Saylor, still at the helm of MicroStrategy, saw a comeback opportunity. Not a new business strategy; it wasn’t a real business at all. It was a speculators’ strategy.
Long ago, JP Morgan testified to Congress that “gold is money, everything else is credit.”
I like Mr Morgan’s way of thinking. And maybe it’s just me… but I have a hard time squaring Bitcoin with any true semblance of underlying value.
Bitcoin is a string of 1s and 0s that represent a sizable past input of electric power. Interesting math, perhaps, but is that all there is? And all that power was converted to heat, which went up the ventilation shaft.
When you mine gold, at least you have gold at the end of the day.
This was certainly true in ol’ JP’s day. Why? Because it was scarce, divisible, etc. We now live in a digital world and Bitcoin shares the same properties. I believe these properties make Bitcoin “digital gold”. One day we may consider gold “analog Bitcoin.”
I think I'll stick with Byron on this. Gold is something you can touch and feel and it withstands time, kind of like a house. Bill frequently makes the point that in spite of this "Information Age" we as a society are not getting wealthier. "Digital anything" is not a store of value. It's more like a car, which is pure depreciating expense.
I remember the Twilight Zone episode.It was black and white and these guys had robbed a bank. They had a time machine to escape the police. The plan worked. When they went forward in time.They went to the place where they had hidden the gold. They knew, of course, that it be worth a 1000 times more at this later date. They trudged through the new desert with the heavy weight. They fought each other and some were murdered. The rest eventually dieing of thirst. Along comes a clear domed vehicle floating above the sand. An elderly man and woman stop at the scene. The pearl clutching woman asks her husband what is it?What is it? He holds gold bars above the lone dead man in the sand and says, "I not sure, but I think it's gold. I think that it was valuable once, I think, before they figured out how to make it."
I remember a slightly different narrative for that Twilight Zone episode, but you capture the gist of it. Another way gold could lose its exchange value is if a huge natural source of it was discovered, like a large asteroid made mostly of gold.
A quote from a Dan Denning associate, Charlie Morris, "Gold is a zero coupon perpetual bond with no credit risk, and no counterparty risk, issued by God!" The big guys are buying like there is no tomorrow but they tell us little people it's a useless yellow relic.
You ever meet a guy who fails epically, publicly, spectacularly, and is still worth 7 Billion dollars! Instead of learning from it, he prints out the failure, frames it, and uses it as a vision board? That’s Saylor.
He turned his entire company into a glorified Bitcoin vending machine. He bought Bitcoin, then he borrowed to buy more bitcoin, then he borrowed again, this guy stacks debt like pancakes at the Cracker Barrel’s all you can eat Buffet!
Ok, here’s the idea guys, we buy Bitcoin, then borrow money to buy more Bitcoin. Then sell stock to people who wanna buy Bitcoin through a company that owns Bitcoin so they can pretend they’re not buying Bitcoin.
It’s like ordering a hamburger that only contains half a hamburger, but the restaurant says, “Yeah, but when meat prices go up, this thing’ll be worth two hamburgers.” And everybody cheers because nobody knows what meat is anymore.
This dude lost six billion in one day back in the dot-com implosion. Most people would rethink their life choices. Not him. He walked out of the flames wearing sunglasses going:
“Round two, baby!”
Saylor didn’t build a business.
He built a theme park ride called
“The Leverage Coaster: Please Keep Your Hands Inside the Insolvency Zone.”
Now Bitcoin drops, and suddenly everyone’s shocked the leverage reversed. YOU DON’T SAY. Next thing you know they’ll announce water is wet, birds can fly, and financial bubbles burst when you poke them with a billionaire.
He ain’t just any con-man archetype, he’s the deluxe carnival edition, the kind who sells folks a ticket to watch their own wallets disappear, then thanks them for the magic trick. Funny thing is, the crowd keeps clapping, swearing the vanishing act is innovation.
Saylor reminds me of another con man who convinces people to forget his past failures, only to inflict his new marks with losses while he amasses further wealth.
There is quite enough risk going around today in somewhat tangible investing, why bother with the intangible? What is of great value coming out of Santoshi is block chain. Firms like JPM are deploying it and foresee a better, faster way to identify and close trades for example. BTC, at least to me and my team is what we use to call vapor wear. Best-
Many in the northern VA tech world worshipped Saylor as a guru/genius in the mid-late 1990s. He sounded brilliant, in part because I think he believed his own sales pitch. But if one listened carefully and experienced his presence, they’d have realized he was more full of stuff than a Christmas turkey.
What was attractive to me about cryptocurrency in the beginning was its potential use as a safe and non-corruptible medium of exchange, not as a store of value(like gold). It was clear from the modern history of money that we needed a way to accomplish everyday goods and services transactions that was divorced from the government. Cryptocurrency seemed to hold promise in that regard, at least in the early going. Governments worldwide, and especially the US government, had diddled and corrupted the fiat money system to the point that it was all going to blow up, making the money we all used and saved and invested worthless. Could we go back to gold? Perhaps, but that looked like an apocalyptic scenario to me(still does, although perhaps necessary). And now we have governments in the cryptocurrency game and it seems clear that governments do not want private competition in the money business. They intend to maintain a money monopoly, which is perhaps why governments do not like the “store of value” concept for money. It automatically cancels monopoly power, or at least renders it inert, whereas fiat money guarantees both monopoly power and corruptibility(the oil of crony capitalism). But if we cannot have a safe and incorruptible “medium of exchange” without the intrinsic store-of-value feature, perhaps we are left with gold at the end of the day. Time will tell.
One more comment. I’m not sure if bitcoin will be a future currency or not, but I do believe that crypto will have a major role in the future of finance. I bought a few XRP by Ripple company. This crypto is used for the transfer of money (competition with SWIFT). It transfer funds cheaper, safer and more quickly. I believe one day in the future money will be transferred using XRP as the bridge. Many countries and banks are currently using it. Just MY opinion.
There are so many different views on BTC you can only class it as a speculation. I actually thought it would fizzle to zero long ago, but it seems to keep coming back. For every detractor there seems to be an institutional buyer and with the emergence of ETF's, Wall St. can use it as a fee extraction mechanism. I wouldn't try to call it's future, but with any speculation one takes care with position sizing. Aside from the intrinsic value & relevance as money arguments, it has some other attributes, such as an alternative way to move 'value' around in a network or store it off grid for example. I would say it is also a potential hedge, if people lose faith in currencies and start rushing for the exit on Fiat, lets say the precious metals are supply constrained and backordered, maybe BTC catches some of that bid. That would favour the hodler rather than the latecomer. As for MSTR, who knows, but it is a way to get some leveraged BTC in an ISA, without the margin calls. Again, position sizing should be considered, but if BTC Survives then Strategy will likely also survive.
BB-I’m not sure why you’re anti-microstrategy. For years there are many companies that make great returns by being in the money exchange market. They exchange different currencies. They don’t produce anything, but for these companies you keep your mouth shut. There is nothing wrong with making money/or losing money (unhappily) in a free enterprise system. If you choose right you make money if you choose wrong you lose money. I believe that crypto will be used as currency in the future. The dollar isn’t worth much as the paper it’s written on so why not try something new. Many countries are now involved with some form of crypto currency or crypto transfer of money. Our dollar goes down yearly and many other countries are very upset at the dollar being the world currency; paying back loans with worthless dollars; something will eventually explode. What’s next, I believe another form of money exchange; crypto???
I do appreciate your point. Let's say you're an intelligent banker I'm an alien planet. These humans have outposts in space, advance medical technology... they carry paper currency in their wallets.... It's actually not paper , it's more cloth than paper.
Still, nearly every transaction is done digitally. An oxymoron.
All your points about the extreme risk leverage strategy are exactly on point. However it’s hard to see how overconfidence comes into play when buying BTC at $8000. Even with the recent drop in price that BTC is 10x.
Where are all the tree huggers on this? It proves they didn't really exist.They're just a group of stupid, manipulated people that are pointed in whatever direction that fits those who lead an excite them.
100% … and where are the tree huggers on sending tonnes of coal & iron ore to so-called developing countries. China wasting resources on ghost cities while India lands on the moon. Yet, we in the West sacrifice our hard earned life style on the altar of woke and climate nonsense.
The mining is to validate transactions and add to the block chain which is essential for maintaining the security and integrity of the Bitcoin network.
But you'll find gold in pretty much every dwelling in the world, as jewellery, as part of electronics, as teeth. Bitcoin is like God, you've got to have faith...
Yes… they are mined in a sense but the blockchain networks themselves are not limited… in fact they are created at man’s discretion. Gold is limited and not man made… that’s why ‘gold is money’ and everything else is credit … fiat, digital or otherwise.
Sold my Bitcoin when my investment doubled and bought more gold.To be perfectly clear I harvested some garbage called fiat and turned it into hard money I am an off on again Bitcoin fan for sure. It just so happens I don't own any bc right now but I am watching.Blessed Christmas all.
If it quacks like a duck, walks like a duck and looks like a duck, it’s probably a duck. All you need to do with Strategy is swap out ‘duck’ for ‘Ponzi’.
That's what great about this country. You get to invest in what you prefer and sit back and wait for an unspecifiied time and reap the rewards (good or bad). Along the way, the shysters appear and take their share, and greatly reduce what others would have received. In the forseeable future, we may get to see how valuable crypto and Bitcoin will be versus gold/silver coins. precious metals mining or royalty stocks, after the upcoming gold/dollar revaluation. Since I'm not "real" greedy, I'll stick with the different forms of gold/silver. based on history. But, again the choice is "to each his own".
Long ago, JP Morgan testified to Congress that “gold is money, everything else is credit.”
I like Mr Morgan’s way of thinking. And maybe it’s just me… but I have a hard time squaring Bitcoin with any true semblance of underlying value.
Bitcoin is a string of 1s and 0s that represent a sizable past input of electric power. Interesting math, perhaps, but is that all there is? And all that power was converted to heat, which went up the ventilation shaft.
When you mine gold, at least you have gold at the end of the day.
This was certainly true in ol’ JP’s day. Why? Because it was scarce, divisible, etc. We now live in a digital world and Bitcoin shares the same properties. I believe these properties make Bitcoin “digital gold”. One day we may consider gold “analog Bitcoin.”
I think I'll stick with Byron on this. Gold is something you can touch and feel and it withstands time, kind of like a house. Bill frequently makes the point that in spite of this "Information Age" we as a society are not getting wealthier. "Digital anything" is not a store of value. It's more like a car, which is pure depreciating expense.
I’m with Byron too.
That "one day" is coming quicker than you think. I'm 100% sticking with Byron and Gold.
I remember the Twilight Zone episode.It was black and white and these guys had robbed a bank. They had a time machine to escape the police. The plan worked. When they went forward in time.They went to the place where they had hidden the gold. They knew, of course, that it be worth a 1000 times more at this later date. They trudged through the new desert with the heavy weight. They fought each other and some were murdered. The rest eventually dieing of thirst. Along comes a clear domed vehicle floating above the sand. An elderly man and woman stop at the scene. The pearl clutching woman asks her husband what is it?What is it? He holds gold bars above the lone dead man in the sand and says, "I not sure, but I think it's gold. I think that it was valuable once, I think, before they figured out how to make it."
I remember a slightly different narrative for that Twilight Zone episode, but you capture the gist of it. Another way gold could lose its exchange value is if a huge natural source of it was discovered, like a large asteroid made mostly of gold.
Byron
Remember years back anything that people believed had value was used for trading. Sea shells for food, pigs and cattle for household goods, etc.
Absolutely. Right before you get shot in the back.
A quote from a Dan Denning associate, Charlie Morris, "Gold is a zero coupon perpetual bond with no credit risk, and no counterparty risk, issued by God!" The big guys are buying like there is no tomorrow but they tell us little people it's a useless yellow relic.
I'll stick with 5000 years of financial history.
Jim Marshall
What do you think about silver?
I also hold silver. Based on history and a huge shortage of supply today we can expect it to go a lot higher.
Jim
You ever meet a guy who fails epically, publicly, spectacularly, and is still worth 7 Billion dollars! Instead of learning from it, he prints out the failure, frames it, and uses it as a vision board? That’s Saylor.
He turned his entire company into a glorified Bitcoin vending machine. He bought Bitcoin, then he borrowed to buy more bitcoin, then he borrowed again, this guy stacks debt like pancakes at the Cracker Barrel’s all you can eat Buffet!
Ok, here’s the idea guys, we buy Bitcoin, then borrow money to buy more Bitcoin. Then sell stock to people who wanna buy Bitcoin through a company that owns Bitcoin so they can pretend they’re not buying Bitcoin.
It’s like ordering a hamburger that only contains half a hamburger, but the restaurant says, “Yeah, but when meat prices go up, this thing’ll be worth two hamburgers.” And everybody cheers because nobody knows what meat is anymore.
This dude lost six billion in one day back in the dot-com implosion. Most people would rethink their life choices. Not him. He walked out of the flames wearing sunglasses going:
“Round two, baby!”
Saylor didn’t build a business.
He built a theme park ride called
“The Leverage Coaster: Please Keep Your Hands Inside the Insolvency Zone.”
Now Bitcoin drops, and suddenly everyone’s shocked the leverage reversed. YOU DON’T SAY. Next thing you know they’ll announce water is wet, birds can fly, and financial bubbles burst when you poke them with a billionaire.
He ain’t just any con-man archetype, he’s the deluxe carnival edition, the kind who sells folks a ticket to watch their own wallets disappear, then thanks them for the magic trick. Funny thing is, the crowd keeps clapping, swearing the vanishing act is innovation.
Saylor reminds me of another con man who convinces people to forget his past failures, only to inflict his new marks with losses while he amasses further wealth.
There is quite enough risk going around today in somewhat tangible investing, why bother with the intangible? What is of great value coming out of Santoshi is block chain. Firms like JPM are deploying it and foresee a better, faster way to identify and close trades for example. BTC, at least to me and my team is what we use to call vapor wear. Best-
Many in the northern VA tech world worshipped Saylor as a guru/genius in the mid-late 1990s. He sounded brilliant, in part because I think he believed his own sales pitch. But if one listened carefully and experienced his presence, they’d have realized he was more full of stuff than a Christmas turkey.
What was attractive to me about cryptocurrency in the beginning was its potential use as a safe and non-corruptible medium of exchange, not as a store of value(like gold). It was clear from the modern history of money that we needed a way to accomplish everyday goods and services transactions that was divorced from the government. Cryptocurrency seemed to hold promise in that regard, at least in the early going. Governments worldwide, and especially the US government, had diddled and corrupted the fiat money system to the point that it was all going to blow up, making the money we all used and saved and invested worthless. Could we go back to gold? Perhaps, but that looked like an apocalyptic scenario to me(still does, although perhaps necessary). And now we have governments in the cryptocurrency game and it seems clear that governments do not want private competition in the money business. They intend to maintain a money monopoly, which is perhaps why governments do not like the “store of value” concept for money. It automatically cancels monopoly power, or at least renders it inert, whereas fiat money guarantees both monopoly power and corruptibility(the oil of crony capitalism). But if we cannot have a safe and incorruptible “medium of exchange” without the intrinsic store-of-value feature, perhaps we are left with gold at the end of the day. Time will tell.
One more comment. I’m not sure if bitcoin will be a future currency or not, but I do believe that crypto will have a major role in the future of finance. I bought a few XRP by Ripple company. This crypto is used for the transfer of money (competition with SWIFT). It transfer funds cheaper, safer and more quickly. I believe one day in the future money will be transferred using XRP as the bridge. Many countries and banks are currently using it. Just MY opinion.
...in April2025 BTC dropped to $76k.
The same words, the same doom and gloom.
Then it zoomed to over $124k.
Is there a reason to suspect this will cease?
There are so many different views on BTC you can only class it as a speculation. I actually thought it would fizzle to zero long ago, but it seems to keep coming back. For every detractor there seems to be an institutional buyer and with the emergence of ETF's, Wall St. can use it as a fee extraction mechanism. I wouldn't try to call it's future, but with any speculation one takes care with position sizing. Aside from the intrinsic value & relevance as money arguments, it has some other attributes, such as an alternative way to move 'value' around in a network or store it off grid for example. I would say it is also a potential hedge, if people lose faith in currencies and start rushing for the exit on Fiat, lets say the precious metals are supply constrained and backordered, maybe BTC catches some of that bid. That would favour the hodler rather than the latecomer. As for MSTR, who knows, but it is a way to get some leveraged BTC in an ISA, without the margin calls. Again, position sizing should be considered, but if BTC Survives then Strategy will likely also survive.
BB-I’m not sure why you’re anti-microstrategy. For years there are many companies that make great returns by being in the money exchange market. They exchange different currencies. They don’t produce anything, but for these companies you keep your mouth shut. There is nothing wrong with making money/or losing money (unhappily) in a free enterprise system. If you choose right you make money if you choose wrong you lose money. I believe that crypto will be used as currency in the future. The dollar isn’t worth much as the paper it’s written on so why not try something new. Many countries are now involved with some form of crypto currency or crypto transfer of money. Our dollar goes down yearly and many other countries are very upset at the dollar being the world currency; paying back loans with worthless dollars; something will eventually explode. What’s next, I believe another form of money exchange; crypto???
I do appreciate your point. Let's say you're an intelligent banker I'm an alien planet. These humans have outposts in space, advance medical technology... they carry paper currency in their wallets.... It's actually not paper , it's more cloth than paper.
Still, nearly every transaction is done digitally. An oxymoron.
Currency will catch up.
All your points about the extreme risk leverage strategy are exactly on point. However it’s hard to see how overconfidence comes into play when buying BTC at $8000. Even with the recent drop in price that BTC is 10x.
I still don’t understand what the ‘asset’ in bitcoin. It’s energy expended for what?
Where are all the tree huggers on this? It proves they didn't really exist.They're just a group of stupid, manipulated people that are pointed in whatever direction that fits those who lead an excite them.
100% … and where are the tree huggers on sending tonnes of coal & iron ore to so-called developing countries. China wasting resources on ghost cities while India lands on the moon. Yet, we in the West sacrifice our hard earned life style on the altar of woke and climate nonsense.
Energy is expended to mine.
Like Gold is mined.
-
The mining is to validate transactions and add to the block chain which is essential for maintaining the security and integrity of the Bitcoin network.
Is that what the banks are doing now? Mining us!
... I believe we are being undermined.
But you'll find gold in pretty much every dwelling in the world, as jewellery, as part of electronics, as teeth. Bitcoin is like God, you've got to have faith...
...BTC, Gold and the Dollar
All evident to believers and non-believers alike.
Either way, faith is required to trade any.
Yes… they are mined in a sense but the blockchain networks themselves are not limited… in fact they are created at man’s discretion. Gold is limited and not man made… that’s why ‘gold is money’ and everything else is credit … fiat, digital or otherwise.
BTC is limited.
...and that's why it works as money.
-
Gold has very limited intrinsic value.
And in the not-so-distant future will likely be obtainable in quantity when considering the potentials of space mining.
-
Gold's universal value is historical, not so much intrinsic nor necessarily scarce.
No one goes so far as to label it "fiat metal" like they do BTC.
...but there are plenty of more intrinsically valuable and scarcer metals.
Sold my Bitcoin when my investment doubled and bought more gold.To be perfectly clear I harvested some garbage called fiat and turned it into hard money I am an off on again Bitcoin fan for sure. It just so happens I don't own any bc right now but I am watching.Blessed Christmas all.
If it quacks like a duck, walks like a duck and looks like a duck, it’s probably a duck. All you need to do with Strategy is swap out ‘duck’ for ‘Ponzi’.
Why argue? Just stock up on the basic B’s: Bitcoin, bullion, bourbon, and bullets!
That's what great about this country. You get to invest in what you prefer and sit back and wait for an unspecifiied time and reap the rewards (good or bad). Along the way, the shysters appear and take their share, and greatly reduce what others would have received. In the forseeable future, we may get to see how valuable crypto and Bitcoin will be versus gold/silver coins. precious metals mining or royalty stocks, after the upcoming gold/dollar revaluation. Since I'm not "real" greedy, I'll stick with the different forms of gold/silver. based on history. But, again the choice is "to each his own".