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*BRIEF

Strategy just posted a $14.5B Q1 operating loss. Somehow, selling $2.5 worth of BTC was far worse for the stock. Since Monday, MSTR down more than 12% .

Concept Artist: Alan Zhou / Creative Studio: Sum of Parts for Zero Knowledge🤦‍♂️


Good morning,

Michael Saylor wants you to believe STRC is a savings account.

It is equity cosplaying as one (and equity bills you by the month).

Yeah, I said it,
Austin Campbell

Teaching DeFi at NYU Stern
Bridging TradFi at Zero Knowledge

ZERO IN

BACK UP
🤷‍♂️ SAYLOR’S WORLD

📊 WTF IS MSTR?

Strategy. Saylor’s digital asset treasury (basically, Strategy = a bitcoin wrapper). For a breakdown of the whole DAT model, Saylor and all: Treasury or Trap?

🏦 WTF IS STRC?

Strategy's newest security. Pitched as a high-yield savings product but actually, preferred equity: not a deposit, not insured, not a place to park cash.

Even its fat 11% yield is entirely optional.

BACK THAT UP

🎭 STRC = SAVINGS-LARP

But that’s not what it is.

Savings accounts return your money plus interest, on demand, backstopped. STRC returns whatever Strategy's solvency & the market allow.

AUSTIN CAMPBELL

STRC’s wrapping Bitcoin in equity then selling some to pay a note isn't a strategy for yield. It's a LARP, a live action role play and everyone taking it at face value are the ones who can least afford loss.

REALITY CHECK

EXPECTATIONS

Steady-yield product. Park cash. Earn as bitcoin compounds.

REALITY

$14.5B operating loss in 1 quarter ~ 1:1 tied to bitcoin price swings.

BREAKDOWN

🌀 SPIRAL ECONOMICS

Bitcoin pays no yield.

STRC’s dividend does.

Do you want a death spiral?

DAVID Z. MORRIS

1

DUMP

Sell MSTR (or BTC) stock to pay STRC dividends.

2

PUMP

Issue STRC, buy more BTC with the cash.

3

BURN

Spend the cash buying back old debt (~$1.5B retired).

4

CHURN

STRC dividends come due again.

5

REKT

Selling locks in losses.
Strategy's track record? Chasing price. Selling low.

↺ back to step 1.

BAG HOLDERS

🌀 SAYLOR

Saylor is the biggest bitcoin lifer.

Saylor's public claim: to NEVER sell bitcoin. May 5 (Q1 earnings call: STRC pays 11.25% on $3.4B stated amount), that died. Saylor called the selloff "a big nothing burger."

But Saylor’s expectations =/= reality.

ZERO OUT

Strategy's strategy? SMH.

1️⃣ selling stock or corporate assets to pay the people who bought its other stock. 2️⃣ mischaracterizing as a savings instrument, when it is an equity instrument.

…[an equity] instrument that uses exogenously subsidized yield, to stabilize a fundamentally volatile underlying.

David Morris

Financial engineering doesn't create value. It moves risk around until someone's left holding it. Fall out from this can devastate the least savvy buyers and given this financial instrument’s marketing, Strategy itself.

Austin Campbell

ZERO INSIDER

Production wrapped on a preview clip of my Tornado Cash documentary, which I'm sending out to distributors. Promoting my book Stealing the Future, on the downfall of Sam Bankman-Fried.

ZERO INPUT

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