Michael Saylor NEVER Controlled Bitcoins Price and That Explains What Comes Next... | EP 1577

**Nico Moran** (0:01)
Well, everyone's been focused on Bitcoin ripping and what the US Treasury is doing. Something more interesting has been happening. Michael Saylor continues to dilute MSTR, common shareholders, and he hasn't bought Bitcoin in over nine weeks. But despite this happening, the price of Bitcoin and MSTR is ripping. So what does this all mean? And really, I guess the next question is, who is really buying Bitcoin to fuel this move higher into about the 80k range? I think we're at like 78, 79 right now. We did hit 81k this morning or kind of maybe last night. So who's out here buying? It's the real question. Now, just to get through the details here, let me pull up what Saylor did. So we all know every Monday morning, kind of wake up and we're all expecting Saylor to buy some Bitcoin. At least that was essentially what has been happening for years. Now, every Monday morning, we would get the orange dots, then it turned into the green dots, and Saylor would buy mass amounts of Bitcoin. And it seemed as if there was only one real buyer in the market, which was Strategy. Again, when I say Michael Saylor, I'm usually just meaning Strategy. And when I say Strategy, everyone essentially just thinks of Michael Saylor. And for a long time, the case was made that, hey, Strategy is the buyer of last resort. They're the ones that are driving the Bitcoin price. But we have seen some interesting kind of counter signals to that very idea. And Saylor and Fong Li, the CEO of Strategy, came out and been like multiple clips saying, hey, look, we've bought in Bitcoin and the price is ducked. And then there's times when we've sold Bitcoin and the price is ripped, which is just further confirming the idea that Strategy isn't really in control of the Bitcoin price, even though they're one of the biggest Bitcoin treasury holders in the space. They have 840,000 Bitcoin, constantly buying Bitcoin. A lot of people attribute the price gains we've seen to Strategy just buying Bitcoin. There is a case to be made that maybe Wall Street's counter trading Strategy, maybe Wall Street is hunting Strategy, maybe they want to make an example of Strategy and trying to liquidate Strategy and their Bitcoin holdings. So if you look at the math, there's no possible way that they could actually liquidate Strategy unless Bitcoin got to like, what was it, 8K for like two years, which is not going to happen. Even the bears in the chat will not even come close to being that bearish. But what we've seen in the last couple of weeks is pretty interesting. So again, we've been covering this saga.
I've made the case for why Saylor is doing this. So again, on Monday, we got the announcement. Strategy increased its USD reserves to $5.1 billion, established additional USD cash of $1.59 billion, and repurchased $136 million of stretch. As of 8-23-26, Strategy holds roughly 4% of total Bitcoin supply and has 0% net leverage. That last part is really, I think, the unsung hero here. But let's go into the filing here because that's where you get all the information. So they sold 18.2 MSTR common stock. So this is a way bigger dilution if you're more of a MSTR bear. But more importantly, no Bitcoin sold. So for the last, I believe, nine weeks, well, no, the last two weeks in particular, Strategy's been able to raise cash without selling Bitcoin. And further, we haven't seen a Bitcoin buy from Strategy in about two months, a little over two months, which is really interesting just looking at the price action. Now, you get more information when you look at the Strategy dashboard here. And something I think very impressive happened with this one particular buy. So you can see $5.1 billion USD reserve, $1.58 in cash. And now they have 3.9 years of USD on hand that they can sell for the STR Preferred Stock. If you remember correctly, if you can remember what we talked about last week, Strategy had 2.9 years. So with this single move, they have now almost four years of cash on hand. So it looks as if they most likely won't have to ever sell Bitcoin. I'm not going to say ever, but it looks like for the short to medium term, they're not going to have to sell any Bitcoin. And you can see in the MSTR stock price and in the stretch price, that it is making investors feel, I would say, a little safer in those positions. Maybe Saylor has regained his trust, the trust of the investors. Now remember, the reason that Strategy is doing this is, I think, put bluntly, they want to get included in the S&P 500 And remember, the credit rating that they got, I believe it was a B plus. They said a few specific things. And ever since that particular credit rating, Strategy has done everything in their power to try to raise their credit rating out of that B plus range, which is really not the best. Hey, look, I know when we got grades in school, B plus is cool, at least for me, a B plus, I was happy. It's not the best credit rating, okay? But they said a few things in particular. One, they didn't really look at Bitcoin as a productive asset. They basically were counting that 840,000 plus Bitcoin on Strategy's balance sheet as a non-asset, so a big old fat zero on their asset sheet.