MSTR True North Special Edition feat. Michael Saylor & Phong Le | Bitcoin for Corporations 2025

I am so excited to introduce this

fireside chat with the MSTR true north

community and two visionary leaders. But

first, I do want to share a little bit

of a personal anecdote that's very

relevant to this because strategy has

empowered so many people and families to

truly achieve financial freedom, to

retire early, and to grow their

families. And I actually have two

friends from high school that attended

this conference this year. I will not

share their names. I'm going to protect

their privacy. But they said that some

of my earliest interviews with Michael

Sailor helped them gain conviction in

strategy to make that their primary

family investment. And that has allowed

them to have the financial security and

the flexibility to expand their family.

So not long ago, they had their third,

fourth, and fifth children. So we're

going to have a strategy baby boom. And

I

know, hey, population growth, right?

Yes. So, this company is truly changing

lives. It's empowering companies. It's

empowering families. And what an honor

to be at this event that's honoring all

of that. So, without further ado, I

would like to introduce Jeff Walton,

Chim Tim Codsman, and Ben Workman, who

are the driving forces behind MSTR True

North, a leading platform dedicated to

analyzing Bitcoin treasury strategies

and corporate finance innovation. And of

[Applause]

course, and of course, they really need

no introduction, but the visionary, the

superb, the superior, the brilliant

executive chairman Michael Sailor and

CEO Fong Lee. Please welcome them to the

stage.

[Music]

We are back. Woo. We are on stage here

with uh some of our favorite people and

uh we are excited to share an hour and

ask a few questions and really dive into

dive into things a little bit more. So

this is the first time we're actually on

stage with uh Michael and Fong. And man,

look at all the people in here. Wow.

Holy cow. All right, this is exciting.

So, uh, maybe we'll just kick it off. A

quick question over to Fong and Michael.

So, over the last couple days, you've

talked about this digital transformation

of investor relations. And prior to, you

know, what we're seeing today with uh

this community, the investor relations

page was the most boring page on a

company's, you know, website, right?

Nobody ever went to the investor

relations page. Nobody went and, you

know, scoured all the documents. But now

people are and people are because we're

talking about it. We're talking about

this evolution of uh and equity and how

a company can be formed. So I I'd love

if you can expand on this concept of the

digital transformation of investor

relations and and really kind of dive

into that a little bit further.

I can start. You know, the the funny

thing uh and I think Eric Semler talked

about it yesterday about being a zombie

company in a company that nobody's

interested in. Uh I had mentioned

yesterday we had 40 investors on our

earnings calls, 10 of which were

employees and board members. The other

thing is we had no investor relations

person. I was the CFO and I was investor

relations. And I remember talking to

investors and like you should really

hire investor relations person. I was

like to talk to 30 people. It didn't

make a lot of sense. and uh Sharish

Jodia we hired in 2022 to be our first

head of investor

relations and and and I still remember

we we had two people who were our final

candidates and uh one person was really

nice super guy from Texas who' done

investor relations for like 15 years uh

and he had zero knowledge about Bitcoin

and then we had Shares who hadn't done

investor relations for very I think it

was like two years or so for a local

energy company and he's like I love

Bitcoin. You know, I I sought you guys

out. I I looked you up. I I like this is

my job. And of course, Shares got the

job. And then we realized after that,

you know, Mike went from like 50,000 Xan

X followers to a million to 2 million to

three million. Got a huge voice. And we

realized that was really the next

relations in 2023 or so was use our

exhandle because you know when you have

a story that's extremely misunderstood

by traditional finance you need an

amplifier outside of traditional

finance. We need an amplifier beyond

just sort of the the way you would

normally do things. Uh and so the Xandle

was the next big sort of really digital

transformation of investor relations.

And then the biggest gift beyond that is

is everyone started producing content be

that we didn't even know we didn't even

know we needed right like charts were

being created videos were being created

um you know 10 p.m. sessions of people

talking about strategy for two hours on

end they're getting created and you know

how else do you amplify an organization

of zero IR people to one IR people to a

thousand to a million this is the way to

do and and it's just fantastic and you

know you realize that all of that is

because we tapped into the zeitgeist of

Bitcoin uh and Bitcoin is what caused

the digital transformation capital but

of investor relations there's no better

way to do investor relations in this

way. Uh, and it makes so much more sense

than sitting and talking to, you know,

in a in in a converted hotel room at a

non-deal road show with four Harvard

MBAs, you know, sorry CJ, uh, that asked

you questions at the age of 27 about

your business and want to steer you to

go do something like they understand

software. That's not investor relations.

This is investor relations.

Um I I think we benefited we we are

catapulted into a digital transformation

uh by COVID and by the crypto

community and I got to say we were taken

there kicking and screaming uh and maybe

that's the only way you get there but as

Fong has said the 20th century way to do

things as you go meet people face to

face uh I I I remember I've I've spent

one month flying around the world and uh

like an entire month of my life million

dollars of travel fees in order to stand

in front of a a hundred people in a room

20 times and to get and basically

deliver a one-hour message to 2,000

people cost a million bucks and that was

quote unquote best practice in the year

2018.

So something profound happened you know

and when the lockdowns came you don't

get to travel you don't get to meet face

to face and then and then you have to do

remote and then you have to embrace

something like zoom and we used to have

uh I mean Fong's being generous I

remember um

okay I'm going to tell myself here I

went through a phase when I just decided

I was I was kind of a little bit irked

with the investor community. So I

cancelled conference calls and earnings

reports for 10 years in a

row. there there's a period about I

don't know like 40 quarters where we

didn't do an earnings

call and uh then there was

a when we came out of that phase we had

a lot of goodwill with our investors

obviously not

um and then the best practice was sit in

a conference room with one of those like

speaker phones and that then we'd all

look at each other and we'd punch the

speaker phone and we'd dial in

And there were like 19 pe I remember 19

to 20 people being on the call and one

of them being an

investor and the other the other 19

working for the company. That's that was

my recollection. There might have been a

couple. So we had that dark period and

then COVID came along and the lockdowns

hit and we went from speaker phones to

you know three different video

conferencing things and then we landed

on Zoom and then we started up Zoom

meetings. Then we tried to have employee

meeting we realized we had to have the

employees join online with a webinar and

so we discovered webinars. Then we

thought well if we're going to have a

thousand you know then we started trying

to figure out to sell things to

customers and we had to do that and so

we were forced to adopt technology for

customer activity after 2020. And um

once you get there, it's a hop, skip,

and a jump to well, you know, if we're

going to do Zoom webinars for customers,

then why don't we do a Zoom webinar as

an earnings call and put the video on

it. And uh you know, we evolved from

there event and I would

say we were catalyzed by co we had to do

that stuff. And then of course we needed

Bitcoin. We found Bitcoin because of the

the war on currency that came with the

war on

COVID. And then after that, we were all

of a sudden in the arms of the Bitcoin

community. And I'm going to say crypto,

too. Although people don't always love

when I use the word crypto, but you

know, we're uh we're rehabilitating

crypto. It's going to be a better word

going forward. And uh the c and and the

the learning from that is this.

uh everybody in the crypto community was

launching these tokens and they were and

they were doing invest in investor

education on tokens and they they had to

do them via YouTube and via Twitter and

so when I got involved with Bitcoin I

saw all these YouTube podcasts and you

would see all the Bitcoin podcast but

you see every kind of podcast and then

you started seeing all these crypto

influencers and and they're reporting on

you know their favorite crypto token

just like it's CNBC in real time and you

know some of them have 500,000 followers

or more. So I started looking at what

they were doing and then we realized

that you have to go do podcast and you

know we started doing some of these

podcasts and we started posting I and I

remember when I started posting I was

very clum everybody when they first

discover X well when they first discover

Twitter used to be before it was X

everybody's very clumsy and you do silly

stupid things and I watch all the

newbies come in space and they don't

tweet well and and I cringe and I'm like

don't do it that way like for and I

remember Samson Mau, as many know Samson

Mau, great Bitcoin maximalist that, you

know, he took me under his wing when I

started tweeting and he goes, you know,

Mike, you posted this. There's no social

preview. And I'm like, well, Sam said,

what's a social preview? Like, well,

like, there's no image showing up on

your URL. And I'm like, an image on the

URL? It's like it's it's he says it's an

ugly string of

letters. So, I got on the phone to my

marketing people like, what's a social

preview? put a social preview on the

URL. And uh and so when we got into it,

we just started getting educated by the

community. This is how you share. This

is how you post this. Like I even I even

sit with executives today and I you

know, and I'll say, "Okay, first you're

going to go on CNBC. Then you're not

going to not tell anybody. You're going

to go on CNBC. You're okay. You're not

going to wait two days and post an ugly

URL that says that links to a partial

extract of you on CNBC. You're going to

go on CNBC. You're going to get your

talking points right. You're going to

extract the video. You're going to put

an MP4 file. You're going to upload the

MP4 file. You're going to write this,

right? You're going to post that. Right?

That's going to be seen by 10 or 20

times as many people as saw you on CNBC.

And if they agree with what you said,

they're going to grab the handle and

they're going to message it to their

boss or investor or board of director or

whatever best friend and say, "You got

to check this

out." And uh and that kind of was like a

four-year journey to realize that you

have to articulate the message. You have

to have to put on the channel. I

remember I we got on YouTube and I would

do this interview on you or someone

would interview me on YouTube and first

I didn't know what I was doing and then

I got lucky and then I got things like

the Lex Freriedman podcast and Lex

interviewed me for four hours and then

he posted it and it runs like 10,000

times a day. Like the residuals are

10,000 people a day spend four hours

with me listening to what I have to say

many years ago.

You watch that and then you watch people

they'll post things and and I've seen

them they'll interview me on Bitcoin and

they'll post uh world coming to

shattering in COVID problem yoyo dine

and I and I'm I'll call them you know

that's going to run better if you put my

full name in the title and and something

something Bitcoin because Bitcoin really

works well with the algorithm and my

name will work well with the algorithm.

And so I I think I went from I was never

on YouTube, I was never on television, I

didn't think to post to stumbling around

and making all the rookie mistakes to to

uh starting to learn a bit uh and then

realizing that the real power is

articulate your message, make it easy to

consume, put it in different formats.

Some people want 30 seconds, some people

want five minutes, some people want 20

minutes, some people want an hour. And

whatever it is, give them the handle

because what'll happen is nine months

from now, they'll want to send it to 97

people. And if they can do that in a

couple of seconds, your message will

spread virally. And don't make it hard.

Make it easy. Like make it like when you

write a paragraph, think people will

read the first sentence. When you write

a sentence, think people might read the

first three words. When you write three

words, obsess over the punctuation of

the three words. Right? That's that's

how I think now, right? And I didn't

think at all like that before

2020. When you think about your equity,

and you guys really did something

special when you embraced volatility in

the market, but when you have a lot of

investors, that's often scary for them.

It used to always be equated with risk.

And one of the big themes that we've

seen from the retail community as we've

been talking to everybody in the

hallways here is that the constant

education and the messaging that you

guys do empowers the retail community to

amplify it further and build conviction.

So, we've been playing around with the

concept of retail being a partner in

what we're calling conviction as a

service where you guys enable us with

enough information that we can distill

and then we can find ways to communicate

that out further to other investors who

might be starting from different points

in their journey and investing and

understanding a type of equity like a

Bitcoin treasury company like strategy.

What have you guys seen along the ride

as your equity is taking these volatile

swings? And I'm sure you guys are seeing

all the noise on social media. But what

I hope you also see is the people that

are the calming voices out there trying

to help the retail community understand

why they're in this in the first place

and what it is that makes this so

special. How do you guys see that

emerging as kind of a strategic

advantage for what you guys have built

with your retail community?

You know, it it's not lost on us that we

hold a two hours earning call and two

hours later, you know, Jeff gets on uh X

and does an hour and 20 minute

dissection of our earnings call and does

a pretty darn good job because what

actually happens in between that is we

go and talk to all of our coverage

analysts and we do call backs, right?

and and we you know have a collaborative

relationship where we share with them

our message, distill it and they go

write reports and and a lot of those

folks are here. We appreciate the

coverage analysts of which we used to

have

one right literally one who had a sell

rating on us uh when we started this

journey and now we have I don't like 15

12 13 14 15 who all have a buy rating on

us and they do pretty good work and they

publish out these reports and I would

guess maybe a hundred or a thousand

people read these reports the next

morning

you go don't talk to us, right? Do a

dissection that is pretty darn awesome

that evening. You know, you could

probably I don't know if you have a wife

and kids, you could be doing something

else, but you're so passionate about

Bitcoin and about strategy. We don't pay

you. We don't ask you. You don't ask us.

And you know, it's awesome work. And you

get 10, 15, 20,000 people that watch it

that night. And and that's awesome. I

mean, and and and so yeah, like like

there's the there is the structural

relationship and there is the unintended

relationship and the unintended

relationship is 20 times better, 100

times better, thousand times better. And

I do think it's a calming voice out

there amongst FUD, but the FUD is

decreased. And so I like this is the way

it should work, right? and more and more

people who do this work and you do it

because you're passionate about the

company, right? Uh I think it's awesome.

I think it's really cool. I think I'm

inspired, you know, by I mean the the

early juggernaut in my career was

Microsoft and the late juggernaut in my

career is Bitcoin. And if you're looking

for a

commonality, it was uh Microsoft made

room for their partners and Microsoft

was successful because just about every

techie company on the world on earth

could build something, build a product,

build a service and work with Microsoft.

So,

so they made space for the partnership

and they respected their

partners. And I think with Bitcoin,

right, the success is it's decentralized

and everybody can choose uh to engage

with Bitcoin in whatever depth

technically or economically or

intellectually they wish to. Um, and I

think that's informed us. So as we built

our company, we wanted to make space for

our partners and uh and create a

community and and it's it's very very

clear that we can't do everything. We

like the best marketing isn't done by

employees of our company.

uh the best uh the best education is is

done by our customers on the product by

our investors on uh

security. Um and you just see you know

endless examples of

that. I used to tell um I used to tell

our investors on the road shows I

said we're our our objective is uh to

stay in our lane. We're not going to

compete with

you. We're not going to do it if you can

do it. We're going to do the things you

can't

do. So, our job is to create the

security, buy the Bitcoin, hold the

Bitcoin, and do that in a credible

fashion. You could almost say the most

valuable thing in the market is uh

credible,

durable, high performance

volatility. And a lot of people have

figured out how to create non-durable

volatility or noncredible volatility. Uh

credible maybe

non-transparent volatility or low

performance volatility. But creating uh

high performance, transparent, credible

volatility uh is what makes us a

success. And when you when you

understand that, you realize

that there's a lot of investors who are

who are very long 30-day call options.

And so they have a particular view.

their their their world ends in 30 days

and they want

up. They're constituents of ours.

There's another set of investors that

are very short 30 days. They they

looking down and their universe ends in

30 days. There are the out of the money

long call option people. There are the

long dated equity people. There are

convertible arbitrageers. And on any

given day, they're either buying our

stock hard or they're selling our stock

hard, but we're in business with them.

Um, there are big people that hate

Bitcoin, and whenever something bad

happens, they want to put a short on it.

They short us. And, and let me tell you,

if you gave me a choice, would I rather

have them short my stock or short

somebody else's stock when they're mad

at Bitcoin? The answer is I'd rather

have them short my stock. I I never want

like I never want them to lose faith in

the fact that I am double long and I

want them to think that they got a two

for one short.

So, you got all these people out there

in the community and there's and there's

someone that needs to be told why it's a

good idea to short our stock when you're

hating on Bitcoin and there's someone

else that needs to understand how to

sell volatility and somebody else wants

to buy the volatility and you have the

long equity investors and then you have

preferred and you have convertible bond

investors and and then you've got the

options traders and and you you can

never forget for for everybody You you

read a lot about on X about people

trading options. For them to trade the

option, someone at Saskuana or someone

has to create has to create that market.

So there's a market maker creating that.

And it turns out

that you know there there are incredibly

powerful forces in the

market. They're all doing their job and

they're very good at it, right?

You want to know how good they are at

it? Just take a stock uh take a stock

ticker out. Take a Bloomberg or take a

Trading View or anything and then put on

your screen,

Bitcoin, IBIT, MSTR, and track it minute

by minute, second by second, and watch

the correlation and ask yourself the

question, who's making all those things

hop like in

synchronicity amplified in a certain

way?

And I think that the point really is you

think you know the investor, you don't

know the you think you understand how

the market works. You don't. Right? The

point at which at which you've you

understand when you realize you don't

understand like the the market's much

bigger than any of us. And so the

takeaway from that is

humility, right?

um you have to you have to allow for

lots of participants. It's a highly

decentralized

market. There's there's so many

conversations going on every day in

every direction in all

polarities, right? In all languages

everywhere in the world. Yeah. You know,

the company could never hope to be able

to meet every need. And you know our

bias Fong and I our bias is naturally

going to be long long the

equity you know with a secondary

objective of making sure all of the

credit instruments are fairly valued

right that's how we think fair to the

credit

counterparties but our job is to make

MSTR go to the moon that's how we think

but and here's the conundrum for For us

to be successful, we actually need

people in our ecosystem that don't

believe any of that stuff and have the

exact opposite point of view. They're

the ones making the market on the other

side of the trade. And what I learned

early on in my career is is the fate

worse than death in the capital markets.

It's not for them to hate you. It's for

them to be disinterested in you.

So, Bitcoin started as a peer-to-peer

network. It is a peer-to-peer network,

but it's also now becoming an ecosystem.

It's an ecosystem full of Bitcoin

treasury companies, lots of vendors and

service providers, ETFs, other

products. And the retail audience is

definitely picking up on this and

tracking it and amplifying it. How

helpful is that? and where could it go

over the next three to five years?

Um, I think I think

great great ideas spread via word of

mouth. And um, every retail investor, no

matter how much or how little money they

have, is no more than one step or maybe

two steps removed from someone running a

public company or someone running a

multi-billion dollar portfolio or, you

know, or or someone running a state or

someone running the cabinet or a country

or a cabinet

department. You know, I I walk into a

hotel and like, you know, a 20-some guy

will walk up to me and say, "You have to

talk to my my father." And his father

turns out to be a mega mega billionaire,

right? And he's the retail investor and

his dad's not invested. But I have to

tell you that every all these retail

investors, they're all they're all

indirectly or directly driving our

culture. And and of course,

um all it takes is maybe two

iterations before you've gone from

insignificant to being 20% of the

market. And then once you're 20%, it's

unstoppable. The entire world flips. So

I I think it's incredibly important not

not to mention the fact that it's

refreshing talking to retail investors

because there's a certain honesty and

cander and

enthusiasm. So I guess ask and they

bring out your best performance. Take

any rock star and ask them, would you

rather put play to a music festival full

of 20somes, you know, a third of which

are

jobless, or would you rather play in a

nice elegant tent of a billionaire at

his charity ball for 300 of his rich

elite friends? And the answer is they

would do that one for free. And this one

you have to pay them quadruple and they

come in and they get off the stage,

right? And so so I I I think we do it

for the people, the masses, right?

You're not going to change the life of

the institutional investor. you're like

2% of their portfolio allocation going

to 200 up 20 basis points and they're

and and they've been trained to be very

very measured in their

communication. But when someone walks up

to you and says, "Hey, you changed my

life. I retired. I I I bought a house. I

got married. I had a kid. I I you know,

you meet someone, they say, "Yeah, I was

able to move to the Caribbean and I

lived there permanently because of you."

Right.

That's that's much more

motivational I think. So if you're

saying like why do you do it right? Well

you do it in theory to make the world a

better place but or you know you like to

make people money but you really like to

make u retail investors money because

it's their money. Whereas when you're

making the institutional investor money,

it's going through three layers before

it eventually ripples to a nameless,

faceless institutional whatever

organization. It doesn't have the same

emotional appeal.

Yeah, I'm surprised more public

companies haven't embraced social media

generally and X specifically, right? It

started with athletes and musicians

said, "Well, I want to get out to my

fans and rather than go through a

publicist, I'm going to go direct to

them." And technology provided a way for

do that. Politicians rather than going

through a PR person said, "I'm going to

reach out in a public town square like

they used to do and go talk to their

constituents." And what better way to do

that than via social media. It's the

same concept with investor relations and

corporations who are are really funded

by the trust primarily of retail and

institutions. Why wouldn't we get out to

our retail shareholders via the same

avenue and skip and bypass the

middleman? and and the answer the reason

why more aren't doing it is because of

friction concerns risk legal because it

makes total sense right and and it's not

even in just in a Bitcoin community I

think if you want to access your

shareholders this is the way to do it

and and Mike's right it just feels so

much better like trust me like none of

our institutional like you know holders

and and they're awesome are coming up to

you at an event with their wife or

husband and saying you changed my life.

No one's saying I was able to have more

kids because I invested. Like nobody on

the institutional side that's just yeah

it makes you feel good. It's inspiring.

Why wouldn't you do that? And I'm sure

that happens to athletes and and and

marketers and influencers and

politicians. It's such a great forum to

get outreach to folks and and Bitcoin

amplifies that. But, you know, you ask

this question like, I love what True

North is doing, the digital

Like, yeah, our advice number one is buy

Bitcoin and put it on your balance sheet

to any corporation, but if you're not

going to do that, at least use social

media to get out to your investors.

Like, why wouldn't you want to do that?

And as an retail investor, why wouldn't

you want to see the raw representation

of the executive team that you're

investing in versus the extremely

filter, curated, prepared remarks at,

you know, Mike's got some guts here,

right? Like he's when I joined 2015, I

still remember, right, like I was CFO

and IR guy, so I wrote the earning

script and I would read the script that

said basically nothing. And Mike would

just go add live the thing, which people

don't really do. And then I remember

once we were like, "Hey, Mike, I'm going

to give you some bullet points." And

he's like, "Okay, yeah, I'll take your

bullet points." He went completely off

script. And then and then after that, I

was like, "Well, I'm going to just write

you something." And he didn't read any

of it, right? But but that's sort of how

this should work. Like you don't really

want to hear the scripted prepared

remarks that were recorded one week in

advance to the earnings call. That's not

a a a investor relationship, right? You

want to hear the the raw remarks, the

raw uh emotion, and that's what the

retail investors want to hear from

someone they're going to put their life

savings into. I think it makes complete

sense.

So, we're

we're you guys have created these new

novel products that the market has never

seen before, right? strike and Strife

and and people are beginning to see the

value of these products and you know

we've been trying to track what's going

on there and how these can potentially

change the world of finance and so I

kind of got a two-part question. What uh

what can we as True North do and what

can everybody else in this room as as an

audience that's kind of experiencing

this do

to do to help? You know, where where can

where can this potentially go? What do

you see this looking like in uh you know

3 to 5 years? How does it change the

world of finance so we can you know get

there?

Yeah. Well um I would

say the a lot of the energy in the

Bitcoin community has always been about

how do we fix the money and how do we

explain to people why Bitcoin fixes the

money. And I and I think that's been

going on for 15 years and there's an

incredible amount of uh really good

content

there. What people I think misunderstand

about our mission at Strategy is we're

not here to fix the money because

Bitcoin did fix the money. Uh we're not

not we're not even so much trying to

convince you that Bitcoin works. I think

we've crossed that inflection point. I

think I think when the president of the

United States, you know, created the

strategic Bitcoin reserve and when David

Sax says Bitcoin is digital gold, I

think I think it became clear that the

establishment has accepted the idea that

Bitcoin

works. We're here to fix the capital

markets. And so here's the mission. And

the mission is a hundred trillion dollar

worth of

equity based on future

expectations of currency derivatives of

broken broken companies operating broken

currencies or weak companies operating

on weak currencies.

And our our suggestion is you can create

new equity based on a sound money and

strong companies can actually grow those

equities and compete against the mag

7. That's hard to understand, right? So

there's an entire world of equity

analysis. uh how do you value a company

uh based upon digital capital and based

on sound money as opposed to based upon

uh traditional 20th century business

techniques. And then in the credit

markets, we want to fix the credit

markets and that's $300 trillion of

credit instruments, bonds, preferred

stocks, convertible bonds, uh you know,

sovereign debt. They're all they're all

based upon future expectations of cash

flow of weak to failing

currencies that are issued uh securities

issued by weak companies. Companies

without assets with weak business. Which

companies do you think are there? Right.

They're weak companies issuing

uh credit

securities valued on future expectations

of cash flows that are coming to you in

a currency which is collapsing in

value. They're not good securities. They

don't yield much. The the credit's not

great. They're not liquid. They're

they're sold in an in an antiquated

fashion. Most preferred stocks, most

corporate bonds are sold over the

counter, one and done, short duration.

They don't have tickers. You probably

can't name a ticker like name a ticker

for corporate bond issued by a major

bank in the United States. Now, major

banks in the United States have issued

billion hundreds of billions of dollars

of fixed income instruments. Does you

know you ever wonder why is it that a

major bank has never issued a fixed

income security that you can

trade right they're sold through a sales

force how many things you know they're

sold through a sales force that's 50

years old I mean it's that the idea is

50 years old they're people they have

cus numbers right they have they there

are numbers like something something 1

199742 and And then there's another

issue something something1

19743 and you can't get the quote unless

you pay $25,000 a year to get the

Bloomberg and then you can get the quote

and then there's no market maker and the

spreads are

3%. And and that's because no why would

you ever trade

them? What? So that's the state of the

credit market. And so we're not here to

fix Bitcoin. We're here to fix the

capital markets. Now, fixing the capital

markets means going to people that buy

preferred stocks that are illquid that

they're holding, waiting to die, right?

They're waiting waiting for them to

whatever expire. And going to those

people, they don't even know they own

the stuff and they're getting a 100

basis point spread above sofur on

garbage and explaining to them how they

could actually get paid 700 basis points

above sulfur with a better credit

instrument. Right. and and like how is

it that our converts can do 60% and the

average convert index is four or six,

right? go find but but you know you know

the the unlock is finding people that

don't even know that that don't know

converts exist and then of course you

know the market it's structured you you

know you have the SEC 33 act the SEC 40

act you have so many rules and when you

decipher the rules the rules basically

just the

market they the market they

the distribution

channel and and uh traditional

conservative or convention

actions the

securities and so you know what can you

do I think it's a it's a educational

campaign to the investors of the world

to show them you know there are more

than a hundred equities or maybe you can

consider more than the magnificent 7

here's some new equities that can

outperform the magnificent 7 let me show

you what they are that's a renaissance

and equity capital

markets. And then there's a crusade.

Well, here, you know, here are some

credit instruments that will give you

yield for your retirement account. And

and they actually aren't

risky. Not nearly as, you know, you

don't even know how to get them. You

don't know they exist, but but someone

invented

electric electric flying car with a

nuclear reactor in it. You you don't

have to refuel once in a lifetime. You

can buy that. It's cheaper than a normal

car, but someone told you that it's

dangerous to have a car with a a reactor

in it, right? So, I think that I think

that the the rate at which the capital

markets evolve, it's really a function

of how rapidly the ideas disseminate.

And I think uh that's a function of just

how adept and nimble and fil the

educators are in the market. And I think

there's an opportunity for everyone to

get involved. And of course, the more

people to get involved and the more

effective and more effective the

education, the faster uh the faster we

transform the market. You know, the the

question is how fast can you grow?

Um it's really it's really a question of

how fast can the capital markets absorb

a new idea. And if there was one

60-minute podcast you could distribute

that just solved it, then you would just

let it run. But there isn't. There's uh

there's a lot of work to be done in

educating and helping people embrace new

ideas. As everybody knows, strategy

issues equity at the

market when

it's proper to do so and accretive.

Is a shelf necessary for success? I

mean, we see Bitcoin companies, Bitcoin

treasury companies coming to

market in a fashion where they can't

have a shelf for 12 months. Is a shelf

necessary for success?

I think um I think you can if you gave

me um a public company that was a cash

cow that couldn't issue equity but it

generated cash it would have

extraordinary success just sweeping its

cash flows. I you know here's my list. I

take a company I sweep the I I take a

company I take the cash on the balance

sheet I convert to Bitcoin. That's a

success. I take the cash flows I convert

them to Bitcoin. That's a success. I

take the dividend, I convert it to

Bitcoin. That would be a success. I take

the buyback program, I turn into a

Bitcoin buyback program. That would be a

success. I I don't take the company

private, but I do an LBO where I lever

up the company. So, I basically pledge

the cash flows, raise private or public

debt, buy Bitcoin. That's a success.

I uh I take a company that's got a slow

growth business that's struggling and

they sell off that business or or do an

M&A transaction and take the proceeds

and buy

Bitcoin. You've swapped a zero growth

success a zero growth

business that you sell at one times

revenue for a 60% a year growth business

that you buy at one times revenue. Would

you do that trade? Right.

Yeah. You could sell this business, pay

30, 40% tax and buy Bitcoin. You would

still be better off by a factor of a

hundred over the course of a decade. So,

you can take a business that doesn't

have access to equity and you can do all

sorts of capital markets transactions.

Um, if you're a private company, many of

those things are also available to you.

And um of course you can you can also

work your way down the credit instrument

ladder, you know, where you sell you

could sell forward contracts of your

products. You could you could sell a

subscription to your product, roll that

into Bitcoin, you could uh you could

sell convertible preferred, you could

sell straight fix preferred, you could

sell junk bonds, you sell convertible

bonds, you could do bank financing.

Um, the world is full of people that

found endless ways to do it. You know,

Warren Buffett, you know, one of his

secrets is he bought insurance

companies, right? And insurance

companies had investment portfolios and

then he was able to invest those

portfolios in securities. Well, you

know, the kind of the trick is the

operating company can't hold a security,

but this insurance company, you know,

has like one layer and they get like a

waiver and they get to invest in

security. So he found uh he found a

very elegant way uh to grab a float, but

the trick is not getting the float. The

trick is being able to invest the float,

right? And uh

so what do you get? What if you get

control of one of those insurance

companies and you reinvest the float in

Bitcoin, right? There's a and of course

there's a million compliance and

regulatory issues you got to work

through, but I can imagine a hundred

different strategies that you could

pursue to sweep cash into

Bitcoin, you know, and and a lot of

product changes uh changes to the way

you run a product business or definition

of a

product that would enhance the product.

You could for, you know, for example,

build an insurance policy where, you

know, you invest the premiums in Bitcoin

and use it to increase the payout on the

back end and grab market share or you

could cut the premiums in half because

you're invested in Bitcoin and and grab

market share that way. And uh so what

you can do is a function of what kind of

company you are and what jurisdiction

you're in and what you're you know what

kind of entity you're

managing. But you know again Buffett

showed you that where there's a will

there's a way and

um you know you have some people that

kind of take they want to do the

simplest thing. They're like well I can

only do this and this and so that's what

I'll do even though I'm going to fail.

And there are some people that don't

want to fail and so they'll think a

little bit more creatively. And you know

we less we forget you know the greatest

investor of the 20th century his success

story starts with buying Berkshire

Hathway which is what a a failed textile

mill. So it starts with a failure and he

just simply decided even though it's a

total abysmal failure he's going to turn

that into a shell

company to to become a great investor

and he did that and I think that every

single operating company in the public

market is in the same situation now

every private company is in a situation

it it comes down to

will. Do you have the will and do you

have the courage?

So, I've got a really important question

here. You guys did something very unique

as a company, particularly at this

conference, which is you took a bunch of

people that stream from their basement

at midnight on a Wednesday, and somebody

convinced you guys it was a good idea to

let us have a room and host our own

conference here. So, first, whose idea

was that? And then the second one,

because you guys have become such fan

favorites in the retail community, you

might be the only person on earth with a

personal digital artist around him. How

weird is this for you?

I think it's definitely Fong's idea

you're here.

[Laughter]

So, you're lovely.

But it was my idea to retweet

you. But we work like that which very

often it the way it works out is I see

something which I think is amazing,

beautiful, extraordinary, compelling,

novel and I amp it and he sees it and he

operationalizes it in the business. So,

so you know, all of the execution is him

and occasionally I nudge him and then

occasionally he has a good idea

too. Look, the the the idea of Bitcoin,

a lot of these

ideas, you know, they they sort of

there's a lot of gut instinct to an

idea. Like when we decided we were going

to do Bitcoin for

corporations four years ago, I was like,

"Hey, Mike, should we do this?" It's

like, yeah, of course. Like there it's

not like there was this long debate of

is it a good idea? When somebody came

and said, should we let True North host

an event within an event within an

event? It might seem crazy, but it was

obviously a good idea, right? Those are

the easy ones, right? Like when Mike

told me we should do Strike, well, when