Short seller Jim Chanos said in a new post on X that Strategy’s stock, MSTR, still offers about $80 billion of what he called "pure arbitrage". According to Protos, Chanos said the catalyst is Strategy selling its own stock, which he framed as a trading opportunity.
He described the setup as "one of the greatest pure arbitrage situations, ever" and called it "an $80 billion actionable spread." The report said Chanos was not telling traders to put on an $80 billion position in full. His point was that the broader gap gives room to time specific entries and exits.
The trade structure Chanos outlined
The idea, as summarized in the report, is that a skeptic can short any amount of MSTR, either directly or through derivatives, while taking a long position in BTC through spot or derivatives. That long leg would be sized in proportion to Strategy’s bitcoin holdings and adjusted to fit the total position.
In the X post, Chanos did not confirm that he had opened a new MSTR short. He also did not disclose a hedge ratio or show how he arrived at the $80 billion estimate.
Why Protos says the setup is not a clean one-to-one arbitrage
The report noted that the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, or CFTC, defines arbitrage as buying and selling identical or equivalent instruments to capture a price discrepancy. MSTR is clearly linked to Strategy’s BTC holdings, but it is neither identical to bitcoin nor exchangeable for it.
Strategy itself says MSTR does not give shareholders any ownership interest in the company’s BTC and does not provide redemption rights tied to those holdings. The company’s description, as cited by Protos, is that MSTR offers "amplified exposure" to BTC.
MSTR’s premium to bitcoin holdings has moved sharply over time
Protos said MSTR often trades in an erratic and idiosyncratic way, making entry and exit timing a skill-dependent exercise for capital markets operators.
Over Strategy’s corporate lifespan, MSTR’s mNAV premium to its BTC holdings has swung widely. Since December 2020, when Strategy had accumulated more than 70,000 BTC, the stock’s basic mNAV has traded between a low of 0.5x and a high of 3.7x.
Protos also referred to its prior reporting, which said Chanos captured a decline in mNAV from an entry near 2.5x basic mNAV in late 2024 to an exit near 1.23x in November 2025.