Chris Millas
@ChrisMMillas • 11,639 subscribers
Investor. Advisor @MeliuzBitcoin. Business. Spirituality. Psychology. Philosophy. Temp notes, mostly to Self. $BTC $MSTR $SWC $SMLR $ALTBG $COIN.AQ $MTPLF $WMTX
Videos
The case is settled. Bitcoin Yield > Total Bitcoin. I have been arguing this for almost two years. It has now been validated by the Strategy team itself. This should have been obvious from the beginning for anyone with common sense. Bitcoin Per Share is the #1 KPI. Be careful who you listen to.
Chris Millas27,270 Aufrufe • vor 1 Monat
Making Sense Of Bitcoin Treasury Companies If you've been following me on X you’ll know that I have recently been floating a lot of my updated thoughts on the Bitcoin Treasury space. Here I have synthesised all of my ideas and distilled them into a single video. If you prefer YouTube, you can find the link in the comments. If you prefer written format, continue reading. The first thing we need to do is acknowledge an important fact which is that Strategy, as a Bitcoin Treasury Company, is an anomaly. What do I mean by that? Strategy’s success has been defined by a number of unique factors and circumstances, most of which cannot be replicated again by other Bitcoin Treasury Companies. Specifically, there are 6 things that stand out to me. 1. Before adopting Bitcoin, Strategy was a billion dollar company with an operating business that was generating roughly $50M in cash a year. 2. Until the introduction of the ETF's in January 2024, Strategy was the only way for the average investor to gain passive exposure to Bitcoin. 3. Until this year, Strategy was the only way for the average investor to gain leveraged exposure to Bitcoin. 4. Strategy was issuing multiple, billion dollar, zero coupon, unsecured convertible notes at +50% conversion premiums. 5. Strategy has Michael Saylor, who, you don’t need me to tell you, is in a league of his own. 6. For many reasons, including those I’ve just mentioned, Strategy has benefitted disproportionately from the broader sentiment around Bitcoin. In other words, for the best part of 4 years, Strategy had zero competition for either capital or attention. As a result, it became a magnet for capital from anyone who wanted exposure to Bitcoin and it attracted inflows that were beyond what fundamentals alone would maybe justify. Therefore, using Strategy as a blueprint for the performance that you can expect from other Bitcoin Treasury Companies is a bad idea. Using Strategy as a blueprint for how to operate a Bitcoin Treasury Company is a good idea. Now let’s break down what’s unfolded over the last 6 months or so. Between May and June of this year, when we witnessed a flood of new Bitcoin Treasury Companies, we entered what I refer to as the frenzy phase. The frenzy phase was driven almost entirely by sentiment. By sentiment I simply mean emotion. Since then, as sentiment has slowly faded, the market has increasingly priced Bitcoin Treasury Companies based more on fundamentals. By fundamentals I simply mean facts. So where as sentiment is driven by emotion and hype, fundamentals are driven by facts and reason. The problem is that when you price Bitcoin Treasury Companies on fundamentals, you realise that many of them are almost entirely dependent on sentiment in order to expand mNAV so they can raise capital via the common stock ATM to buy Bitcoin and generate Bitcoin Yield. However, for me, raising capital via the common stock ATM and recycling it into Bitcoin is not genuine value creation — it’s value transfer. That’s not to say you shouldn’t leverage the ATM as and when necessary — you should. However, if your business model as a Bitcoin Treasury Company no longer works when “sentiment is low” then you have neither a business model nor a business. You’re the equivalent of a meme stock except with Bitcoin on your balance sheet. On that basis, companies shouldn’t expect to trade at a premium if the common stock ATM is the only way they raise capital. I’m not saying they won’t trade at a premium — I’m saying that companies shouldn’t expect to. Now, between July and now, we’ve obviously seen mNAVs compress substantially and so the frenzy phase is over which means that the days of automatically being granted generous mNAV multiples is also over. So now we are in the maturity phase. The maturity phase is going to be defined by being able to offer a differentiated value proposition and having a sustainable business model that can generate Bitcoin Yield in any environment independent of sentiment. In other words, they can generate Bitcoin Yield when trading at or below 1 mNAV. So essentially now, Bitcoin Treasury Companies have to work for their mNAV multiples — as it should be. Following the maturity phase will be the consolidation phase where capital, Bitcoin and ultimately market share will converge towards a small number of Bitcoin Treasury Companies that will dominate the entire industry. I should clarify that I am referring predominantly to pure-play Bitcoin Treasury Companies — companies who are valued based solely on their Bitcoin strategy. Now, with everything that I’ve said, how should you evaluate Bitcoin Treasury Companies? Hopefully over the next few weeks I’m going to string together a video with my valuation framework. In the meantime, a basic test is that I use is this: How much Bitcoin Yield can the company generate over X period of time — you decide what that period of time is — if it traded at 1x mNAV over that entire period? If the answer is 0, then they are probably entirely dependent on raising capital via the common stock ATM which means they likely don’t deserve a premium. If the answer is >0, then they are probably innovating through the use of other instruments — like converts and preferred products — which means they likely do deserve a premium and so whatever number you come up with should be used as the base for your valuation. Now, don’t be fooled. The Bitcoin Treasury Company space is, not entirely, but to a large degree, a zero-sum game. Every Dollar raised by one Bitcoin Treasury Company is at the expense of every other Bitcoin Treasury Company. Every Bitcoin purchased by one Bitcoin Treasury Company is at the expense of every other Bitcoin Treasury Company. It’s only because we are early that everyone is incentivised to essentially hold hands and cheer each other on. However, make no mistake, everyone involved is tacitly well aware that they are all competing for the same finite amount of capital and the same fixed amount of Bitcoin. Thus, the reality is that, by definition, not every Bitcoin Treasury Company is going to succeed. So choose your horses and jockeys wisely. As a side note, with the amount of Bitcoin Treasury Companies now desperately chasing and competing for the same capital from institutions, who do you think has the leverage; the Bitcoin Treasury Companies or the institutions? I’ll let you decide. Before I close, I want to leave you guys with this. There is a small subset of people invested in Bitcoin Treasury Companies who are desperately clinging on to their bags because they believe “sentiment will return.” These people are completely missing the point. My friends, if your investing philosophy is based on sentiment, you are simply not going to last. You want to base your decisions, as far as possible, on fundamentals. As investors, you either adapt and update your mental models based on how things are and not how you want them to be — or you get left behind. With that in mind: Never get caught up in tribalism. Never get attached to your beliefs. Always think critically. Always think independently. Always seek Truth.
Chris Millas34,483 Aufrufe • vor 8 Monaten
Making Sense Of Strategy What is happening with $MSTR? If you’ve been following me on X for any meaningful length of time, you will know that I have been attempting to calibrate people’s expectations of the stock's performance for the best part of 2025. Here I have synthesised all of my thoughts and distilled them into a single video. If you prefer YouTube, you can watch it here: If you prefer written format, continue reading. The first thing we need to understand is what Strategy is and why people invest in it. Strategy At the highest level, Strategy is leveraged Bitcoin. That’s it. Strategy leverages debt to acquire more Bitcoin. Therefore, the main reason you invest in Strategy is because you want to outperform Bitcoin. The only thing better than Bitcoin is more Bitcoin. The second thing we need to understand is mNAV. mNAV Generally speaking for a pure-play Bitcoin Treasury Company like Strategy, mNAV is a reflection of the market's expectation of future Bitcoin Yield. Bitcoin Yield comes with diminishing returns because each additional Bitcoin purchase contributes less to Bitcoin Per Share. Thus, the larger your Bitcoin stack, the harder it becomes to generate Bitcoin Yield and by extension the harder it becomes to outperform Bitcoin. This is why on a Bitcoin Standard, over a long enough time horizon, mNAV trends towards 1 since the maximum amount of Bitcoin you can own is 21M. With all this in mind, why is Strategy trading where it is and why is it trading at such a low mNAV? There are a few reasons. 1. Strategy Is A Different Company In 2025 Firstly, Strategy is a totally different company in 2025 to the one it was in 2020. For context, believe it or not, the company only introduced Bitcoin Yield and Bitcoin Per Share in the July 2024 Q2 Earnings Call and so it was only after that that they began optimising for those metrics. In my view, that is also when Michael Saylor truly started to understand the opportunity that was in front of him, which is why in October 2024 we saw Strategy announce the 21/21 plan which became the catalyst for the parabolic run we saw in November 2024 where $MSTR went on to briefly hit an all-time-high of around $550. Since people are comparing $MSTR this cycle to the $MSTR of last cycle when it briefly traded at an mNAV of over 8x, it is distorting their expectations. Again, Strategy is a totally different company today with a totally different set of dynamics. 2. New Industry Secondly, we need to recognise that the Bitcoin Treasury Company industry is entirely new which means that the market has been forced to learn and adapt in real-time. With Strategy being the first and by far the largest Bitcoin Treasury Company, it has gained a disproportionate amount of attention and as a result it has attracted a disproportionate amount of speculative capital along the way while everyone has been trying to figure out how to value it. Consequently, in my view, the move we saw in November 2024 was an over-correction to the upside — which by the way coincided with Bitcoin’s parabolic run following Donald Trump’s election win — and what we’re now seeing is an over-correction to the downside. 3. Bitcoin Yield Thirdly, as I mentioned at the beginning, Bitcoin Treasury Companies are currently valued based on how much Bitcoin Yield they are expected to generate in the future. At the time of recording, Strategy currently holds precisely 637,460 Bitcoin — that’s over 3% of the total Bitcoin supply — which means that it is much, much harder to generate meaningful Bitcoin Yield, which again is why we’re seeing the mNAV compress. However, there is a caveat here. There is another metric that Strategy have introduced which is Bitcoin $ Gain. Bitcoin $ Gain is defined as the $ value of newly acquired Bitcoin within any period. Strategy — and I don’t blame them — have been attempting to encourage the market to interpret Bitcoin $ Gain as “earnings” and to value the company based on how much earnings it is expected to generate in the future. For full disclosure, I personally dislike Bitcoin $ Gain as a valuation metric. I think framing it as “earnings” is misleading and disingenuous. I understand why it has been introduced because it speaks the language of Wall Street. However, traditional earnings are final. Bitcoin $ Gain is not because it is forever subject to the price of Bitcoin. Therefore, for Bitcoin $ Gain to be embraced by Wall Street, the market must collectively agree that Bitcoin is going up forever. I remain very sceptical of that happening — especially in the short-to-medium term. However, I am also not attached to my beliefs and so if Wall Street does decide to embrace Bitcoin $ Gain as its primary valuation metric, then $MSTR is likely undervalued by a factor of 5-10x. If not, then $MSTR is likely undervalued by a factor of 1-2x. If you’re not content with the latter being the worst case scenario, then the stock probably isn’t for you. 4. Preferred Products Fourthly, the Strategy thesis right now revolves entirely around the success of its preferred products. Remember, Michael Saylor wants Strategy to become the Amazon of the fixed income market. Thus, we’re not talking about a small innovation here — we are talking about completely transforming global finance. This means that the process of generating awareness and educating the market that will ultimately drive demand for these products is going to take years — not months — which is why you need to have a long time-horizon. Presently, the market is completely discounting the success of Strategy’s preferred products. What it’s not factoring in however is that the capital markets are desperate for yield right now. Thus, when — not if — but when, they eventually wake up to Bitcoin, how do you think they’re going to get that yield? Who is going to be the entity that is offering Bitcoin-backed credit instruments at scale? The answer is obviously Strategy, but again, this is a 5-to-10 year and beyond story. So with all that said, if you’re reading this right now, what should you do? Valuing Strategy There are 3 steps you need to take: 1. Firstly, you need to define your time horizon. In other words, how long do you intend on holding the stock for? 2. Secondly, you need to estimate either — depending on your preferred metric — how much Bitcoin Yield or how much Bitcoin $ Gain you expect Strategy to generate during that period and then calculate how much you expect $MSTR to outperform Bitcoin based on those values. 3. Thirdly, ask yourself whether you’d be satisfied with the level of outperformance you have calculated? In other words, is the trade-off worth it? Or would you be better off investing in either spot Bitcoin, an alternative Bitcoin Treasury Company or a Bitcoin ETF. If you’re satisfied with the level of outperformance that you’ve calculated, then $MSTR it probably a good choice of investment for you. If you're not satisfied, then $MSTR is probably a bad choice of investment for you. I personally believe that $MSTR will outperform Bitcoin by a minimum factor of 1-2x over the next 5/10 years and potentially much more if Bitcoin $ Gain becomes the primary metric by which it is valued, but again, I remain sceptical of that happening. Regardless, the best is yet to come.
Chris Millas36,835 Aufrufe • vor 9 Monaten
Why is it taking so long for people to grasp Strategy? In episode 12 of the Saylor Series with Robert Breedlove, in absolute trademark fashion, Saylor explains the reason for people misunderstanding Bitcoin. & the explanation holds true for Strategy. Must-watch.
Chris Millas25,302 Aufrufe • vor 1 Jahr
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