Ben Hunnewell: We're the First Company to Hold STRC. What Bitcoin Skeptics Should Know

**Ben Hunnewell** (0:00)
Strategy is a polarizing company. There are people that absolutely love it, and there are people that absolutely hate it. You have people that think all the strategy followers are idiots and they want to take advantage of that. And then you got the other guys that are real big followers saying, all the rest of these naysayers are idiots. We're gonna take all their money. But when Stretch came out, that's when I realized this is going to change the world. You've heard people say that there's no one that will ever catch strategy. If anybody can catch them, it might be Strife. I think they're going to be able to raise immense amounts of capital with this structure.

**Natalie Brunell** (0:35)
Hey, everyone, thanks for joining me. Here with me in New York City is Ben Hunnewell. He is the Chief Financial Officer for Prevalon Energy, which was the first corporation to hold STRC, the digital credit instrument issued by Strategy. Ben, thank you so much for joining me here in person.

**Ben Hunnewell** (0:53)
Thanks, Natalie. Appreciate you having me.

**Natalie Brunell** (0:54)
Well, first, can you give us a little bit of an introduction? Who are you? What's your background and what is Prevalon Energy?

**Ben Hunnewell** (1:00)
So I am the CFO of Prevalon Energy. We're actually an LLC.
We are a joint venture partner of Mitsubishi Power Systems Americas. Our primary focus is battery energy storage systems.
Prevalon has been under existing management now for about two years. The management team purchased the business or the controlling stake back in April of 2024 So we're only a little over two years old with the current management. It's been a good run.

**Natalie Brunell** (1:36)
So we're going to get all into like energy, battery energy storage systems. But first of all, I mean, how did you get into Bitcoin? Because you're one of the big reasons why this company put stretch on the balance sheet.

**Ben Hunnewell** (1:48)
Well, my story starts back in 2020, around the COVID time. And when I saw what was going to happen with the Fed about to issue that much money, and we knew what was coming.
So that's when I really started looking into Bitcoin a lot more serious. Up until that point, I think Michael's famous for saying everybody hates it until they love it. And I was one of those people. I used to make fun of the people that invested in Bitcoin.
But the more I studied it, because lo and behold, when you shut down the planet, you have a lot of time. So that gave me a lot of time to actually dig into it. And once you understand that Bitcoin was a protocol, and you understand that it's not something you can hack. That's like hacking the base 10 numbering system. It just doesn't happen. So as you start to get more involved that way, then I started to appreciate it more.
It was somewhere around late 2020, maybe 2021, when I flipped to be more of a maxi and realized the difference between cryptocurrencies and Bitcoin. And from there, about that time is when MicroStrategy at the time decided to put some Bitcoin on the balance sheet. And I thought, okay, there's a company I'm interested in. So that was when I started dating, if you will, with MSTR. And I've been following them ever since and become more and more of a fan along the way, which led us down the path of, you know, when Stretch actually came out last year. I mean, the Preferreds, the Converts and the Common Stock, ATM, all that stuff was things that I was very interested in. But when Stretch came out, that's when I realized this was a pivotal moment. And recognizing an opportunity early is a key attribute for any successful businessman. And I went to my partners and told them, this is going to change the world. It's going to change the financial world. And once they realized that wasn't hyperbole, they were on board pretty quick. So small companies, small management teams, small section of a piece of voters. So it was relatively quick and able to be nimble, move into it.

**Natalie Brunell** (4:01)
Well, a lot of people have now heard of companies holding Bitcoin on the balance sheet. But why specifically was Stretch something that you wanted to embrace? Because people have never heard of these perpetual preferred instruments collateralized by Bitcoin paying upwards of 11 and a half, some of them now 13 percent.

**Ben Hunnewell** (4:20)
Yeah. Yeah. Well, you know, I've heard the keep Bitcoin on your balance sheet for a long time. You know, Michael's been preaching it for years now. And I was never really an advocate for that, just because the primary purpose of a business is to generate product and generate cash flows and profit for its its owners and shareholders and Bitcoin's volatility means that, you know, particularly up until the FASB rules changed, they were very punitive to Bitcoin. So you can only mark it down. You could never mark it up.