On Aug. 17, Strategy founder and executive chairman Michael Saylor and CEO Phong Le took part in a live investor Q&A hosted by Coin Stories Podcast host Natalie Brunell. The discussion covered a broad set of shareholder concerns, including MSTR’s pullback, at-the-market common share issuance, STRC buybacks, Bitcoin sales, cash reserves, and the company’s capital allocation priorities. The source text noted that the interview took place before the market recovery, so some of the information may now be dated.
Across the session, both executives returned to the same point: Strategy’s most important task right now is to repair and expand its digital credit business, especially STRC, rather than pay dividends to MSTR common shareholders or put common share repurchases at the top of the list. Saylor also said Strategy believes it is operating in a Bitcoin bear market and needs to be prepared for a difficult stretch lasting months, a year, or even two years, while continuing to buy Bitcoin and maintain a long-term bullish view.
Bitcoin as digital capital, STRC as digital credit
Brunell opened the discussion by asking about a digital asset spectrum Saylor had posted on X, which grouped assets into digital capital, digital credit, digital currency, and digital specie. Investors wanted clarity on what products belonged in the digital currency bucket and whether Saylor rejected the idea that Bitcoin is money.
Saylor said that under a theoretical definition, money can be understood as a store of value not issued by a sovereign and owned directly by the holder, with gold serving as an example. He described that as a classical Austrian-school view. Under the modern mainstream view, he said, money means fiat currencies such as the U.S. dollar or assets that maintain a peg to fiat and function as equivalents. In his view, about 99% of people think about money in fiat terms, and money-market instruments are fiat-based tools that generate yield.
He added that perhaps 1% of people approach the subject from an Austrian-school perspective, seeing gold as money, with some extending that view to silver or Bitcoin. But he called that largely an academic debate because only about 0.1% of global capital or economic value is actually committed to the Bitcoin network today. Put differently, he said, 99.9% of capital, money, and valuable assets still sit outside the Bitcoin ecosystem.
Saylor said much of that external value consists of equity capital, real estate capital, metals such as gold, and credit assets measured in the many trillions of dollars. If Bitcoin is going to grow 10x or 100x, he argued, it has to attract capital from traditional finance, including equity capital, credit capital, and money-market capital.
That is why he classifies Bitcoin as digital capital. In his framing, Bitcoin competes with gold, real estate, equity capital, credit assets, money-market instruments held as capital, and art. To draw more capital into the network, he said, Bitcoin has to be presented as superior to gold, art, real estate, the S&P, and bullion.
By contrast, he described STRC as digital credit. Strategy, he said, has extracted a credit instrument from capital, one with less volatility than Bitcoin but more volatility than fiat. The next step, in his view, is to create something that looks like digital currency on top of STRC. He described that as an idealized Bitcoin-backed stable instrument that stays stable against fiat, whether dollars, yen, or euros, while also paying yield.
Digital currency should be stable and yield-bearing
Saylor drew a distinction between digital specie and digital currency. Digital specie, in his usage, refers to stablecoins such as Tether, Circle, and similar dollar-linked tokens. Those instruments, he said, do not pay yield on their own regardless of the currency system they attach to.
By 2026, he said, digital specie has clearly won as the medium of exchange inside crypto and digital assets. Nearly all pricing around the world is still denominated in fiat, he argued, and even saying 99.9% may understate how dominant that is. The medium of exchange remains the dollar and other fiat currencies, and stablecoins, even when counted, still do not pay yield.
That makes stablecoins useful for settlement and making change, he said, but not especially strong as stores of value. Digital currency, by contrast, would combine the best features of digital credit and digital specie: price stability against fiat plus yield.
He said a stablecoin-like tool that also generates yield would make for a much better store of value. The instrument shown in his diagram, he said, is among the first and possibly the first attempt to create a digital currency asset. Through financial engineering, it seeks to keep its price near $1 while generating yield sourced from digital credit.
Saylor expects dozens or even hundreds of different monetary assets to emerge. The asset in his chart is not the only possible version, he said, and he believes roughly a dozen institutions in the digital asset industry are already developing digital currency assets.
He also said digital currency will not necessarily exist only as a token. The U.S. could see digital currency funds in ETF form. Other regions could see ETPs, exchange-listed public funds, and private funds. In his framing, money-market funds already exist in both private and public structures, while stablecoins function as currency-linked monetary tools.
If Bitcoin is to grow 10x or 100x, Saylor said, the industry needs channels for money from the credit markets and money markets to enter the ecosystem. Without STRC and the early versions of digital currency tokens, fiat flowing into the stablecoin market remains backed entirely by fiat assets, while capital entering capital markets can support BTC but credit-market and money-market capital does not really enter the Bitcoin system.
If high-quality credit can be created, he said, then monetary instruments can be built on top of it. Companies such as Strategy and Strive that create digital credit also have equity that attracts capital, and that capital can then move toward Bitcoin. Firms that build digital currency tools will also have equity and products based on digital credit, bringing in additional capital.
His conclusion was that the broader system grows if credit tools, money tools, specie tools, and equity tools are all built in ways that are backed by BTC or connected to the Bitcoin ecosystem. He added that the product shown in his chart is only one early example, not the only path, and he was not endorsing it or recommending an investment. He described it as a securities-type investment, but one he still views as a landmark event, similar to the arrival of the first money-market funds and later money-market fund-backed ETFs.
A shareholder asks what to do after $73,000 fell to $20,000
Brunell then turned to MSTR common equity and read a question from an investor named Rob. He said he had invested $73,000 in MSTR for each of his three children because he believed in the company’s long-term potential, and each position was now worth only $20,000. He argued that MSTR common shareholders seemed to be the company’s lowest priority, that Strategy was protecting STRC and using MSTR ATM issuance to repay convertible debt, and that per-share BTC gains were not helping his children much. He also worried the company could issue so much stock through the ATM that the share price might never return to $325, and asked whether Strategy had considered paying a dividend to common holders, at least as a short-term tangible measure.
Le said MSTR common shareholders are absolutely the company’s most important priority and that increasing the value of MSTR and lifting the stock price remain the top objectives. The way to do that, he said, is to make MSTR outperform Bitcoin.
Since August 2020, when Strategy first put Bitcoin on its balance sheet, Bitcoin has risen 32% and MSTR has risen 41%, according to Le. He acknowledged that investors who entered later may not yet have seen that outperformance. Over time, when Bitcoin rises, MSTR usually rises more because the company holds more Bitcoin per share. In the past that amplification came through leverage, including convertible debt. More recently, he said, it has come through digital credit and the magnification mechanism tied to STRC.
He also said the downside works the same way. Bitcoin has declined 50% from its all-time high, while MSTR is down about 75% from its own high. That, he said, is what the shareholder is experiencing now.
Because Bitcoin is the underlying asset, Le said, increasing Bitcoin per share raises MSTR’s value when Bitcoin goes up. The tradeoff is a deeper drawdown on the way down. If common shareholders want the stock to rise, the company has to increase Bitcoin per share, and making STRC work is part of that process. That is why management has been so focused on STRC and on getting it back to par, he said. In the long run, that is what should push Bitcoin per share and MSTR common equity higher.
Le said Strategy will not pay a common dividend because that is not the best use of capital. The best use, in management’s view, is to make STRC function properly, buy Bitcoin, and place that Bitcoin on the balance sheet.
Saylor added a blunt product distinction. Investors who want dividends should own preferred stock, he said, pointing to STRD, which he said has an effective yield near 15%. Investors seeking a more stable instrument that pays dividends could consider STRC or STRK, which were designed to distribute income and still offer some upside.
He then laid out a rough time-horizon framework. If someone’s horizon is less than four months, he said, they might belong in money-market tools. If it is four months to four years and the goal is to get principal back with a decent return, that investor is acting more like a credit investor and may be better suited to credit tools. If the asset is equity, he said, the investor should have at least a four-year horizon, ideally seven to ten years.
Saylor said Bitcoin set an all-time high about a year ago, and in a bear market MSTR gives holders magnified Bitcoin exposure. If Bitcoin falls 50%, MSTR may fall 75%; in a bull market, the expectation is that MSTR will outperform Bitcoin. Buying MSTR, he said, means buying amplified Bitcoin exposure.
He compared Bitcoin ownership to riding a roller coaster and argued that the right way to judge it is through a four-year lens. Strategy looks at Bitcoin using the 200-week simple moving average and a four-year cycle view, he said.
In his view, MSTR should be more volatile than Bitcoin because equity exists to provide leverage-like upside. Paying dividends on the common stock would weaken the value proposition of the equity and weaken the value proposition of the credit products as well.
He then described what success would look like operationally. If Strategy can sell $10 billion of STRC each year and BTC performs above the company’s hurdle rate, currently around 10% to 10.5%, then from the perspective of common shareholders that $10 billion in credit issuance will begin to resemble net income. If that happens, credit product sales become something the market can assign a multiple to. Without those sales, there is nothing for the market to value in that way, he said.
That is why the most important task is to stabilize the credit business and build a high-quality, durable credit franchise. The equity return comes later, in his telling.
Strategy says a hard stretch may last one to two years
Saylor described the company as being in an investment phase in which the credit business has to be built first. What helps the equity in the short term may not help its long-term value, he said, while things that help the credit business in the short term can ultimately help the equity.
The company’s product is credit, he said. Better credit products make the company more valuable. If Strategy succeeds with credit, especially STRC, he believes the company becomes very valuable.
He compared the effort to Netflix or Amazon. Amazon spent a long period offering cheap or even free shipping while building Amazon Prime, and many people thought that was not good for the equity, he said. Later, consumers across the country subscribed and used the service, and Amazon won the market. Strategy sees itself trying to win the digital credit market and create the best credit product in the world.
He said common shareholders would be the largest beneficiaries if that happens. He also reminded listeners that he is a major shareholder himself, owning more than 19 million common shares.
Still, he warned that the company has to be ready for difficult years. It could be one year or two years, he said. Management does not think it will last four years, but it may take months, a year, or two years before things begin to move in a direction favorable to common equity.
No priority on MSTR buybacks right now
Asked whether Strategy plans to repurchase MSTR after recently selling Bitcoin and buying back STRC, Saylor said the company would be willing to buy back MSTR if the stock traded below mNAV, or if a repurchase otherwise served the company’s best interests. He said those options are evaluated every week and every day.
At the moment, however, STRC is trading below par, making STRC repurchases the more obvious choice. MSTR, by contrast, is not currently trading below mNAV. If that changes and the stock trades at a large discount relative to mNAV, investors may see the company take similar action, he said.
But he stressed that this is not the company’s highest priority. The immediate priority is to repair the credit business. If the credit business is repaired, the equity premium should expand, which would help common shareholders.
Using capital that could repair the credit business to repurchase common stock would hurt both the equity and the credit operation, he argued. If the credit business weakens, the stock’s fundamentals weaken as well, even if the company is buying shares in the open market.
Saylor framed the issue this way: either the digital credit business is worth $100 billion, $1 trillion, or something in between, or it is worth zero if it never works. Strategy’s capital allocation is built around making sure that business works, he said.
ATM issuance does not automatically dilute Bitcoin per share
Before answering a question about JPMorgan as a strategic comparison, Le said there is a common misunderstanding in the market that any equity issuance automatically dilutes shareholders. From the standpoint of Bitcoin per share, he said, that is not necessarily true.
He gave several examples. If Strategy sells the digital credit product STRC and then issues equity to pay dividends, he said, that can materially accrete value for shareholders. If the company issues equity above 1x mNAV, which he said was about 1.07x mNAV at the time, and uses the proceeds to buy Bitcoin, that also accretes value by increasing Bitcoin per share.
Another example: issuing equity and then repurchasing STRC below its issuance price. If STRC was issued at $100 and the company can issue MSTR equity when it is above 1x mNAV and then buy back STRC at $95, that too accretes value for common shareholders and raises Bitcoin per share, he said.
That is the key point investors need to understand, Le said. Saylor added that issuing equity above mNAV and holding the proceeds in dollars can also accrete value. In his view, the company’s transactions are designed to strengthen the balance sheet, increase resilience, and improve long-term prospects.
Le says Strategy wants to be the JPMorgan of digital assets
Asked why Strategy looks to JPMorgan as a reference point for digital credit when Bitcoin was created in opposition to centralized, trust-based banking, Le said the company does not want to become JPMorgan itself. It wants to become the JPMorgan of digital assets.
He said JPMorgan offers useful lessons. It is the most valuable bank in the world, and Strategy wants to become the most valuable digital asset company in the world. JPMorgan has trust and substantial equity value, and Strategy wants an equivalent level of trust and equity value inside the digital asset world.
He noted that JPMorgan is also one of the largest players in the repo market and a bank the U.S. government may turn to when needed. Strategy wants that level of trust and scale in digital assets, he said, though not by copying JPMorgan’s business model. The comparison is about becoming the largest and most important participant in the sector.
The first step, he said, is becoming the largest corporate holder of Bitcoin in the world. Strategy’s holdings amount to about 4% of total Bitcoin supply, according to Le. After that, the company intends to build products on top of Bitcoin: MSTR as digital equity, STRC as digital credit, and then potentially additional products built by others on top of those layers, including the digital currency structures Saylor described earlier.
Le also referenced another comparison Saylor has made, calling STRC the company’s iPhone moment. He said that does not mean Strategy plans to operate like Apple. The comparison is to the historical success of the iPhone as a product and the belief that STRC could become the most successful digital credit product globally.
STRC proceeds can go to cash, buybacks, or Bitcoin
Asked by an X user whether Strategy could sell STRC and use the proceeds to build cash reserves and repurchase MSTR, rather than only buy Bitcoin, Saylor said yes. The company can do many things with that capital, he said.
It can exchange STRC proceeds for MSTR, dollars, or BTC, and it can also use them to deal with other outstanding debt or credit instruments. There may be additional uses as well. Strategy, he said, remains open-minded about how to deploy that capital.
MSCI removal would affect roughly 3% to 4% of float, Le says
On MSCI’s proposed rule changes that could remove Bitcoin treasury companies from its indexes, Le said MSCI index funds currently hold roughly 3% to 4% of Strategy’s float. If the company were removed from the relevant indexes, that could create some selling pressure for a period of time.
He did not view that as a major issue. In his words, 3% to 4% is not enough to create a material long-term change in the stock price, so he would define the impact as not material. If the company’s Bitcoin holdings are considered as part of the picture, he said, the effect gets smaller still, perhaps around 0.1%.
Le also argued that MSCI’s approach is out of step with the U.S. government, global markets, and other indexes. He said this is the second time MSCI has tried to deal with the issue, this time by redefining what counts as an operating asset.
According to Le, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission and the Financial Accounting Standards Board have already defined what constitutes an operating asset for Strategy, and Bitcoin is plainly one of them. MSCI, he said, appears to be taking a position that conflicts with U.S. GAAP and the SEC.
Strategy plans to respond and seek a better understanding of why MSCI is handling Bitcoin as an asset class in this way. He said he hopes MSCI will consider feedback from Strategy and others in a constructive way and not move forward with the latest proposal. Even if it does, he said, he does not think the impact on Strategy would be especially important.
Strategy expects to keep large dollar reserves
Asked whether Strategy could use STRC to build a $20 billion to $30 billion cash reserve for deployment in a future bear market, Saylor said the company expects to hold substantial cash at all times going forward. Over time, he said, dollar reserves, Bitcoin reserves, and unrestricted operating cash should all continue to grow.
Those funds can be used flexibly to repurchase credit instruments, repurchase stock, repurchase debt, or buy Bitcoin whenever management thinks that is sensible. Strategy’s capital allocation options are expanding, he said, and the company expects to become larger and have more choices than it had in the past.
Le then drew a distinction between S&P credit ratings and the S&P 500 index. On the ratings side, he said, Strategy’s corporate rating is currently B-. More cash could help and may improve the rating over time.
But the bigger issue, he said, is whether rating agencies treat the Bitcoin on Strategy’s balance sheet as capital. Right now, they do not. In fact, he said, the value they assign to it is effectively less than zero. If that treatment changes, the rating will improve, and that matters more than simply increasing dollar reserves. Inclusion in the S&P 500, he said, is not directly tied to the size of the company’s dollar holdings.
Strategy says it is not a short-term Bitcoin trader
On whether Strategy will eventually focus more on opportunistic spot Bitcoin purchases, Saylor said the company’s primary business is creating digital credit products that strip away most of Bitcoin’s volatility while extracting yield, with STRC being one example.
He said the digital credit market is currently about $15 billion and could grow to $100 billion, then $200 billion, $400 billion, and eventually $1 trillion.
The transactions Strategy does are effectively a bet that Bitcoin’s long-term performance will exceed the company’s hurdle rate, which he said was around 10.5% and updated every 15 seconds on the company’s website. Strategy’s duration is about 33 years, so the bet is on the next 10 to 30 years, not on daily Bitcoin trading.
Investors should not buy MSTR because they think the company is unusually good at trading Bitcoin, Saylor said. If someone believes they have found a great Bitcoin trader, he suggested, that person should invest in the trader’s private fund instead. The reason to buy MSTR, he said, is that Strategy has about $60 billion of capital and could create $5 billion, $10 billion, or even $20 billion of digital credit per year. If Bitcoin performs above the funding hurdle, the company could create about $20 billion of value annually and grow at 30% per year.
Operationally, he said, Strategy expects to hold more cash. If Bitcoin trades at an extremely high premium relative to its 200-week moving average, the company may prefer to keep more cash after selling credit products. If Bitcoin trades at a very low premium or at a discount to that average, it may allocate more to Bitcoin.
That means the point in the cycle can influence the balance between cash and BTC, but Strategy is not a short-term trading firm.
He added that in bull markets, MSTR’s equity premium tends to expand, demand for the common stock rises, demand for credit products rises, and perceived credit risk falls. Both the equity and credit sides of the business can therefore grow quickly, bringing in more capital. In strong bull markets, Strategy generally buys more Bitcoin. In bear markets, equity premiums compress, credit products weaken, demand declines, and the company generally buys less Bitcoin in weak markets than it does in strong ones.
Still, if the company buys Bitcoin using common stock issued at a high premium, the exact purchase price of Bitcoin is not the most important variable, he said. As long as Strategy is exchanging an even richer-valued stock for Bitcoin, the transaction can still be accretive to shareholders.
He offered an example: if Bitcoin rises to $1 million and MSTR rises to $25,000 per share because its premium expands, and Strategy uses equity to buy Bitcoin at that point, a later decline in Bitcoin from $1 million to $200,000 does not by itself prove the purchase was a mistake, because the company used highly valued equity in the exchange.
For Bitcoin bought with credit tools, the main question is not the short-term drawdown but whether Bitcoin will outperform the credit cost over the next decade. Strategy thinks in long time frames, he said. How much dollar exposure or Bitcoin exposure the company carries, and how much capital markets activity it undertakes, will be driven mainly by the markets themselves: the Bitcoin market, the credit market, the equity market, and to some extent the derivatives market, all of which move independently each day and sometimes interact.
No plan to buy outside cash-flow businesses
When asked whether Strategy could acquire operating businesses with cash flow backed by a Bitcoin treasury, Saylor said plainly that it would not.
He said that could be a perfectly reasonable business model for other companies, and there are investors who specialize in buying cash-flow businesses. But Strategy’s business model is to create digital credit. Moving away from that would distract management, dilute focus, and add operational complexity.
It would also weaken the equity story because investors would no longer only need a Bitcoin valuation model for MSTR. They would need to assess each acquired business and asset separately. Saylor also said it would hurt the derivatives market. MSTR’s call and put options market runs into the tens of billions of dollars, and diversification into multiple unrelated cash-flow businesses would affect those investors.
It would also weaken the credit business. At present, he said, Strategy can recalculate its credit risk every 15 seconds. Once heterogeneous operating businesses are added, the company would need a different credit model to evaluate how those businesses change the risk of the whole enterprise.
For Strategy, he said, that would be a dilutive distraction. The company plans to remain focused on its current business model because management believes it is the best one for Strategy to execute.
After STRC’s pullback, Strategy wants deeper dollar liquidity
Asked what management had learned from STRC’s recent pullback and recovery, Le said the biggest lesson was the need to hold enough dollar liquidity on the balance sheet to support dividend payments. He said that is why Strategy currently holds $4.8 billion in cash.
Going forward, the company may place part of the proceeds from STRC offerings into dollar reserves or other dollar liquidity assets to support dividends and strengthen institutional confidence in STRC, he said.
Saylor added that the company also learned it must always be able to buy or sell any asset. For Bitcoin to be fairly valued, Strategy has to be capable of buying Bitcoin and selling Bitcoin. If it is unwilling to sell Bitcoin to fund dividends on credit products, that would hurt the credit business, he said. So the company has to be able to trade BTC.
The same logic applies to STRC. To stabilize it, Strategy has to be able to sell STRC and repurchase STRC. Saylor said the market had already seen that the company could issue STRC at $100 and buy Bitcoin; now it has also seen that Strategy can sell Bitcoin and buy back STRC.
He compared this to a car that cannot turn in only one direction. The company needs both a left hand and a right hand, he said. It also has to prove it can dynamically manage reserves, including dollar reserves, unrestricted cash, restricted cash, and Bitcoin. If it wants to grow the credit business, it must keep improving the quality of its capital structure.
Institutional ownership of STRC has risen to about 30%
On STRC’s investor mix, Le said retail investors are usually the first adopters when a new product category appears, and digital credit has followed that pattern. Institutional investors typically want to see one to three years of dividend payment history and price performance before they enter, so they tend to come later.
He said STRC’s holder mix has shifted from roughly 80% retail and 20% institutional to about 70% retail and 30% institutional. That does not mean retail ownership has fallen. In fact, he said, retail holdings have doubled, but institutional growth has been even faster.
Institutional adoption is now clearly rising, he said, and Strategy’s digital credit capital framework has helped build confidence. Retail investors remain important, but institutions usually hold for longer periods and use less leverage, so a larger institutional base should help STRC remain stable over time.
No move planned to daily dividends
Asked whether STRC could switch to daily dividends like SATA, and whether other preferred products might move to monthly or daily payouts, Saylor said Strategy has no plan to change the payout frequency of its other preferred securities.
He said STRD, STRE, STRF, and STRK are aimed mainly at institutional investors, and those investors have been comfortable with quarterly dividends. For that reason, he does not expect that structure to change in the foreseeable future. The company is watching SATA’s daily-dividend model closely, but there is no plan to adopt daily payouts now. Strategy’s present focus remains on improving STRC’s credit quality and strengthening the balance sheet.
Le agreed and said the current structure of paying dividends twice a month has worked well for the company’s investor base. Daily payouts are interesting, he said, but for now the company is simply observing SATA.
STRK buybacks are not the current focus
Asked whether Strategy might repurchase STRK, Saylor said the immediate focus is restoring STRC to health. Investors should expect the company to remain highly focused on that goal, with the aim of keeping STRC stable and growing in a predictable way.
Only after STRC is stabilized will Strategy evaluate whether it should take actions tailored to other products and other investor groups. For STRK investors, and for holders of other Strategy securities, the best thing the company can do right now is still to restore STRC, he said, because actions that help STRC usually help STRK as well.
Strategy does not want STRC to stay far above par
Saylor gave an unequivocal answer when asked under what circumstances Strategy would allow STRC to trade materially above $101 for a long period without acting to bring it back toward par: it would not.
The target trading range for STRC is around $99 to $100, he said, and the company has no interest in allowing the product to move materially above $100. One of STRC’s key value propositions is that investors can sell at $100 without fearing they missed a higher price and can also buy around $100 in nearly whatever size they need.
If the price is allowed to swing meaningfully, he said, the market becomes sticky. Someone ready to sell at $100 starts wondering whether the price might go to $101 or $102. A decision that should take 15 seconds can drag out. If STRC trades anywhere from $95 to $105, investors may spend three months making what should have been a three-second decision. If the price is $100.50, they may fear a return to $100 and sit with limit orders for days.
He compared that to a bank telling depositors that withdrawals might randomly return only 99% of their money, though at other times they might get an extra 1%. That sort of uncertainty is deeply uncomfortable, he said. Strategy’s core value proposition is to strip out volatility and extract yield.
He also used Standard Oil as an analogy, saying its name came from standardized kerosene whose value rested on predictable quality. If one gallon out of every 100 could explode, a disclaimer would not make that a product that is just 1% worse. In his words, it would be 100 times worse. Strategy is trying to build the highest-quality credit product it can.
That means providing liquidity near par. If someone wants to buy $1 billion worth of STRC, Strategy does not want that investor to have to pay $110 per share. It wants to supply that amount near $100. On the other side, sellers need to know that selling at $100 was not a mistake. If STRC falls to $95 or $90, the company intends to use available resources to work it back toward the target range and par.
If Strategy were vague about that, Saylor said, it would break its promise and damage STRC’s value proposition. The product is meant to be the lowest-volatility, most liquid, most predictable credit instrument in the digital credit market.
Stability matters more than squeezing shorts
Saylor said some people argue Strategy should allow STRC to rise to $101, $102, or $103 so short sellers would be less willing to short it. He rejected that approach.
Strategy will put the interests of roughly $10 billion of credit investors ahead of the interests of roughly $300 million of short sellers, he said. The product is managed for investors who buy and hold it, not around fears of short activity.
He went further and said the company even welcomes shorting at $100 if someone is willing to pay roughly a 12% dividend cost to maintain that short while contributing balance sheet capacity and liquidity to help build the digital credit ecosystem.
If someone shorts $10 billion of STRC at $100, Strategy gets $10 billion of credit capital while the short seller pays roughly $1.2 billion of dividend cost each year, helping STRC grow into a $20 billion product, he said.
For that reason, he sees no rational case for letting STRC float loosely instead of managing it tightly and minimizing volatility. Lower volatility means more liquidity. More liquidity makes STRC a better credit instrument. A better product means more demand, and more demand ultimately helps the common stock and the company as a whole.
Investors who want a product that can trade between $95 and $105 already have STRF, he said. STRF is lower risk in his description, with higher collateral coverage and longer duration, and was built for long-term credit investors comfortable with a product that may trade above $100.
But demand for STRF and its liquidity are clearly lower than for STRC. If STRC were allowed to float the way STRF does, Saylor said, product demand could drop by an order of magnitude, liquidity could contract, and confidence would weaken. That is why he does not want STRC’s price left to random fluctuations.
Saylor says Strategy is in a Bitcoin bear market
Brunell noted that Saylor had previously said Bitcoin could reach $1 million if Strategy held 5% of supply and $10 million if it held 7%, then asked whether his long-term price expectations had changed given that Bitcoin was still below its November 2021 level while Strategy then held only about 120,000 BTC.
Saylor said Strategy has never tried to make precise forecasts about when those price levels would be reached. The directional view remains simple, he said: the more Bitcoin Strategy buys, the better it is for Bitcoin.
He said Strategy is currently in a bear market, which makes the environment tougher and progress harder. Even so, the company will continue buying Bitcoin and remains long-term bullish.
For investors trying to predict short-term price moves, he said, he has little useful advice because that is trading. His advice is not to invest in Bitcoin unless the plan is to hold for more than four years, and ideally for ten. The long-term thesis has not changed in his telling: the more Bitcoin that gets bought, the higher the price should go.
Using frontier AI models to examine security risks
Asked how Strategy evaluates the threat frontier AI models could pose to Bitcoin custody as they become better at finding software vulnerabilities, Le said Strategy uses the world’s three largest institutional-grade custodians. The company regularly engages with them and reviews their controls across software, hardware, personnel, and automated processes.
Those custodians also serve most of the world’s Bitcoin ETFs, he said, so they are already subject to broad scrutiny from many institutions.
Le said Strategy has consistently supported the use of frontier AI models by those custodians and by the broader open-source Bitcoin community. Some institutions are already using those models to test their software, and Strategy has started doing the same.
He said that aside from Bitcoin capital planning, Bitcoin security and custody may be the company’s most important area of work. Strategy takes it very seriously. He also said Strategy is a member of the Bitcoin Security Alliance, which brings together some of the world’s largest Bitcoin custodians, issuers, exchanges, holders, and banks to study these security issues collectively.
No plan to pay dividends in Bitcoin
Asked whether he believes Bitcoin can separate money from the state and whether Strategy might one day pay dividends in Bitcoin instead of dollars, Saylor said Bitcoin’s value lies in being a non-sovereign store of value similar to gold. In that sense, he said, it can separate capital and money from state systems. The larger Bitcoin becomes, the larger the share of global capital stored in a non-sovereign digital asset, which is why Strategy is so enthusiastic about it.
But he said the company has no plan to pay dividends in Bitcoin. Roughly 99.9% of global money is still fiat, while Bitcoin is about 0.1%. Given that structure, the better trade is to issue credit products, pay dividends in fiat, and buy Bitcoin.
If Bitcoin appreciates about 30% per year and is expected to outperform the S&P over time, while credit costs are well below that level, then it makes more sense to pay a 10% credit cost and pursue 30% Bitcoin appreciation, he said. Paying dividends in Bitcoin would mean handing out an asset that may rise 30% annually in order to receive only about 10% in return.
That reverses the economics, he argued. He compared it to promising a 30% return while investing the proceeds in a bond yielding only 4%. Done that way, he said, the structure would go bankrupt. The right direction is to borrow in dollars or yen and invest in Bitcoin to capture the spread. Global pools of borrowable dollar and yen capital are about 1,000 times larger than borrowable Bitcoin capital, he added. That is why issuing fiat credit tools to buy BTC and other digital assets makes financial sense, while the reverse does not.
AI-made STRC ads helped retail adoption
On the AI-generated STRC advertisements Strategy ran on X earlier in the year, Le said the company tracked views, click-through rates, website traffic, and time spent on the Strategy website. Across those metrics, he said, the ads performed well.
He believes the campaigns also helped drive STRC adoption among retail investors. Using AI to explore different capabilities was interesting in itself, he said, and the ads created a coherent narrative, so he was broadly satisfied with the results.
He also noted that if institutions are the more important target audience for STRC, those ads may not directly cause institutional buying. They can still help make institutions more aware of the product.
How the executives unwind off the clock
In the lighter closing segment, Saylor said the team makes and posts AI videos promoting Bitcoin. Lately, he said, one of the more entertaining things has been creating videos of himself speaking Korean, Japanese, Italian, and French.
Brunell replied that she remembered Saylor once saying a picture can be worth more than a thousand words. Images can reach more people than an earnings call or a book, she said, and sometimes the video or photo communicates the point without many words at all.
Le said he still makes time for ordinary ways to unwind, while Michael mostly works. He said he has three children, enjoys traveling with his wife and family, plays basketball, cooks, plays video games, and sometimes watches shows that do not require much thinking. At the same time, he tries to protect his time carefully and avoid spending too much of it on things that do not create much value.