Michael Saylor: Bitcoin is the Best Property in the World

up only

hello and welcome to up only tv i'm

ledger we got kobe and the king of all

sat stackers michael saylor on the show

today we're excited for everybody to be

here first let me tell you about our

partners at ftx go to uponly dot tv

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even buy coins we'll ask sailor

about that uh thanks for being here

thanks ftx

let's get to the episode

cubby how you doing

i am nervous mate it's giga chad himself

is

sleepless yeah

like we're called up only but he is the

true up only poster boy saylor how you

doing

awesome thanks for having me

you know you're the most popular

podcaster that's invited me on my

notifications went nuts when you started

posting

and i i thought you know i said okay

yeah maybe we'll do this podcast and all

of a sudden i see like 25 blue checks

like the thing and i thought who is this

kobe dude

it must be the og podcaster because i've

never seen anybody so popular in my

notifications yeah we only started doing

it a year ago and honestly we don't

really talk much about markets or crypto

or bitcoin we just get drunk

yeah let the guests watch over us but um

yeah thanks for thanks for coming on um

i think he is probably been the most

anticipated episode when you replied it

got instantly like 10 000 retweets or

something um and i think a big part of

it is our audience or the people that

watch are um

they're into

crypto

like often late cycle um and their uh

role in crypto is a little bit more

similar to gambling than it is to

like super long

time horizon kind of it goes up forever

um they're making money to their trading

whatever not just bitcoin they're

trading like whatever dog coin or uh

sonic coin um in order to make a bit of

money so um you coming on as the there

is no second best bitcoin only um i

think is uh super interesting um to them

um

i'd love to ask

on your bitcoin journey from you know uh

day one hearing about it to you know

where you are now and what uh what sort

of changed throughout that time and um

yeah your realizations can we can we

start in a particular place with that

because this is the first tweet that i

know of with uh

with you about bitcoin and it was uh

skeptical uh

so like that was 2013 but then you know

obviously now you're you're one of the

biggest advocates out there and you know

i think a lot of us go through that

skeptical to believer journey but we

definitely won't hear it

yeah um

i think if you roll the clock back

to the beginning of the decade

and i i fancied myself a twitter

commentator i would watch things in the

tech space and you know how they're like

these twitter people and they post

things and they get three likes

and they think that someone's noticing

okay so i was posting and i might get

like 12 likes or eight likes and

probably like half the people work for

me that liked it and i had opinions

about

all sorts of stuff you know i

i was um a big tech enthusiast i wrote a

book called the mobile wave published it

in 2012 and

and uh you know and i was fascinated

with the idea of what happens when

software is dematerialized

and starts running on a mobile device

and

if you're sleeping with your software

and it can wake you up you know what how

would that create a business opportunity

you know

and the mobile wave winners were like

facebook and amazon and apple and google

what can you do with a mobile phone

you're not going to book a hotel

reservation on a pc

you know but when you've got a mobile

phone and you're out on a saturday

afternoon then maybe you could actually

do something commercial or communicative

or you know et cetera

um

so

i i tweet this and that uh i'll say two

things one

i didn't even remember i tweeted this

thing

uh when i actually announced we bought

bitcoin in in 2020. all the bitcoiners

they scoured everything i'd said in the

history of the world and then bring this

up i'll make did i say that wow

i noticed bitcoin once i literally had

forgotten i'd ever said it right but you

know you gotta give him credit that uh

the internet never forgets

but what i was thinking when i did tweet

that was

you know i watched uh i'd watched all

these online poker sites

and you know it was a great idea and

remember tradesports.com

when you could bet there used to be this

prediction markets i mean there still

are today i think uh

i think there's a love-hate relationship

people would like to vote on who's going

to win the super bowl and well you know

which politician will win this

and they'll get it started and then the

regulators will shut them down and um

so trade sports was like an online

gambling site and then they had online

poker sites and they were really big

what happened by the way is

i think like the indian casinos got

together gave a lot of money to the

southern baptist ministry that gave a

lot of money to jack abramoff which and

he went to lobby a bunch of politicians

in dc

to convince them that gambling is an

abomination in the eyes of god and the

remedy was of course to outlaw the

online

poker sites and allow the gambling and

the indian reservations in vegas to

continue but they

they basically

uh

pulled uh they stopped uh banks from

allowing you to wire money into trade

sports and online gambling sites and

first they did that and then they

actually pulled the ceos of those

companies off their flights while

passing through dulles airport and

arrested them and that shut that

business down so

so much you know we all we all like to

play poker it was kind of fun and bet on

who's going to win the next election or

whether it's going to rain on groundhog

day it seemed fun but it became

non-compliant and it just went away

so

at some point i probably read some

random thing about

bitcoin and you know it was being used

for silk road or use for whatever

and i said well it looks like it's gonna

go the way of online gambling some some

regulator will probably shut it down and

and uh i

it probably got like four likes

you know and okay here's oblivious

when you tweet something and nobody

notices

and you don't notice that nobody noticed

right

there's a lot of twitter influencers

like that even today people tweet some

random thing and like they don't notice

that nobody noticed or cared

out here

you know so i did that for a long time

and that was one of my tweets bottom

line with bitcoin is i didn't need it

i did i didn't need it it wasn't a

problem i was very i had a solution my

solution to every world problem was oh

mobile you know

amazon apple music apple photos mobile

apps amazon

apple is going to ship a a billion a

product to a billion people overnight

for a nickel and change the world and

you ought to buy apple stock

and i mean that's my solution buy apple

stock buy amazon stock buy whatever and

it works fine and that's the mainstream

the mainstream big tech or the

mainstream investor if they were

successful in that decade from 2000 to

2020

they entered in the big tech trade like

90 of the gains in the s p were making

like five companies

and if you you know and by the way the

the the tech rev the revolutionary

the revolutionary was going on a wall

street and saying you should buy amazon

or going to wall street and say you

should buy apple

you know and the mainstream investors

would say

well you know if apple stock doubles we

should just sell it and rebalance and

we'll buy a bunch of other computer

companies so you don't have too much

risk

and they're like well if amazon stock

doubles we should just sell it and buy

some other retailers you know toys r us

whatever something not too much risk

okay and and my you know

my view at that time and it's still my

view today is like

the problem with the the problem with

diversification

diversification is

selling the winner to buy the losers

one company in the retail space amazon

wins

the second company walmart

kind of treads water

and fifteen thousand companies lose

they all lose

and with apple

one company wins

they get a hundred and fifty percent of

the profit in the industry

every other company loses half as much

as apple makes or a third as much as

apple makes something to compete

and there are no winners

there there was just one winner there

was apple and the reason you don't want

to sell the winner to buy the losers or

the reason you don't want to diversify

or portfolio balance is

because the success of the one thing

eliminates the need for all the other

things

and

when that one thing is a digital network

and it's a digital monopoly

when the one thing is a youtube or the

one thing is an apple or an ios or

whatever

the problem is they can ship a piece of

software that's crappy

like apple tv

apple apple music they can ship anything

that's mediocre average but they can

ship it to 300 million people with a

marketing cost of a dollar and they

could ship it to a billion people over

the weekend for the cost of the

electricity like a nickel

and everybody else

has to you know like peloton's got to

manufacture a bunch of treadmills and

put them in inventory and you know they

got to deal with real world issues it's

nearly impossible to beat the digital

monopolies so

anyway that my my view was find a

digital monopoly and ride the wave the

mobile wave was digital transformation

of music and maps and relationships and

communications and entertainment and

video and television and books

and you know each of those companies

made about a trillion dollars doing that

you know fine

i didn't really see bitcoin as a

solution to my problem if i if i had all

my assets in argentina all of them

if i if i was a rancher in

zimbabwe

if i was a business person in syria or

lebanon or whatever i would have been

more sensitive because when more than 50

percent of your net worth

is at risk if i tell you you're about to

lose half of everything or all of

everything in the next 12 months or you

watch it happen

all of a sudden you get religion

um i i had just

i had my feathers singed i had a taste

of it i lost a million dollars in a bank

in brazil when the head of the bank just

stole the money

i never got it back

so i saw that counterparty risk rug poll

but it was a conventional

and then i i lost a million dollars in

argentina

you know when the argentine peso was one

peso to the dollar

i i literally remember when that when

the peso was one peso to the dollar

right if you if you google blue dollar

right now you'll find it's like 210

pesos to the dollar or something

but i remember when i was one and i

thought no way am i trusting the peso

with my money i had like a big company

that was selling business intelligence

software in argentina so i had about a

million dollars and i said well i don't

trust argentine argentine banks

get me an american bank you go oh oh my

ouch painful

it was 209 a week ago i swear to your

ledger and now it's 221.

look at the official rate

110. so they're not even recognizing the

actual rate

the cut the government will you know

they're like that we think it's 110 but

you have to come up with uh 221 for a

dollar if you want to actually get the

dollar

right they officially say you can put

110 pesos up for a dollar but they don't

have any dollars to sell you it's

capital control right

anyway uh but coming back to that

so i have a million dollars i say to my

finance people i say i don't trust an

argentine bank they're like no problem

we're going to put it in bank of america

oh bank of america i feel better about

that bank of america where in argentina

okay but it's the bank of american

branch in argentina and i don't trust

the peso like okay no problem we'll save

it in the dollar

okay i said well can i get out of the

country no

capital control we got to keep it there

like sure okay no

so i go to sleep and i wake the next

week it's like the finest people coming

in my office are like well you know we

got some bad news and some worse news

what's the bad news well the bad news is

the government converted all of our uh

all of our pesos uh all of our dollars

to pesos

and the worst news is the pace is

devalued ten to one

it's like so what do i have now like

well you have a you have a hundred

thousand pesos or something like that i

like i yeah you know you have a million

pesos worth a hundred thousand dollars i

said well can i get it out of the

country now they're like no it's gonna

keep

depleting that's crazy so so i had a

little inkling of of this issue but at

the end of the day 95 98 of our assets

were in the western world and and it was

just like a flesh wound

so um you know incidentally by about

2017

if you pull up that chart again can you

pull up the blue dollar chart put it on

the screen and you know you'll find

there's a little thing that shows the

the rate for like the last five years

pull the uh look at the uh informal rate

and pull up the chart there's a chart

there

yeah

okay you you want to uh go to that chart

in 2017

can you read uh what the no you you had

it on you had it on there i think

just uh

can you can you see 36 months ago

just put your cursor over it okay

okay you're showing the 20 years like

it's pretty brutal right yeah but what's

what's the rate around 2017 it was about

uh 20

okay yeah 20.

20 pesos to the dollar

and i'm looking at i'm reading the press

i'm like i know i'm going to lose all my

money in argentina again i know it's

going to happen i said

it's 20 pace of the dollar inflation

rates 30 40 percent a year i said can we

get the money out of argentina

they go well no

i said uh can we just go buy like two

million dollars of gold

like and they're like and carry it to

the airport it's like we'll get arrested

no

okay now i can't do that i said well can

we buy any can we buy like a ranch or

something in argentina at least buy

something tangible like well we can't we

don't own a ranch i said

can you guys just go buy a yacht in

argentina

and i want you to buy the yacht and i

want you to float it to the caribbean

and then we'll sell it or we'll keep the

you know the and the the finance people

and the lawyers came in my office to

stage an intervention

they're like they're trying you know how

when you have like your boss's boss

you're a very powerful person and you

want to tell them that no they can't do

something but you're afraid that they're

going to send you so you come in with

three other people as backup

yeah so there's like four people in my

office and i'm like okay i get it this

is like they're about to give me some

really bad news

they're going to tell me that i just

can't do it like i don't think there's

anything illegal about buying a yacht in

argentina if you're a company i didn't

think it was illegal i mean what's

illegal about buying a boat yeah but uh

i guess they're concerned about a

boating accident

but um

but you know so i i couldn't do that and

eventually i gave up and

yeah our solution was some roundabout

way we bought some sovereign debt from

the argentine government that where

there's a law makes it illegal legal to

buy the sovereign debt you take a 20

haircut and by the time you pay 20 or 30

fees

you know you've lost like 30 of your

money but maybe you got some of the

money out of the country

and it's all kind of compliant but

that's my experience with that currency

if you fast forward to 2020

you know when i discovered bitcoin again

i had a problem and at that point the

problem was half the market cap of the

company was in dollars

i had a billion dollar market cap i had

500 million cash the interest rate had

gone to zero was going to stay at zero

for four years

and uh

the wall street wall street had

recovered with a k-shape recovery and i

was staring at cash with a zero percent

yield in the s p up 25

which means that i'm basically losing 25

of the purchasing power of the money

and

i either have to just give back the 500

million dollars

i mean basically it's kind of like

amputating your left arm and your left

leg and attempting to run the race it's

like you're an athlete but we need to

you to like give up you know either two

of your legs or an arm and a leg and

then you can hop

in the race

it's either that or i better find out i

better find something to invest the cash

in

that's going to go up faster than the

money supply expands

and hence yeah we're back to can i buy a

boat with it it's like

i can't buy a boat so can i buy should i

buy gold should i buy land can i buy a

building can i buy a portfolio of real

estate can i should i buy baseball cards

what can i buy

that's actually going to go up in value

more than 20 a year

and you know to make a long story short

we shifted through everything we thought

crypto gold was a good idea we shifted

through all the cryptos we thought

bitcoin was the crypto gold

and we started on this journey and

there's a long story about how we

finally got into our position we are

today where we got like five billion

dollars worth of it

we started

to make a very short story we we started

deciding we'll buy 250 million dollars

of the bitcoin and will give 250 million

dollars back to the shareholders in a

buyback

the idea being that the shareholder

assault were sparked stark raving crazy

and they wanted to get off the crazy

train they can sell their stock back at

a at a premium

and that's what helps you to avoid

getting sued

right because if i just did it and the

stock traded down

then i immediately get a whole rash of

shareholder lawsuits

you know alleging that i shouldn't have

done it

but if we announced the the initiative

along with the buyback well the stock's

going to trade up because we're going to

buy back the stock and that way it does

a bunch of things it's kind of

prophylactic

from a shareholder relation point of

view it also rotates your shareholder

base

and it also de-stresses the transition

because instead of have if i put out a

new if i got put on a news release at

nine o'clock in the morning where we

just bought 500 million dollars of

bitcoin

every investor has 27 minutes to

research bitcoin

and they decide whether they like that

or not now how many people can figure

out whether or not they want to own 20

million worth of bitcoin in 27 minutes

on a monday morning right they go

ballistic nuts

so you don't really want to surprise

anybody one of the rules of running a

publicly traded company a simple rule is

no surprises

be transparent be very predictable

you know tell them what you're thinking

about tell them you're thinking about

tell them how you're thinking about it

tell them how you thought it you know

and make sure that it is

utterly boring

so

you do a tender offer it's 20 days

everybody's got 20 days to study it and

at the end of the 20 days they can

either tend to their shares at a premium

or they can stay

on board you know for the ride and they

can um and they can be investors in the

company so that's kind of how we got

into it and

i didn't really tweet much about bitcoin

when we made the first announcement

because we're in the middle of a dutch

auction and every investor has to decide

whether they want to

buy or sell the stock or hold right

and it's a security

and if you're if you're a public company

officer of a security if i do jury

duties and it's like if i made it look

like i wanted them to sell into the

tender that's bad if i made it look like

i wanted them to not do it it's bad if

you know i was like i i just don't want

to condition the market everybody's got

to make their own decision

so we really didn't start to communicate

until

later

like after the tender offer expired then

i started seeing some of these tweets

where i had

you know said the bitcoin was going to

zero and i'm like oh crap

like

all of a sudden there's like twitter has

come to life if you had this experience

for a decade where you tweet every

single day for a decade and four people

notice and you kind of it makes you a

little bit what is the word comfortable

like

like maybe you think you think no one's

noticing so you could be a little bit

more loose

and then at some point people are

noticing and you're like you get the

math wrong and if you multiply by two

numbers and you got you're wrong in the

third significant digit you get

excoriated

they've got receipts on the internet i

posted i posted one tweet you know and i

you know i

i posted a tweet by gandhi and i spelled

his name wrong you know i put the gh

instead of a g-a-n-d or whatever i had

the h in the wrong place

and i tweeted it and then within like 17

seconds there's like four people that

have like lambasted me for spelling

gandhi's name wrong and i'm like oh crap

i have to fix this or i'm not going to

feel the end of it for the you know next

many days and so i'm like delete

create

google gandhi

copy paste it you know now you gotta

like you gotta google everything before

you tweet it for the spell checker to

check it and lord help you if you didn't

have the apostrophe where you should

have had the apostrophe there's somebody

who's going to like rip you to shreds

but i guess that's why we love them

ollie so when did i like i like the idea

that someone saw a tweet

about like

gandhi talking about bitcoin and they

focused on the spelling of his name

he didn't say that i was like he spelled

his name wrong though

a lot of times people were like gandhi

did not endorse bitcoin

dude

obviously everyone knows that you're

like incredibly bullish on bitcoin

hardest money biggest network effects

all those things bitcoin is energy and

we're all cyber hornets and what i can't

remember all the memes um

what i would like to know is when did

owning bitcoin under a corporate

umbrella change from i want to maintain

the buying power of the cash that we

manage within our company to

we're going to buy absolutely all the

bitcoin we possibly can

with you know cash debt instruments

whatever the hell is out there like if

we can get our hands on bitcoin we want

our hands on bitcoin like when did that

conversion occur

yeah that's an interesting uh story in

in the second quarter of 2020

the k-shape recovery hit and what i said

was

if you're on main street this is the

worst year of your life in 30 years

there's nothing worse than this if

you're manufacturing products with

people and providing goods and services

in the real world

but if you but the k-shape recovery

meant that if you're on wall street you

had a 30 gain in your portfolio and and

the average s p index was up 10 a year

for 100 years

and is up 30 percent in one year

so

wall street had the best year of their

life

main street had the worst year of their

i'm sitting in the in the middle i'm

saying i got a massive problem i'm

obviously i'm missing something we can't

keep

we can't keep going where it's like

we're rowing six miles an hour against a

30 knot wind

this is not going to work

so

the first bitcoin buy that we announced

in august

that was defensive that was i either

have to do this

or i get stripped of all my capital and

if i lose my financial capital my stocks

trading not at 120 bucks it'll be

trading at 60 bucks a share if it's

trading at 60 bucks a share the stock

options are underwater the rsus are

underwater

microsoft and amazon and google and

apple target all my employees

you know my top line's shrinking my

turnover is going to double right we're

kind of we're headed toward a death

spiral if we give the capital back if we

hold the capital it's dead money on the

balance sheet losing 20 percent so i'm

gonna lose a hundred million dollars in

in shareholder value and make 50 or 75

million a year so i'll work for the next

decade but make no progress just

i'm just rowing against the wind that's

blowing harder than i can grow so

i figured uh

better to take a risk than have a than

suffer either a fast death

giving up the capital is kind of a

speedy death keeping the capital is a

slow death

do something take a risk is a chance at

life

so

so i figured better to take a risk it's

defensive and the first purchase in

august was 250 million

you know and i i thought you know

wouldn't it be great if we get 50 a

share in bitcoin but i but our first buy

was about 25 a share in bitcoin about 10

million shares outstanding

and then the dutch auction well i didn't

know what would happen i mean for all i

know if the shareholders hated bitcoin

we would have got hit with 250 million

dollars of redemptions

and then that's all we would have but as

it turns out the dutch auction resulted

in 60 million dollars in redemptions and

175 million in free capital

so at that point you know

we meet as a board and we think well

we've got extra capital we've already

come halfway we might as well adopt this

as the primary reserve asset

and so we did that

then we bought 175 million more bitcoin

it wasn't easy because we bought that

first tranche bitcoin was trading like

11

600

yeah and that 20 days it traded down to

10 000 okay so so

and and that first 20 days i'm getting

beat on pretty hard you know you you're

more on you've lost 40 million dollars

or something

people kind of make fun of me today on

twitter like michael said i lost all

this money they're like it's not my

first time you know

[Laughter]

you know take a ticket stand in line

this is like not the first time a trade

has gone against me

so

so the the actual courageous decision

i think was the second decision because

the second time around we were putting

175 million dollars in and i think that

purchase was like 10

400 a coin

so we were actually doubling down

after the market moved 10 against us

but you know it is what it is

and so

that's stage one defensive and uh what

happened next is the stock traded up

and then all of a sudden the stock

traded up to the 10-year high

and so for 10 years we've never gotten

above 200 a share and went to 200s and

we went to the 300s

and um

at that point

you know we're

we're generating cash we bought bitcoin

with some cash

you know some of the employees were

exercising some stock options we

generated cash from stock option issues

we bought some bitcoin with that

and um and you know the equity markets

were pretty strong the convertible

market was strong and we thought

well maybe we can actually raise money

in a convertible debt offering

and uh

so we came out we offered uh we offered

a 400 million dollar debt offering well

you know the stocks trading in like 300

or something you know

we couldn't have raised 400 million

dollars

at that level at any other time in 10

years so we thought we'll offer that

bitcoin traded up a lot and our stock

was up and we had an opportunity so we

upsized the deal

we priced it at the low end of the range

we were able to basically make the deal

a 650 million dollar deal at 75 basis

points like three quarters of one

percent interest

and uh it was a 37 percent premium which

was the high end of the range which

meant that in essence the strike was 398

dollars a share

now keep in mind that a few weeks

earlier our stock was trading ninety

and when we announced this strategy our

stock was 120 a share

so

we're in essence we're raising money at

not quite four times but almost four

times that price

and at that point i call that

opportunistic

it's like why did you raise the 650

million dollars at less than one percent

interest

well because like why wouldn't you

why yeah why wouldn't you like if

someone wanted to give you a 650 million

dollar loan to invest in anything you

wanted to invested in

for less than one percent interest would

you take the money

yes

yeah okay so

we're opportunistic at that point you

know and like

i think i think in that in the offering

you know they said well are you going to

buy bitcoin with it i said yeah i'm

going to buy bitcoin with it like and so

we went back and forth over well is it

for general corporate purposes

or to or to buy bitcoin and we

eventually said something like we're

going to buy bitcoin with it and then

hold it for general corporate purposes

if we want in the future

so we're at the stage where an

enterprise software company you know in

our and our market cap is up and we've

got this interesting treasury reserve

strategy

and and it went from a treasury

investment to a treasury reserve

to an opportunistic capital raise

then what happened next is by the time

we got to like february

you know bitcoin caught fire you

remember what happened like it went to

all-time high so we bought 650 million

dollars of bitcoin around 19 000 or 20

000 i don't remember exactly but

people said you're crazy you're buying

at the all-time high

okay let me just say for the record guys

i'm going to be buying at the all-time

high forever

like

you know if the company's in business 30

years then every year for the next 30

years there's going to be a point at

which i'll be buying an all-time high

you know

the haters are like they're like blah

blah blah you bought some at 57 or 49 or

whatever they always conveniently forget

that i also bought 175 million worth of

it below 10 000.

like they leave that part out right they

always remember the other part

um but you know every year forever if

you just focus upon the last six months

you're going to be able to find someone

buying something all-time high so

we bought this at the all-time high

no i was like what was the all-time high

to date i mean

at some point the world changes i have i

have views of you know the future and

the future includes things that have not

yet occurred

and the future includes things that

didn't happen in the past

and so

right uh the all-time high is just the

all-time high to date

so we bought

and this and bitcoin just kept trading

up you know we probably bought a bunch

at 19 000. you remember was 25 000 by

christmas it was 30 000 by new year's

day and then it went on this

run

that convertible bond that we sold

that was the best performing bond of the

year of every bond sold by any company

in the world

okay the the people that bought that

bond like

triple their money or sorry like it

traded up it tripled right they doubled

their they got a 200 return in like six

weeks so it was a it was a screaming

home run

so um

you know because the strike was 3.98 our

stock ended up going to a thousand

bitcoin would scream and like you know

you could go do the math but

so

at that point we had a chance to go back

to the market and we thought well maybe

we could do it again

okay our stock had a thousand dollars a

share so

we went back we did a convert we started

this time at 600 million and we upsized

it to 900

million or something and we exercised a

green shoe in a 1 billion 50 million

dollar capital raise

and uh the range of coupon was zero to

50 basis points so we priced it at zero

zero interest

and the rate of the premium was 37 to 50

and 37 to 47 or something and so we were

at the high end of the range so the

shorts the short story there is

so we essence we raise a billion fifty

million dollars with a strike price of

fourteen hundred thirty two dollars a

share now you remember what my bottom

was like 90 a share you remember what my

tender price was it was 140 a share

in september people were giving the

stock back to us at 140 a share because

they thought we were crazy

[Laughter]

and we turned around we sold a billion

dollars at fourteen hundred thirty two

dollars a share now why because why

wouldn't you

again mike

why if someone said okay what business

are you in blah blah blah well would you

like a billion dollars for the next six

years for free to invest in that

business

well yeah

i mean

so at that point i i don't know if it

was before or after but in the february

time frame

we had to file our 10k a public company

files an annual report and an annual

report it's audited and it's pretty

serious document it's probably the

single most serious document you file

every year is the 10k and in the 10k we

had to address this issue is this

a treasury strategy

is it opportunistic is it defensive or

is it

strategic

and that's the point where we turned the

corner and we said you know

we're not just to say

if you go back and you look at my first

cnbc interview

you know melissa lee said well are you a

software company or a hedge fund i'm

like

well we're a software company and uh six

months later we said well what are you

and and the answer is well we really are

two things now

we've got two business strategies we're

a business intelligence company and

we're selling enterprise software and we

got 30 years experience it's a 500

million a year business it's growing

zero to 10 a year

it's gonna generate 50 to 100 million in

cash flow a year

it's profitable that's what we are

we love it we'll keep doing it uh

but you know you can't really scale it

like if you gave me a billion dollars i

couldn't just go hire 10 000 more people

and make it 10 times bigger

like you can't scale it with labor you

can't scale it with capital we're not a

monopoly we're not

we're not google or facebook or amazon

or apple i can't just you know buy a

music service and bundle it on 18

billion devices right

i have to go and knock on doors and sell

things so that is like your main street

company

we provide services and products that

take a lot of effort to people that

value them and we're very proud of what

we do

but the other strategy was the bitcoin

strategy

and the bitcoin strategy we thought long

and hard about it it's acquiring whole

bitcoin

pure and simple

not trade

not

not anything else just acquire and hold

bitcoin it's like acquiring hole

property

right uh it it might evolve

sometime in the future to be something

more sophisticated but acquiring holding

bitcoin

seemed like a reasonable thing to do

and it became proactive at that point

and we set it in black and white we said

if you're buying the company

then you're buying a company that's

going to acquire and hold bitcoin

and it's going to

build and sell and market enterprise

business intelligence software

and we do our best to disclose all the

risk factors and all the cost and how we

do it

and um

with regard to acquire and hold bitcoin

it's like how are you going to do it

well

by any means that is accretive

and the creative's a very a powerful

word but i

you know are you going to do it with

equity you're going to deal with debt

are you going to deal with cash flows

you're going to do it with convertible

debt well you know it all depends upon

the terms and conditions and the risks

associated with the financing and it's

pretty obvious if i generate 50 million

in cash flow and i buy bitcoin with it

that's creative

so yeah i'm going to do that

but we may do other things

and so i would say that that's the

journey in august it's defensive

in december

it's opportunistic

by

march february to march it's become

strategic

you said um you said you know uh i

bought the all-time high and i'll buy

future all-time highs over the next 30

years you know i'm i'm just buying

non-stop how do you think about the

um

i guess historically cyclical nature of

of the markets where i've been in crypto

since 2012 or so so i've sat through

three horrendous uh soul-crushing uh

bear markets of

just being down only and me losing my

sanity a little bit um

and

um i've also sat through some of the

most euphoric op only

years over the past decade um

is your strategy you just don't give a

you're buying no matter what like

periodically

yeah um but but i have a more articulate

answer

first of all

we're an institution

so the life expectancy of an institution

is forever like if you're a company

right that the company will transcend it

will last past me right i'm not a family

right the you know

the life expectancy of a family depends

upon you know it depends upon the family

it might be 100 years it might be 10

years right it might

might be you're a solo dude and you're

thinking i just need to have a lambo in

three years and nothing else matters but

a lambo or or whatever

um

institutions have a longer time horizon

uh the second is we're a profitable

institution so i we don't we don't

if you're an individual and you were