#755: The Bottom Is In with James Check

**Marty Bent** (0:07)
You've had a dynamic where money's become freer than free.
When you talk about a Fed just gone nuts, all the central banks going nuts. So it's all acting like safe haven.

**James Check** (0:18)
I believe that in a world where central bankers are tripping over themselves to devalue their currency, Bitcoin wins. In the world of fiat currencies, Bitcoin is the victor.

**Marty Bent** (0:29)
I mean, that's part of the bold case for Bitcoin.

**James Check** (0:31)
If you're not paying attention, you probably should be.

**Marty Bent** (0:36)
James Check, they've got our boy in the street and they're murdering him in the street. Bitcoin is at $66,500 right now.

**James Check** (0:44)
$66,250 based on my block clock. It'll be $2K by the end of this thing.

**Marty Bent** (0:51)
No, it's been a fun ride.

**James Check** (0:52)
It was cool. We learned a lot. We made some friends. And that's the thing, the yield is the friends you made along the way.

**Marty Bent** (0:58)
Yeah. Well, the yield could also be the cash you get from Bitcoin sold from MicroStrategy's balance sheet to cover the yields that's been promised to you via stretch.

**James Check** (1:10)
Yeah.
32 Bitcoin. I mean, the sell side, you just can't handle it. Who's buying this 32 Bitcoin?

**Marty Bent** (1:18)
Right. We were discussing it right before we recorded, but it's funny. I got three, are you okay techs today? It's like, yes, I'm fine. Been through this before.
It is weird. I know you did some content with Michael Sullivan about sentiment analysis. Sentiment? And Matt O'Dell and I were discussing this last Thursday on Rabbit Hole Recap. For me personally, it hasn't been this bad since the summer of 2015, when people legitimately thought Bitcoin was going to die.

**James Check** (1:49)
And I mean, I wasn't around 2015, but just based on my studies, that is the bear. That's like the most horrendous of all the bears. Anybody who thinks you've been through hard time, haven't been through a hard time, the length of it, it was a year of down and then a year of nothing. And Bitcoin was dead. Your biggest exchange is just a whole different animal. Every bear market gets progressively less brutal. There's also a side to it, we were saying before we record that you develop a thicker skin. You and I, we've been through a couple of these drawdowns before. So I forget where I heard this, but just the idea of resilience, mental resilience in anything really, but as an investor, mental resilience is how quickly you can bounce back. Like you get the initial shockwave and go, oh man, what's this red candle?
But then you go, okay, back to clear thinking, what does this actually mean? Does it change my thesis? Has anything actually materially changed? And the answer is no, nothing has materially changed at all. Bitcoin is the same. So there's been talking about having to sell some portion of Bitcoin. I wrote a piece on this yesterday, just sharing my thoughts.
At the end of the day, what I think is like the sale of 32 Bitcoin, let's face it, they don't need the 2.5 million bucks. Maybe he needs more AI tokens for his slot image generation. But my general view is that they don't need the money. They're selling it to slay the sacred cow. They've been saying, don't sell your Bitcoin for years and years and years. And that just is not for the business model they've built. They can't do that. They have to sell the Bitcoin at some point in time. And more importantly, what they're really doing is saying to their creditors, whether prefs or debt holders, don't worry.
There's six months of cash in the bank, but also we've got 34 years worth of Bitcoin. They're making that like, no, no, guys, we're serious, 34 years. And in my piece, I was saying, these guys, you got to remember with strategy, they have a fiduciary duty to their stakeholders, bonds first, press second, equity third. You know who's not on that cap table? Bitcoin and Bitcoiners. I'm sorry, guys, Bitcoin is not on the strategy cap table. They have no fiduciary duty to look after us. Now, of course, there's like a secondary effect where they don't want to nuke the market to zero. My view is that what they're doing is they're slaying the sacred cow because there is going to be very serious money out there, and to be perfectly fair, rightfully so, who's been concerned saying, hey, there's this 840,000 Bitcoin horde that this dude might have to liquidate in a distressed manner.
The sale of 32 Bitcoin, I don't know what the 32 number is, I'm sure there's some symbolism behind it, but the sale of a very small, trivial token amount is just the firm basically saying to their creditors, don't worry, your dividends are here, we're going to pay for them. And the other one is, it's kind of waylaying a lot of the fears that he's going to get himself into hot water. They may have to sell Bitcoin before they get to hot water, but they're not going to get to a point where they're just distressed and it's like, now we're in liquidation.