Strategy Sells $216M in Bitcoin. Is Saylor a Buyer or a Seller Now?: Bits + Bips

**Ram Ahluwalia** (0:00)
The quest for yield is insatiable amongst institutions.
If you're an exchange, you make money in a couple of ways. You make money in data, kind of. You make money in trading fees, and you make money in net interest income. Stable coins are the new net interest income. The problem with stable coins is that, typically if you're a holder, somebody else is getting the interest. And so what they'll do is they'll find ways to incentivize people to buy that stable coin, maybe not get all the interest, to kind of build that product market fit. The big challenge with all these stable coins right now is frankly utility. Yes, you can move it, but what can you really do with a stable coin? Can you buy a cup of coffee with it yet?

**Austin Campbell** (0:38)
Hey everyone, welcome to Bits and Bips, where we explore how crypto and macro collide one basis point at a time. We're here to discuss the latest stories in the worlds of crypto and macro and possibly soccer, but before we begin, a quick commercial break.

**SPEAKER_3** (0:55)
This episode is brought to you by Cape, America's privacy-first mobile carrier.
Same premium service you'd expect from any other carrier, but designed so your number, your location and your data actually stay yours. Get 33% off six months at cape.co.unchained.

**Austin Campbell** (1:17)
All right. As always, I'm your host, Austin Campbell, High Scholar of Zero Knowledge Group, here with my co-hosts, Ram Ahluwalia, Maester of Wealth, leader of Lumida, Chris Perkins, the Conan. We'll let you decide which one of Franklin Crypto. And a quick programming note, I want to remind everybody, the full Bits and Bips interviews are now on our dedicated channels, X, YouTube, Spotify, Apple podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. But before we get into the main story of today, I want to start with something that I was just saying to Chris during the ad break, which is that Belgium, to be honest, is not a real country. And as I've been watching, they're complaining that they have to play the US soccer team at full strength is going to be the key unlock for soccer in America. And what I mean by that is this, my observation as an American is that there's only two things right now that are consistently enraging the Europeans, soccer and air conditioning. And I'm just going to warn the entire continent, if you continue down this path, you will have our full attention.
And Micah, and Micah, yes, we get to that later. We will. All right. So all joking aside, let's start with the real first story, which is strategy sells Bitcoin again, this time in size. So strategy sold 3,588 Bitcoin, as disclosed, for $216 million in cash, roughly. That's its biggest tranche yet, capping some previous selling to fund the preferred dividends. So one of the things that we're looking at is with the MNAV premium gone, the question becomes, is selling Bitcoin to cover the dividends, the routine? Is it still an accumulator, or is this now a recurring seller in the current Bitcoin environment? So the facts, as we've said, were they broke their multi-year no-sell streak with the 32 Bitcoin sale and now have followed on a month later with a much larger sale. The holdings as of July 5th are 843,775 Bitcoin in reserves, $2.55 billion of US dollar reserves, and a cost basis of $75,700 a coin, significantly above the $60K range where coins are currently trading. MNav fell below one for the first time on June 27th to 99 cents. It has since recovered some. That is per CoinDesk and mnav.com. Those numbers vary a little depending on how you compute them, directionally correct.
STRC had traded as low as $74.57. I saw it back up around the 90s today before the show started. The dividend was raised 50 basis points to 12%.
Certainly, it has improved. It is not fully back to the $100 of par. The new framework is authorizing selling of up to 1.25 billion of Bitcoin, the monetization program plus a repurchase program, STRC first. I want to start here before we get into deeper bull and bear cases. Chris, I know you're like an investment banking guy. Ram, you've done a lot of investing. What do you think of the structural mechanics here? Like Saylor clearly is now pivoted to selling Bitcoin off the balance sheet versus issuing even more MSTR. What is that telling you as a starting point?
Go for it, man.

**Chris Perkins** (5:06)
Well, look, two ways to fund the debt obligations. They can either issue common stock, which is dilutive and would hurt MSTR. That would send MSTR going down. Or they can sell Bitcoin. And if they do sell Bitcoin, then they get this narrative violation.