The Bitcoin Crash & The Future Of Crypto - Michael Saylor | PART 1 of 2

we went from investing 250 million in

Bitcoin to 425 million in Bitcoin to

eventually a billion in Bitcoin to 2

billion in Bitcoin to just slightly less

than 4 billion you said there are

decades when nothing happens and there

are weeks when Bitcoin happens so every

decade there's some profound Paradigm

Shift it's such an out of the blue idea

that no one can conceive of why you

would even want it what you've got is a

lot of people questioning all their

premises and Rising through that chaos

is a new idea what if I can encrypt

energy what if I can encrypt money such

that nobody on Earth no government can

debase it no Corporation can steal it I

don't trust anybody I'm going to create

a shared immutable Ledger

Incorruptible Immortal transcendental

Ledger if I can transfer a million

dollars of value from me to you without

an intermediary that means I have

transcended the political realm you said

Brian I like Bitcoin because it has low

aspirations the idea of Bitcoin was how

do I create a protocol that's fair and

Equitable that I give as a gift to the

world that no one can control

if you're gonna do it and you understand

thermodynamics and if you have any sense

of genetics or biology or physics you

realize you need to be very humble in

your aspirations

how do we give the gift of property

rights freedom and sovereignty and

empowerment to everybody on the planet

the best idea 30 years ago was YouTube

or Google Maps Twitter Facebook or email

I think the best idea for the next 30

Years is digital energy

everybody can own their stuff

and nobody can take it away from them

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inspiration is everywhere

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we're learning from others and finding

the best in ourselves

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challenging our beliefs

sharing our vulnerability

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how far can we go

this is London real I am Brian Rose my

guest today is

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guest today is Michael Saylor the

American entrepreneur technologist

author and Bitcoin evangelist you

recently became executive chairman of

microstrategy having spent the last 33

years as CEO with your change of

position allowing you to focus even more

on long-term Bitcoin strategy you are

the author of The New York Times

best-selling book The Mobile wave how

mobile intelligence will change

everything which correctly predicted the

sharp rise in technology Giants Amazon

Apple Facebook and Google while

highlighting the impact of mobile and

social networks on global economic

development you previously described

Bitcoin as the Apex property of the

human race and over the past two years

you pursued a massive Investment Drive

that has seen microstrategy purchase

over 129 000 Bitcoin as The Unofficial

spokesman for the Bitcoin movement and

the most famous maximalist of them all

you believe that Bitcoin represents the

digital transformation of money property

currency energy and matter Michael

welcome back to londonreal hey thanks

for having me Brian hey it's great

having you back here I want to quote you

and I don't think you said this probably

in the last couple months but you said

there are decades when nothing happens

and there are weeks when Bitcoin happens

and it's been 14 months since we spoke

but it feels like it's been years and

years and years with everything that's

happened since we talked and I kind of

wanted to maybe get your thoughts on

kind of the year in review and the

things that stick out in your mind and I

don't know where to start you know do we

start with Celsius and Voyager going

bankrupt do we start with the failure of

UST do we start with Bitcoin going to 68

000 and back to 20 do we start with the

eth merge or recent statements by Gary

Gensler or the SEC saying bitcoin's a

commodity and everything else is a

security I don't know what's the

Highlight for you in the past year

I I think that the Highlight the past

year is the institutional adoption of

Bitcoin and the mature maturation of the

asset class along with the education of

millions and millions of people as to

why they might want digital property

what is a digital commodity and and uh

what's its place in the macro economy

now to be clear I still think we're very

early

but uh you know that phrase you know

other decades when nothing happens and

you know weeks when decades happen it

really refers to Paradigm shifts and uh

and uh you know if you think about the

Paradigm Shift when automobiles arrived

you know there's a famous snapshot in

New York City where you know there's

just a bunch of horse and Buggies and 10

years later it's all cars and in that 10

years you adopted it and if you

I remember you know standing once on uh

the pantheon

and uh you know on the Acropolis and I'm

I'm uh like taking a photo and about to

post it and I think to myself what's

different about this and I think well

last time I was here maybe a decade ago

I had no smartphone I had no iPhone

there was no Facebook there was no

Instagram you couldn't post it there

were no you know digital photography

didn't exist

so a decade goes by and you're like you

know you're trying to remember yeah you

remember back in college I went to

college

we didn't have laptops

you know yeah so when I was in college

there were no laptops and I you know I

thought well what if I'd had a

spreadsheet when I was doing engineering

you know I went with an HP HP 15c

calculator and we had notebooks and we

wrote down 20 pages of calculations in a

notebook with a calculator you know and

I remember seeing people saying well you

got a calculator we use slide rules you

know when you fast forward a decade and

people have laptops you fast forward

another decade you know they have

internet you fast forward another decade

they've got YouTube and simulations and

now you're starting to question whether

or not you didn't even needed to go to

college at all maybe you could just sat

at home so every decade there's some

profound paradigm shift and uh the thing

that that hits you about a paradigm

shift is it's such an out of the blue

idea that no one can conceive of why you

would even want it

so you know it took a while before

people thought maybe radio waves have a

place right or maybe electricity has a

place in the world and and uh you know

why would I want a railroad but I think

now we're we're starting this Paradigm

Shift of digital energy and why would I

want to move a block of a billion

dollars of something from point A to

point B through cyberspace in a split

second with instant final settlement

right uh initially if you roll the clock

back a decade we didn't have it every

financial crisis we've had right in

history of the world and we've had 10

000 of them there have been 10 000

currency collapses from the lydians to

the Athenians to the Spartans to the

Romans to the venetians you know to the

Brits multiple times to the

carthaginians you know you could just go

on in the Persians and go on and on and

on and on and and uh the history is full

of examples of an Empire Rises someone

meant the currency uh the successors or

the children of the Conqueror debase the

currency the grandchildren to base it

more the great grandchildren forget how

they actually got the power they spend

everything go wacky crazy pretty soon

the economy collapses you can't pay your

soldiers they all defect and The

Barbarians come over the gate and they

take everything including your debased

gold they melt it down they purify it

they meant their own coin and the cycle

starts again that's literally start

that's literally taken place ten

thousand times you know when Von

schliemann dug up ancient Troy he dug up

like 19 ancient Troys he found 19 cities

buried under each City everybody said

good place to build a city they would

build it they would rise over a couple

hundred years they would Crash and Burn

200 years ago by someone else comes

along and says wow good place to build a

city we do it again we can do it again

we do it again

that's the history of money and that's

the history of Economics along con

Satoshi and you know and we've got the

white paper and you know January 3rd

2009 we we launched this little monetary

virus or the or this idea virus and it

kind of uh Burns very very uh low level

for a while and people aren't sure of it

it's a gimmicky thing and it gets bigger

and bigger and bigger and waiting for

why would you need it

and uh you know you had to be a

Visionary to kind of need it or get it

if you lived in Argentina and your

currency collapsed and you remember the

currency collapsing or if you lived in

uh North Korea or if you lived in Africa

and your currency collapsed and you

watched your family get wiped out then

maybe you get it but you know that

wasn't the mainstream right the Western

world is not run by by people that lost

their family's life savings in Africa or

South America so it was um

it was an interesting idea but it was a

fringe idea until uh 2020 and in 2020

the monetary inflation rate tripled in

the U.S and what we saw was in the

world's best economies you're losing 15

to 20 percent of your economic value in

the currency every year and the second

tier economies you're losing 30 or more

like the Japanese yen is down 24 against

the dollar in the last 12 months right

and in the tertiary economies you're

losing 50 60 70 percent of the value in

the currency and that's where you get a

Sri Lanka where literally the entire

government collapses or where you what

you're seeing going on in Africa and

Zimbabwe right now or or famously in

Lebanon where people have been breaking

into Banks taking people Hostage to get

their own money back right the bank

robbers are robbing banks and their

demand is give me my own money back

because the government stole the money

and the banks froze it devalued it and

they're going to give it back to you

over the next 17 years devaluing it 20 a

year while they trickle it out to you so

here we are we're in uh this great uh

reset if you will people are questioning

currency they're questioning uh their

political thoughts they're questioning

stores of value

and um and uh every conventional model

the 60 40 Bond model it's broken

bonds for example are down 20 percent in

the same year where stocks are down 20

okay so that never happened for 20 years

so why does that happen because when you

drive interest rates to zero if you

can't drive interest rates negative then

there's no way to get bonds to go up

so what we've got is the 60 40 models

are broken conventional ideas like oh

I'm just going to store my value by

buying property that's kind of broken in

a lot of places people are losing faith

in just investing in property when you

see the gyrations of of this property

the conventional idea I'm going to buy s

p index stocks well the uh the s p is

slightly up NASDAQ is flat over the last

two years it blasted up and then it

blasted down

so what you've got is a lot of people

questioning all their premises and uh

and Rising through that chaos is a new

idea and the new idea is what if I can

what if I can encrypt energy what if I

can encrypt money such that nobody on

Earth no government can debase it no

Corporation can steal it I don't trust

anybody people you know people don't

trust governments right we're we're in

an all-time low in public Trust of

Institutions it doesn't matter what

government uh and they don't trust

companies and why for good reason

because companies are influenced by

governments right right if if you're in

America you know you're certainly not

going to trust the company in China and

if you're in China you're certainly not

going to trust a company in America and

then you know a lot of people that don't

trust domestic companies the Europeans

and the Australians don't trust American

companies either so there's a lot of

lack of trust

so if I can't trust that then what can I

trust where am I going to put my money

you know I'm going to do a a slight

detour here Brian but this is very

interesting uh that I want to share with

your listeners which is I track

I tracked the financial Market since we

embarked on our Bitcoin strategy

so here is here is what's happened since

August 10 2020 when we adopted Bitcoin

as a treasury Reserve asset

Bitcoin is up 65 percent

microstrategy stock and microstrategies

bought three point not almost 4 billion

dollars not quite but nearly four

billion dollars of Bitcoin microstrategy

stock is up 66 so we are we are tracking

slightly ahead of Bitcoin the s p is up

14 the NASDAQ is up four percent

whoa four percent all of big Tech is up

four percent gold

is down 18 and you know bonds the ultra

safe bonds long-term bonds down 18

so in terms of asset classes the crazy

volatile Bitcoin is the best performing

of all those major assets and then you

can say to yourself well I'm just going

to invest in stocks okay let's look at

big Tech

Google's up 37 Apple's up 32 Microsoft's

up 16 Amazon is down 22 Facebook is down

45 and Netflix is down 52 percent okay

microstrategy little micro strategy no

one ever heard of up 66 percent would

you have guessed that a mid-sized

software company low growth mid-size

software company nobody ever heard of

would outperform Google in the last two

years by a factor of two

and you know so last point I made we

compete against companies 100 times as

big as us Oracle 100 times bigger than

us they're up 25 IBM's up three percent

Salesforce is down 23 sap is down 47

percent

okay so what is the lesson of that the

lesson is we're in the middle of chaos

there is no place to hide your choices

you could buy gold but gold is dead

metal and it's just getting ground into

the dirt right I can seize your gold

gold is the half-life of money and gold

is 35 years and you can't put gold on 8

billion iPhones so the problem is

there's no Tech and gold and it was a

good idea in the 19th century and it's

centralized governments can seize it and

the gold miners keep debasing it they

keep mining more gold right and the best

year you get two percent more and the

worst year someone seizes a bunch of

gold dumping on the market you get more

than two percent so people are looking

for Safe Haven what's it going to be

property in Africa property in Venezuela

you can't have a property in North Korea

property in Argentina a business a

business where a business in Argentina

where the currency collapses what go to

your cash flows of the currency that you

generate the cash flows or collapses and

value so

I think here's the here's the big idea

really big idea everybody in the world

has to decide where they're going to

locate their family

they have to physically they have to

decide where they're going to locate

their uh themself in cyberspace their

mind

are you going to watch Facebook all day

long you're going to read Twitter are

you going to be on YouTube you know

you're going to go to rumble are you

going to look at Instagram right where

is your mind right um and then the third

question is where's your business are

you gonna run a yoga studio in Miami how

about our Yoga Studio in New York how

about you know are you going to run a

farm in Zimbabwe a ranch in Argentina

are you going to buy a company that has

business interest in China how about uh

owning a bunch of businesses in Ukraine

or Russia right so where is your p l

right and and the fourth Big Ideas where

is your balance sheet

okay you uh you're a podcaster on

YouTube okay well you better make sure

that you comply with YouTube platform

requirements otherwise they turn off

your podcast and and and they crimp your

business that's where you generate your

revenue and you generate your cost but

now where are you going to save your

money are you going to save it in U.S

sovereign debt are you going to actually

store it in Gold are you going to buy

land where in California in Ukraine and

Russia where

and Florida right are you going to buy s

p index stocks are you going to buy

Bitcoin are you going to buy art

so

they were conventional answers to all

these questions Brian and and they kind

of worked for you know there was an

answer to this question before 1914.

there's an answer to this question

between 19 uh between Bretton Woods in

1971. there's an answer to this question

from 1971 to the year 2020.

in 2020 it's like oh the answer 60 40

Bond portfolio by the s p index and like

a portfolio of Diversified bonds and

you're good okay there was an answer the

answer kind of got confusing after 2020.

the answer got confusing for a lot of

businesses for a lot of people and so

highlight of the year the highlight of

the year is people were stunned from

March of 2020 to March of 2021 and from

March of 21 through the middle of 2022

they're all starting to get their

bearings and they're and they're like

well I guess what is bitcoin a digital

commodity is that do I have to deal with

that well now now Fidelity's talking

about rolling out the 34 million retail

accounts you've got the government

embracing crypto assets saying we better

figure it out Congress senators getting

educated on it

the cftc the SEC getting educated on it

you know a big institutional investors

starting to

take uh Bitcoin positions you know the

media now you know now you've got

Bloomberg covering crypto you've got

CNBC covering crypto you know you've got

an entire world media analyst

politicians financiers and they're all

starting to figure this out

but I still say we're early right this

Paradigm Shift takes a decade and maybe

the first decade was the Embers of a

flame flickering from 2009 to 2020 and

then from 2020 we started pouring

gasoline on that flame

right get the gasoline the U.S is we

triple the inflation rate triple it a

monetary inflation but forget about that

maybe you're a blue blood living on the

Upper East Side with a trust fund and

you just don't see why you need it the

gasoline in Sri Lanka is everybody lost

everything overnight the gasoline in

Lebanon is the bank Frozen freezes their

doors and you lose all your money

the gasoline in Argentina is the peso

goes from 20 pesos to the dollar to 280

pesos to the dollar in four years

right the gasoline in Ukraine is is oops

there's a war banks are you know there's

a limit to how much money you can

withdraw and the gasoline in Russia is

okay I get you know the stuff you

thought you owned in Europe you don't

own that anymore we're taking that from

you know taking your gold taking your

bonds taking your Yachts taking your

Villas so there's a lot of people with a

2x4 at the head

and they're all stunned and they're all

trying to figure it out and there is

this um colorful debate a political

debate immediate debate you know a

debate on YouTube a debater on Twitter

what's the solution and the only thing

we can all agree on is we probably need

to look at some new ideas because the

old ideas just don't work anymore and

there's there's no there's no

intellectually honest person

that would say yeah everything I

believed in 2019 or 2018 it's all still

true I haven't changed any of my

opinions about anything I mean

everybody's had a place in their life

where they've you know been uh they've

been Jarred and stunned and now they're

trying to make sense of it so the

question is

how do we move forward and you know to

summarize on bitcoin I think Bitcoin is

uh it's very volatile it's getting uh

it's getting jerked around all risk

assets are getting jerked around if you

look at um

you know if you look at one of the more

interesting things right the the

two-year you know the the two-year

treasury was 16 basis points a year ago

and it's currently like

3.9 percent

we went from 16 basis points to

390 basis points on short-term money the

mortgage rate on a 30-year mortgage you

know has gone from 2.7 percent to six

percent in 12 months right the yield

curve is inverted you get paid higher

interest on a two-year loan to the

federal government than on a 30-year

loan the 30-year loan is 350 basis

points so summary of all this it's it's

this we had an unprecedented expansion

of the money supply in March of 2020

where we just pegged interest rates to

zero and the banker said we're going to

keep interest rates at zero for the next

four years they look I mean they

literally implied it said Not until 2024

where we raise interest rates okay well

that's one panic and now we've got the

other extreme which is the fastest

tightening of the money supply like one

of those old crap moments oops I think

we over did it on one side now we ever

did it on the other side

and what you see is risk assets they're

all getting hammered down

Bitcoin included but but look all

Financial assets bonds hammered 20

NASDAQ hammered 30 percent s p gold

hammered silver hammered uh and Bitcoin

hammered but on the other hand tangible

assets

oil

natural gas food

any type of energy they're all shooting

up and I think people are going through

this moment where they're like I guess

I'm gonna freeze the death or starve to

death unless I have some of that

tangible commodity stuff and the

financial stuff I guess I'll trade it

and meanwhile the the politicians you

know they they uh play with the little

knobs uh attempting to do good

and uh and it turns out that it's very

difficult for Humanity for any any human

being to actually make adjustments fast

enough and intricately enough so that

they could do good without probably

doing more harm than good and that's

where we find ourselves right now

yeah and um I grew up on the the US

yield curve because when I went from MIT

where we both graduated I went straight

to Wall Street and I was I was trading

fixed income derivatives so I grew up on

three percent overnight rates six

percent long rates I traded a swap book

that traded as a premium on top of that

for inner Bank rates and it pretty much

stayed around there for the next 10

years okay it's a couple times we had a

flat curve I think the bond yield got up

to eight percent maybe but you know

there wasn't QE back then and it all it

behaved like it traditionally behaved

what you just said boggles my mind that

a two-year no could go from 16 bips to

two 398 that's just you know the beauty

of the fish it's 15 weeks that's crazy I

mean 50 weeks and and this it's such a

massive market for people that don't

know it's it's so big and that's why it

usually doesn't move much and it's it

can still you know move markets

um and now it's all over the place like

you said we used to believe that the FED

had some control over the economy now

it's not obvious that they have any

control or that what they do helps the

economy

um and yeah it's a good point if you go

back to MIT right now and take an

economics class and raise your hand and

say is that really true what's in this

textbook that's five years ago your

professor can he can he look at you with

a straight face and say yes I don't know

be worth of us us doing that maybe to go

back to Sloan school and say do you

really think that's true and would they

have a discussion about Bitcoin I don't

know maybe they would

um Michael I think it's people it's

important for people to hear your

background because you said you know

Bitcoin was you know created kind of out

of the financial crisis in 08 and you

might not have cared about it unless you

had faced a currency collapse if you

hadn't have watched what happened in

March of 2020 would you would you we be

hit sitting here talking about Bitcoin

would you have 130 000 on your balance

sheet if that had never happened would

you have noticed it

no right like uh I well here's what what

I would do I sort of notice that some

techie thing that's interesting and it's

in the category of do I want to invest

in some startup or some Instagram

competitor or SnapChat or Uber or

Bitcoin or or Airbnb or you know we work

it's just another thing that may or may

not work that I'm not paying that much

attention to I think that um if you live

I I did have a business in Argentina and

I watched a currency collapse in

Argentina where we lost nearly

everything like we lost all of our

profits for a decade overnight we had

all our money in a bank and the bank and

it was in dollars it was an American

Bank in Argentina really and uh the

American Bank sealed itself the

government sent an edict to the bank the

bank converted our Dollars into Pesos at

one dollar per peso and then the next

day devalued the peso ten for one and

when we lost 90 of our money in one day

and uh in an American Bank holding in

dollars and and luckily for us it was a

small part of our business so it's kind

of like someone just chopped one of your

fingers off

but they didn't chop your head off now

if you'd lived in Argentina and you had

100 of your business or your assets in

Argentina on that same day you didn't

you know lose one percent you lost 90

percent of everything so I I kind of

knew intellectually that this could be

useful

you know but it wasn't a visceral it

wasn't a visceral near-death mortality

facing event right you don't really get

religion until and until uh someone says

you know next Monday everything you've

got I'm taking it all

if you stay here right and uh so when

you have that kind of come to Jesus

moment

then you get you get religion so um I

think that um for us our our um come to

Jesus moment was March of 2020 and it's

just we got to the end of the line where

I'd spent a decade trying to use

conventional models and conventional

techniques you know use treasury bonds

as a treasury treasury asset and do

stock BuyBacks and just work harder you

work harder and you use conventional

techniques but you're making no progress

and you're just getting beat to death

and I I mean at that point I wasn't

looking at

we still didn't have the Sri Lanka you

know the Sri Lanka Argentina Zimbabwe

type situation where

your money is losing value at the rate

of I think 90 of the value drains out of

the ball out of the Venezuelan Boulevard

every year right it wasn't that bad

but I think that uh in 2020 I realized

the half-life of money the half-life of

energy or a wealth stored in the

currency

was 36 to 48 months

so I looked at 500 million dollars and I

said 500 million dollars stored in U.S

dollars at a 15 to 20 monetary inflation

rate you know divide 20 percent into 70

right the rule is 70 and you know hey

okay got three and a half years and it's

half of it's gone so I think I got to

that point and and the significance of

that for me Brian was

I realized at that point that holding

500 million in cash

at at a 15

monetary inflation rate means that you

lose 75 million a year on your balance

sheet and the best I could hope for is 2

000 people working themselves to death

doing a hundred thousand things right

every year everywhere in the world and

if we didn't screw up anything and if

everybody worked

themselves to the Bone we could make 75

million right so I I had a this

inflection point where I realized

everything we were going to do for the

rest of our lives is going to be negated

by the inflation on our balance sheet

and there's just and that's the point of

Hope Despair and indifference to where

you're like it just doesn't matter what

we do for the next decade because we

can't get ahead now that's a slow death

right I've used the phrase right the

road to serfdom is working exponentially

harder for our currency growing

exponentially weaker just a road to Surf

them

um that's a slow death but you know if

you if you took yourself and you dropped

yourself into uh Venezuela or Zimbabwe

and I just told you or Argentina

it's the same idea but instead of a slow

debt that's just a fast death right you

just you might as well just open up a

vein and let the blood drain out right

it's not like giving a pint of blood a

week it's like giving a pint of blood a

day or I just open up the vein and I

just bleed out right I mean that's what

hyperinflation is

so I would say

um we were Jarred out of our lithurgy or

Jarred out of our

are conventional thinking because of

that crisis and then we had this a

couple of advantages one we had a huge

balance sheet and so it if you were

running on 500 million in debt instead

of 500 million in equity

right when you're running on 500 million

of equity at 15 monetary inflation the

cost is 75 million a year but when

you're running on 500 million in debt

you know you're actually getting 75

million a year so you see you see if

you're an indebted company you wouldn't

be a sensitive a sensitizer to that so

we happen to have a lot of cash we had

positive working capital and then we had

a company with a a fairly uh tight board

five people we knew each other and and a

very smart engaged executive team and

engage board and uh and I'm the

controlling shareholder of the company

so we didn't have to worry that we would

have some hostile takeover activists

that would just immediately Target us if

we were to get outside of the

conventional bounds

and so we had sort of not much to lose

when we had something to gain

and our option was a fast death we give

the 500 million back to the shareholders

and we just get Beat to Death by

Microsoft and Oracle you know or a slow

death we keep the 500 million but we

just gradually get whittled down at 50

to 100 million a year

or

take a risk

you know you ride out from the castle or

the or the Citadel and you make a stand

on the plane and you fight that battle

and you may win or you may lose

but you know that if you just cower in

your Citadel you know when you get

surrounded you're going to get starved

out get choked out it all cut off your

water supply right there's no way you're

going to win unless you make a stand

so we we decided that rather than the

slower the fat death we would go and do

something and take a risk and it's a

very intricate story which is probably

beyond the scope of this but the short

of it is about

10 different transactions you know a

Bitcoin you know a share buyback a Dutch

auction

Equity raises junk bond convertible

bonds lots of communication to the

street

and and we we went from investing 250

million in Bitcoin to 425 million in

Bitcoin to eventually a billion in

Bitcoin to 2 billion in Bitcoin to just

slightly less than 4 billion and Bitcoin

and and the result I just I just said

right for our shareholders our stock

outperformed every big tech company

every asset class and every Enterprise

software company I think we did the

number and we calculated we outperformed

485 of the 500 s p companies over that

time period

and then um and then in terms of the

corporation itself we added billions and

billions of dollars the Enterprise Value

company so

it's paid off so far

even though we get thrashed this way in

that way by volatility right you know

now you know the war in Russia the war

in the Ukraine the utterances of the

Central Bank of Europe the utterances of

the Federal Reserve all of those things

impact our stock and impact our

shareholders but

you know better to get out

it's another analogy you're in a row

boat you're rowing three miles an hour

the wind is blowing against you 20 miles

an hour the current is 10 miles an hour

you're never going to get to your

destination you will starve to death

before you get there your choice

you know reach down in the hall put up

the sale

tack into the wind and now you're

sailing with the wind and you know what

you're actually going somewhere and you

probably will get to your destination

but you're gonna actually get jerked

around by the storm and it's going to be

a fast ride and maybe a harrowing ride

but you have a you have life

and you have an opportunity because

you've harnessed a new energy source and

the old strategy was going to kill you

the new strategy is it's scary

I gotta learn to sail I gotta learn to

fly

it's uh invigorating it's different

people are going to think you're crazy

but you know they wouldn't be talking

about us and and uh we would be just

very quietly uh starving to death or

getting squeezed out of existence while

we didn't really bother anybody or

threaten anybody had we not done what we

did right okay I like the decision you

made I think I think it was the right

one

um question is there a price of Bitcoin

where things get interesting for you as

far as where I don't know not that you

get stopped out but where as a leverage

position gets where it's like okay now

there's an issue I might have to

liquidate bitcoin is there a price there

is it 12 000 or 13 000 well that's an

issue or is that not the case

now we've been pretty Artful about this

uh for example the first 425 million

almost the first 500 million was was

equity

and then uh then the next 500 million uh

or the the next 1.7 billion was

convertible debt but it was converting

into equity and it's not it's unsecured

debt so it's not related to the Bitcoin

it just becomes Equity at some point in

the future and in the next 500 million

was a junk bond but that was secured

against the cash flows of the software

business which is very stable that could

be refinanced in the future and it's

just it was a seven year Chuck Bond so

again not really correlated to bitcoin

um and then the next billion was an ATM

Equity issues we issued a billion

dollars of stock so so you see we've

issued a lot of equity and then we've

we've uh financed other parts of the

business it was only the last 200

million 205 million where we pledged

some Bitcoin is collateral so that's our

famous Bitcoin backed alone our Bitcoin

back yeah loan facility with silvergate

and we calculated that when we did that

we were 20x over collateralized like we

had 20 times as much Bitcoin as the loan

and right now we're probably 10x over

collateralized I think if Bitcoin got

down to 3 500 a Bitcoin then we'd have

to come up with some other collateral

okay but you know we just announced

another 500 million dollar uh at the

market Equity shelf registration so

we've just used a balance of equity

long-term debt secured debt unsecured

debt uh just a very thin layer uh

borrowing against the asset itself and

we primarily did that just to prove it

could be done in order to legitimize it

as an asset you could borrow against so

so the answer to your questions I don't

really worry so much about that

um you know it's at some point a Bitcoin

gets to 2 000 that I have to adjust

something but uh you know not so likely

with quite a big buffer okay are you

buying more or plan to buy more

yeah okay yeah we are I remember when

you were here last time I said uh I said

how how are you gonna buy it and you

were like I'll buy it up to 250 000 like

I remember you just said that just

resolutely like this for the next

thousand years you're like I still I'm

happy to keep buying this

um I don't know if you remember the same

we've still got the same uh you know

question which is if I have an increment

of 10 million dollars of cash flow do I

put it into bonds do I put it into gold

do I buy silver do I buy land do I buy

art do I buy Bitcoin so um I still think

Bitcoin is the most scarce most

desirable highest quality property it's

a long-term store of value

so I just I think generally for us we

we've adopted a very simple strategy we

keep we keep enough working capital to

last us a year normally in the range

about 50 million dollars in US dollars

and then when we have excess cash either

from operating income or any other

financing opportunity we put that into

our treasury Reserve asset and we have

adopted Bitcoin as our primary treasury

Reserve asset so we're 100 treasury

reserves in Bitcoin you might decide

that you're going to split your treasury

reserves one-third property one-third

arched one-third Bitcoin or one-third s

p stocks or something right it's a it's

a preference for an individual or an

investor

but of course our company microstrategy

has adopted a Bitcoin strategy and we

have transparently communicated that to

all of our outside shareholders and that

is in our 10K filing so when someone

buys microstrategy stock they know what

they're getting they don't want us to

hedge or juggle 16 different assets so

if I showed up and said hey I found it

we could buy a Picasso and I got a good

deal on it we think that's better than

Bitcoin all my shareholders would freak

out because they don't want to invest in

an art hedge fund or a real estate hedge

fund they want someone that's got a

Bitcoin strategy so so from a corporate

point of view it's the right thing for

us to do I personally think it's the

highest quality property in the world

and I think it will appreciate the best

over time and as I pointed out to you it

has performed the best in the past two

years versus every other option so

so we we've been right over a two-year

time frame I think we'll be right over a

4A 10-year time frame but even even if

it turned out that your picassos were

better or your Rolexes were a better

investment we're running a publicly

traded company

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