Momentum Is Building For Bitcoin
Michael Saylor @saylor · 2025-09-08 · 7m · View on X →
Check out price of Bitcoin this morning.
The cryptocurrency up over 100% this year joining us right now is Bitcoin,
bull, Michael, sailor, a strategy executive chairman.
You know him from micro strategy.
People are still getting those names, you know, figured out.
So we had Tumbly on the broadcast.
I don't know if you saw this earlier today.
And he effectively said Bitcoin at $111 is headed to $200,000,
effectively by Christmas.
What do you think of that?
Well, most of the equity analysts that follow our stock
have target prices for Bitcoin and they're all north of 150.
Bitcoin represents a digital transformation in the capital markets.
And so the more people know about it, the more they get educated on it,
the more companies embrace it, the higher it goes.
You can't make any more of it.
Right. That may be all, but in terms of just what you're seeing in terms of flows
and whatnot, that would get it to $200,000 by the end of the year.
Yeah, great, great flows from the ETFs.
BlackRock is showing record numbers.
Our companies raised $19 billion this year.
All of it went into Bitcoin.
We just announced $217 million.
Bitcoin purchases this morning when I before I walked onto this set here.
Wait, $217 million.
$217 million.
Just slightly less than $2,000 Bitcoin.
Our first buy and we were the first public company to buy Bitcoin.
We bought $250 million of Bitcoin and that was like all the money we'd come up with in 30 years.
Yeah.
And this was just a short week, four days.
Okay, so can I ask you this for those folks who are investing in micro strategy,
or strategy, I should say, as opposed to Bitcoin, you are effectively a levered bet on Bitcoin.
That's what this company has become.
That's correct.
Okay, so the question is on the way up, it would be fabulous.
Right? Because everything becomes, you know, multiplied.
What happens on the way down if there is a down?
Well, a lot of investors, they have to buy equity.
And so we offer Bitcoin backed equity or they need to buy credit.
And so we have four Bitcoin backed credit instruments, preferred stocks.
So the ones that are risk adverse, the ones that the exposure are buying the credit,
like strike, which has got the upside with some downside protection.
The ones that are buying the equity want two X Bitcoin.
They want more volatility, they want more performance, and they see it as more
efficient way to get that exposure.
Turns out that 99% of the money in the world is mandated to equity and credit.
Most of these professional investors and most of these passive funds,
they can't buy the underlying commodity, even if they wanted to.
Right, but just to understand it, if in fact, even if there was a crypto winter,
and we'll call it a winter because that suggests there's still a potential summer again.
At what numbers and levels does it become complicated at which you start to have to sell things?
You know, we constructed a pretty bulletproof balance sheet.
I would say we have a PhD in leverage by now because we lived through the last crypto winter.
We went from $6,000 to $16,000.
We were buying Bitcoin at $16,000.
We used to use senior debt and we had some margin-type loans.
We rolled out of that to converts, and this year we really have started to reallocate to
perfords, and perfords are the best kind of leverage because they never come due.
So I think we're fine right now because substantially our leverage comes from
preferred stocks rather than from debt at all.
You mentioned that you bought $250 million this morning or $217.
This morning as you walked in, what's your dollar cost average for what you've paid for Bitcoin?
About $73,000 of coin.
I guess I wonder if you think standard and pours or others or if anybody has any sort of bias
towards crypto still at this point because the S&P 500 just came out with their decisions
and they chose to go with Robin Hood and Apple oven over strategy.
A lot of people were surprised by that.
The stock actually was down a little bit.
Do you think that there is a bias at any of the indexes or any places that come through
this against the company with a lot of Bitcoin and holdings?
I don't think there's a bias.
I don't think we expected to be selected on our first quarter of eligibility.
We figured it'll happen at some time.
There's a digital transformation in the markets.
This is a brand new novel concept.
Every quarter we make new believers.
We get more support from banks, from politicians, from credit rating agencies, etc.
I think that will continue for the foreseeable future.
Can we go back to the preferred piece for just a moment?
No, because I think people want to understand what a leverage bet this is, but you're suggesting
that because it's preferred, it never comes due.
How can it be that they never come?
If you were using margin debt, you'd never want to go beyond 10% leverage.
If you were using bonds, maybe 20%, 25% is about the most you would want to do.
But if you're selling a perpetual instrument, I borrow a billion dollars forever, and I agree
to pay you, say, 10% dividend yield forever.
The principle is never coming due.
The preferred stock by definition is a dividend.
It's not a coupon.
The board has to have the option to suspend it in duress.
It's practically speaking possible to take your leverage beyond 20% to 30% or 40%, even.
But you don't have the kind of credit risk you have when you have a bond or a margin.
Let me ask you a different question.
There's a whole bunch of companies now, these sort of treasury companies that are emerging
spacks and other things that are trying to look a little bit like what you're doing, right?
We've had 180 companies that have adopted Bitcoin on their balance sheet.
We were the first.
No, but I'm so close in the past.
Right, but I'm curious about some of these levered efforts that may be using actual debt,
not preferred the way you are, and how you think about them in the marketplace.
Most companies are buying Bitcoin instead of holding sovereign debt, or they're buying
Bitcoin instead of dividending out their cash flows, or instead of buying back their stock,
they're just buying Bitcoin.
And so they're actually increasing their capital base.
They're decreasing the credit risk in the company.
There are a few companies that are going to issue Bitcoin back credit.
They may do it with bonds, they may do it with converts, they may do it with preferred.
We're the first company to create liquid preferred stocks that represent Bitcoin back credit.
Companies like Meta Planet will probably issue preferred stocks.
They'll do it in Japan in a yen basis.
Most other companies are just going to creep into this by building up their capital base,
and they're not going to get into the business of issuing credit instruments back by Bitcoin.
How much levers do you have?
We have about, let's see, 11% of our Bitcoin holdings are bonds, so convertible bonds,
and like another 9% are preferred.
So not that much.
I mean, really, we have $72 billion of Bitcoin.
We have $8 billion of convertible bonds that will eventually equitize more than half of
the majority in the money.
Michael Seller, I want to thank you.
Appreciate it.
You got there early.
You got there so far so good.
Thank you.
Thank you.