跌了6%,Strife上涨了22%,而其他市场下跌了4.6%。除非你愿意将100%的资产负债表用于比特币,否则不可能发行比特币支持的可转换优先股和比特币支持的固定优先股。我希望他们进入比特币领域,购买大量比特币,当他们这样做时,他们将支付一百万美元的比特币,价格将上涨到月球,这对整个加密经济有利,对所有持有BTC支持的股权或信贷工具的人都有利。我们已经转向发行更多的优先股来为我们的购买提供资金,因为可转换债券市场通常是短期投资者,而我们出售的Strike是一个永久看涨期权,有效期为100年或永远。优先股对我们来说永远不会到期,所以我们没有清算风险,没有信用风险,如果你打算投资像比特币这样波动的资产并永远持有投资,这是一个更好的工具。我们已经确定了大约800亿美元的公司信贷和优先股ETF,他们中的大多数每年收取50到80个基点的费用,产生6%或7%的收益,并且具有非常异质、不透明的信用、低波动性和非常低的流动性。我们提供的优先工具具有8%到10%的票面股息收益率,流动性高出10%到100倍,交易非常活跃,信用同质,并且有6倍以上的抵押。如果你相信比特币是一种数字资产,这是一个非常有吸引力的工具。我们实际上是在与这些ETF竞争,我们为那些想在投资组合中持有这种资产的人提供具有税收效率、零费用的固定收益。

Deep Dive

Chapters
Michael Saylor refutes Jim Chanos's suggestion to short Strategy shares, highlighting the company's unique business model and the profitability of its Bitcoin investments. He emphasizes the company's ability to generate Bitcoin yield and the value of its Bitcoin holdings.
  • Strategy's Bitcoin holdings are worth over $60 billion.
  • The company generates significant Bitcoin yield.
  • Saylor views Strategy as an operating company, not a holding company.

Shownotes Transcript

Translations:
中文

This is an iHeart Podcast. Did you know that 92% of U.S. hiring decision makers expect to face challenges?

Finding qualified candidates this year? The costs of recruiting, advertising, interviewing, and onboarding can add up quickly. But Express Employment Professionals is your hiring solution. Go to expresspros.com today. Express streamlines your hiring process, saving both time and money. Whether you need contract staff or your core team member, visit expresspros.com.

Bloomberg Audio Studios. Podcasts, radio, news. Another success story in terms of the stock that just climbs and climbs and climbs is strategy. The company bought recently 1,045 more Bitcoin, bringing its total supply to 582,000.

worth more than $60 billion. Bloomberg News took a look at Strategy and its 70 separate Bitcoin purchases since Michael Saylor began to invest cash from the company's balance sheet into the token in the middle of 2020. And every purchase over the last four years plus is now a profitable purchase. Well, I'm pleased to say that joining us now is Strategy Executive Chairman Michael Saylor himself. Michael, it's great to have you with us. We have a

lot to talk about. And one of those things is a recent call from Jim Chanos, of course. He's a legendary short seller. He came out recently and said basically, buy Bitcoin short strategy shares. And just to set the scene here, I'm curious what you make of that.

You know, I don't think he understands what our business model is. We're actually the largest issuer of Bitcoin-backed credit instruments in the world. So last week, we just raised a billion dollars by selling a preferred stock, non-cumulative, called Stride.

That means we basically borrowed money that we never have to pay back, that we pay a dividend on, but we could suspend the dividend if we needed to. So Jim has been thinking that we somehow needed to sell the equity. We now are in a situation where we have strike, stride, and strife, three publicly floating preferred stocks.

Stocks that are not diluted to the equity and they all meet a different market requirement right that hundred and ten million dollars of Bitcoin We bought last week that was acquired without issuing any common stock. So what's going on here is that we're using our sixty billion dollars of Bitcoin collateral to issue credit instruments and

They never come due. There's no liquidation risk. There's not even an interest rate risk, right? It's a non-cumulative preferred, and we could suspend the dividends. So at the end of the day, if he's lucky enough to short the stock below one times NAV, we're going to issue the preferreds, buy back the stock, and make money for our shareholders. If the stock trades at a weak premium, we're just going to sell the preferreds,

And if the stock rallies up, he's going to get liquidated and wiped out. Well, let's talk about that premium because that is the heart of his short call on strategy, as you point out here. So he said recently on a podcast that shareholders are paying around $1.

$220,000 for Bitcoin that trades at $110,000. But the company is doing everything it can to close that spread, which is great. There's a catalyst. So he's referring to the fact that you are selling your own shares and buying Bitcoin. But when it comes to the premium that strategy shares enjoy over the price of Bitcoin itself, do you think that that's sustainable? The fact that, like he points out, that basically Bitcoin

So the value of your company is trading at twice that of Bitcoin itself.

What he still doesn't understand is we're not a holding company or a closed-end trust. We're an operating company. So when we issue – trust can't leverage the Bitcoin. They can't issue preferred shares. They can't issue permanent shares of equity at a premium. We can. Our companies generated a BTC dollar gain equal to about $8.4 billion today.

in the first two quarters of this year. That's the equivalent of earnings for a Bitcoin treasury company. Our target for the year is $15 billion. And so he's valuing the business that's generating $8.4 billion of shareholder value at zero.

And he's hoping that somehow the equity will trade to NAV. But what he's not paying attention to is if we can issue preferred shares that yield 10% and invest it in Bitcoin, which has been going up 57% for the past four and a half years.

we're capturing the 47% arbitrage effectively risk-free for our common stock shareholders. And if you want to value the company, you have to value the company's ability to generate Bitcoin yield or Bitcoin gains over and above the actual holdings of the Bitcoin the company has.

As you said, you have about $60 billion, $63, $64 billion worth of Bitcoin. Your company is worth about twice that at $106, $107 billion in market cap. And you also have, obviously, an enterprise analytics software business. How do you break down the value of the rest of your company, ex-Bitcoin holdings?

If the company generates $10 billion of Bitcoin gains this year, you got to put a 10 or a 20 multiple on it, right? So the Bitcoin treasury company operation is worth a multiple of 10, 20, 30 or 40 times the BTC yield we're generating.

That's the number one source of value for the operating business. And then the company also has $60 billion plus worth of Bitcoin. And I would say to investors, look at it that way. A BTC dollar gain is like our earnings equivalent.

And then the Bitcoin NAV is the assets on the balance sheet. And you should just look at the earnings equivalent and put the multiple that you think is appropriate on it to come to an opinion about the value of the entire enterprise. Michael, nobody has to explain the rapid rise in Bitcoin to me. I started buying Bitcoins at $800. I bought one as low as $600, but I spent them, unfortunately.

How do you expect the asset to continue a price increase at these levels that we've seen? I mean, can it keep that up over the next five years, over the next 10 years? And at what point do we see winter coming again? Because that's been a...

a permanent fixture of this asset class, right? It's gone from zero or a thousand to 20 and then back down to three or four and then up to 50 and then back down to 15 and now up to 110. Like when does it drop again? - Winter's not coming back. We're past that phase. If Bitcoin's not going to zero, it's going to a million dollars.

And you have all the evidence you need to determine that, right? The President of the United States has determined he supports Bitcoin. The Cabinet supports Bitcoin. Scott Pesant supports Bitcoin. Paul Atkins has shown himself to be an enthusiastic believer of Bitcoin and digital assets. Kintez at CFTC feels the same way. The banks are going to custody Bitcoin.

Bitcoin has gotten through its riskiest period. The accounting has been corrected. There's now only 450 Bitcoin a day available for sale by natural sellers, that's the miners.

At this level, that works out to about $50 million of Bitcoin available for sale every day. If that $50 million is bought, then the price has got to move up to find any seller that's price sensitive. Now, if you do the math, you'll actually see the Bitcoin treasury companies by themselves are buying the entire natural supply. BlackRock and the ETFs are buying another measure of that.

and we've got nation-state actors coming into the space. So I think when Bitcoin rallies, if it surges to $500,000 or $1 million, then maybe we could talk about it crashing down by $200,000 a coin. But at the current price levels, it only takes $50 million to turn the entire driveshaft of the crypto economy one turn.

And you've got the Trump media organization announcing $2.5 billion. You've got GameStop announcing $500 million. You've got my company that's raising billions and billions of dollars. So the writing is on the wall. Bitcoin's moving higher. Okay, so there's a few things to dig into there. One, in your words, Bitcoin winter is not coming back again.

I'm rereading Game of Thrones right now, so that statement gives me the shivers. But I did want to go to the competitive landscape, if you can phrase it that way. And you went there naturally. You think about the ETF suites out there. iBit, for example, already up to $72 billion in assets. There's a lot of Bitcoin treasury companies that have come to the scene, as you mentioned. 21 Capital comes to mind, started by Jack Mallers. And they all have the intention of just accumulating

Bitcoin. That would be good for the price, Michael, as you say, but do you worry about the competition out there to buy Bitcoin? It's going to become more and more expensive and everyone's competing for a shrinking pie, if you will.

I think we're in a digital gold rush and you've got 10 years to acquire all your Bitcoin before there's no Bitcoin left for you. The competition is a virtuous competition. Metaplan is the hottest company in Japan right now. They went from 10 million to a billion dollar market cap to a five billion dollar market cap.

They're going to raise billions of dollars. They're going to pull the liquidity out of the Japanese market. So they'll be raising capital in Tokyo and the Tokyo Stock Exchange. Obviously, none of the rest of us are trading or selling equity in the Tokyo Stock Exchange. So it's not competitive. It's cooperative.

There are companies coming public in Brazil right now like Orange BTC that will come public in some time frame and Melius. They're actually supporting equity capital markets in Brazil.

You know, the game stops. They already had $6 billion of capital. And so for them to start to take some of that capital and funnel into Bitcoin, it's good for all of us. Nakamoto and 21, they'll bring their own particular twist.

Our company has a very particular business model. It's to issue Bitcoin-backed credit instruments, like Bitcoin-backed bonds and especially Bitcoin-backed preferred stocks. We're the only company in the world that's ever been able to issue a preferred stock backed by Bitcoin. We've done three of them in the past five months.

We're not competing against the Bitcoin treasury companies. We're competing against ETFs like PFF that have portfolios of preferred stocks or corporate bond portfolios that are trading as ETFs in the public market. And the way we compete is we offer 400 basis points more yield on an instrument that is much more heavily collateralized and more transparent than

And we're not going to saturate that market anytime soon. That's $100 trillion or more of capital in those markets. It sounds like, you know, when you talk about what you're doing

in terms of financial engineering, in terms of financial markets with Bitcoin. Clearly, it's, I mean, you're doing a lot more than just holding the Bitcoin. So it's, I think, unfair to compare you to an ETF. But it sounds like you may be inviting competition from JP Morgan, for example, which then makes me wonder, when does this asset start to convince

The naysayers, Jamie Dimon has famously said, it's worthless. Warren Buffett has called it probably rat poison squared. When does it win those people over?

People called electricity worthless and aircraft worthless too when they didn't understand them. So I welcome the competition from JP Morgan. I hope they enter the space. Our advantage is that we're 100% Bitcoin. So whenever we create a preferred stock, it has the Bitcoin performance and it has a measure of Bitcoin performance and a fraction of Bitcoin volatility.

That allows us to issue the most liquid preferred stocks in the world at the highest performance. Strike was up 29% when the rest of the market of preferreds was down 6%. Strife was up 22% when the rest of the market was down 4.6%.

It's impossible to issue Bitcoin-backed convertible preferreds and Bitcoin-backed fixed preferreds unless you're willing to make 100% of your balance sheet Bitcoin. So I'm not really worried about competition from JP Morgan or Berkshire Hathaway.

I would love for them to enter the Bitcoin space, buy up a bunch of Bitcoin. When they do it, they'll be paying a million dollars of Bitcoin. The price will go to the moon. That will be good for the entire crypto economy and beneficial to everyone that holds any BTC-backed equity or credit-based instrument.

Well, I'm still thinking about you saying that you view yourself in competition not with the Bitcoin treasury companies, but with some of the ETFs that hold preferred shares, that that is the strategy that they're tracking. And when it comes to your own financing and the fact that you have been pivoting to issued more preferred stocks to fund your purchases, why is that? Why go towards preferreds rather than convertible bonds? Is it just a question of demand or is there something else to it?

The convertible bond market normally is a short-duration investor. They want to hold the bond three or four years, and the calls that are embedded in the bonds are capped calls, capped at 130% of the strike, sorry, of the conversion price. And so that's a short-duration call investor and a short-duration credit investor.

What we sold with Strike, STRK, was a perpetual call option, good for 100 years.

or forever. And then we sold a perpetual dividend you could hold for 100 years and give to your grandkids. So long-duration credit, long-duration call, and that preferred never comes due for us. So we don't have liquidation risk. We don't have credit risk. So it's a much better instrument if you intend to invest in a volatile asset like Bitcoin and hold the investment forever. Now, the other point I'll make, Katie, is...

If you think about what we're competing against, there's like $80 billion worth of corporate credit and preferred equity-based ETFs that we identified. Most of them charge a fee of 50 to 80 basis points a year. Most of them generate a yield of 6 or 7 percent. And most of them have very heterogeneous, opaque credit, low volatility, and very low liquidity.

We're offering preferred instruments that have 8% to 10% dividend yields at par, 10% to 100x higher liquidity. They trade really, really hard, very, very liquid. And they're homogeneous credit, and they're 6x over collateralized. So it's a very compelling instrument if you believe in Bitcoin as a digital asset.

So just to finish the thought here, and I'm looking at Invesco's preferred ETF, the ticker there is PGX. That charges an expense ratio of 51 basis points. It has about $4 billion in assets. When you say that you're in competition with funds such as this one, are you referring to the fact that you're competing for assets?

investor attention with these ETFs. I just want to make sure I'm understanding your point. Yeah, what I'm saying is you go buy that and maybe you get 7% yield effectively and you pay the 50 basis points. And some of that is QDI eligible and some of that is taxable.

When you buy one of our preferreds, like Stride is yielding like 11% plus right now, and Strife is yielding 9%, 9.5%. You buy that, it's all QDI eligible. It's trading 10 to 50 times more liquid on a dollar-for-dollar basis. It's very homogeneous credit, and you get an extra 400 basis points of credit.

of yield, better tax treatment, etc. So we're actually competing against that. We're offering tax-efficient, zero-fee, fixed income yield to someone that wants to hold that in their portfolio.

Michael, at least in the top five, the most important characteristics of Bitcoin is its security, right? I mean, scarcity has to be one near the top, and the ledger obviously was a genius move by Satoshi, but it seems to be uncrackable. And I'm wondering if that will hold true far into the future with the development of quantum computing. Do you worry about that? I don't worry about it.

And I make the point, you know, Microsoft and Google market their quantum projects, but they would never sell a quantum computer that cracked cryptography because it would destroy their own companies. And there isn't a practical use case for those quantum projects they've been marketing.

I think at some point, a decade out, maybe 10, 20 years, maybe whenever, there'll be a powerful computer. It may start to threaten modern cryptography. When it does it, it'll be a threat to Microsoft, Google, J.P. Morgan, the U.S. government. It may be a threat to Bitcoin. When it is a threat...

All of these organizations are going to upgrade their crypto protocols to be quantum resistant. You'll see it coming a mile away. And every other digital entity in the world is more vulnerable to that idea or that threat than Bitcoin. And so they're all going to upgrade. And we'll be talking about it while you're reviewing Microsoft stock or Apple stock exposure.

I only, I don't want to go too deep into this, Michael, because it's only a half hour program, but I feel like AI could, you know, everyone's worried that AI may turn on us and this could be a way in which AI has real power. Is that not the kind of thing that keeps you up at night?

I'll make a point here. The typical person might do 10,000 transactions in their lifetime, maybe 100,000 if they're very busy. The AIs are going to do 100,000 transactions a minute. They're not going to suffer the existing credit systems and the existing banking systems of the 20th century. They're going to want to move digital money at high frequency at the speed of light

That means digital assets like Bitcoin over the Lightning Network or via Layer 3 protocols. The demand for digital capital, which is what Bitcoin is, and digital networks like Lightning and like all of the crypto protocols that are being worked on right now, it's going to go through the roof. So I think AI is really a demand driver for Bitcoin. It's going to accelerate the entire digital assets economy. And no, I'm not...

I'm not worried about the threat. The AIs can't crack, you know, public-private key cryptography. What they can do is imitate you and talk you into doing something stupid if you're listening to them. And so they're a threat to all the other systems in the world, not to Bitcoin.

All right, Michael, we got to leave it there. It's always great to speak with you. Appreciate the time. That is Strategy co-founder and executive chairman, Michael Saylor. The data that matters for your investments. The entire auto sector is higher today. And analysis on the companies making news on Wall Street. Tesla's been a stock that's been in focus. Shares have really been all over the map this morning. Listen to the Stock Movers Report from Bloomberg. Let's talk.

This is an iHeart Podcast.