*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.
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?
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.
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.

ZERO INSIDER
Bitcoin.com’s David Sencil did his homework before sitting down with me for one of the best discussions I've had on BTC: what it is good for, and what it is not good for.
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.
1 For our full analysis on Strategy being a death spiral, jump to Zero Insights.
Missed out? INCA-pacitated, Kelptomania, World Liberty Locked