专访Michael Saylor：我是说了要卖币，但绝不会是净卖

Source: David Lin 

Compiled by: Odaily (@OdailyChina); Translator: Azuma (@azuma_eth)

Editor's Note: During last Monday's earnings call, Strategy mentioned for the first time that it was "prepared to sell Bitcoin if necessary to pay dividends," a statement that immediately sparked intense market debate about the company potentially "abandoning its faith."

In response, Strategy Executive Chairman Michael Saylor recently provided an in-depth explanation of the underlying logic behind this decision during an appearance on David Lin's podcast. He emphasized that saying "we will sell" does not mean "net sell." Saylor also noted that Strategy is leveraging Bitcoin's extremely high appreciation attributes as "digital capital" to achieve arbitrage by issuing digital credit instruments (such as STRC), thereby ensuring continuous net growth in its holdings. Below is the full transcript of the podcast (with edits), compiled by Odaily.

Podcast Interview

David Lin (Host A): I am very honored to co-host this exciting interview with Strategy Executive Chairman Michael Saylor, joined by my co-host Bonnie Chang. We'll start with Strategy's recent announcement and Michael Saylor's social media posts. Bonnie, let's begin.

Bonnie Chang (Host B): You announced something last week that shocked the entire industry.

Michael Saylor: Um, you're probably referring to our statement during the earnings call — that we are prepared to sell Bitcoin if necessary to pay STRC dividends.

Bonnie Chang: I believe that was a well-thought-out decision. What was the thinking behind it?

Michael Saylor: The most important point is that we want the market to understand that Bitcoin capital gains can be used to fund credit dividends. When we sell $1 million worth of STRC credit products, we turn around and buy $1 million worth of Bitcoin. Our expectation for Bitcoin is an annual appreciation of around 30%, though in reality it's been closer to 40% per year. We can strip out the first 11% of that capital appreciation and pay it out as dividends.

The market has been confused about what we would use to pay dividends. For most of our history, we paid dividends by selling common stock (MSTR equity). MSTR equity is a derivative of Bitcoin, usually trading at a premium to Bitcoin. So we were selling Bitcoin derivatives, but some worried we wouldn't be able to sell equity in the future.

Then some bearish narratives emerged, saying we had to sell equity; other narratives claimed the company would never sell its Bitcoin. These narratives worsened into — "Well, if they're not going to sell Bitcoin, then Bitcoin must have no value, and they can never sell it. If they can't sell it, we can't count Bitcoin as a balance sheet asset."

If you own something worth $65 billion, and people try to value it at zero, that's not good, right? We don't want credit rating agencies to think the company has zero assets. We want them to think we have $65 billion in assets. Furthermore, some "haters" online kept complaining this was a Ponzi scheme because we were funding preferred stock dividends by selling equity.

What we wanted to do was strengthen the business model — selling credit to invest in Bitcoin; the investment appreciating faster than the accumulation of dividends over time; then monetizing the capital gains to pay the dividends.

We believe the best way to clarify this is to state clearly that "the company never needs to sell common stock." We can simply sell highly appreciated Bitcoin to pay dividends, which is essentially using capital gains to pay credit dividends.

I think it's like a real estate development company that raises funds through credit instruments, buys land at $10,000 per acre, develops it to a value of $100,000 per acre, and then monetizes that capital appreciation. You can sell the land at $100,000 per acre, lease it after full development, or refinance it. No one questions a real estate development company that makes capital investments using credit income. We're doing the same thing with Bitcoin, and we need to ensure the market understands this.

I became famous for saying "never sell your Bitcoin," which is why the internet exploded when they heard we might sell. But if I were more precise, I should say "never be a net seller of Bitcoin." It's just that "never be a net seller" doesn't sound as catchy or spread as easily.

I think during these times, even if we sell 1 Bitcoin, we will buy 10 or 20 more. So, what you're really talking about is a situation of "buying 10, selling 1, net buying 9." Once people understand this, it shouldn't be a problem, but right now it's a controversial topic.

Bonnie Chang: Can you explain how you can sell 1 Bitcoin while buying 10?

Michael Saylor: Sure. Strategy's primary Bitcoin acquisition engine is STRC. We sold $3.2 billion worth of STRC in April, so we bought $3.2 billion worth of Bitcoin. The dividend is around $80 million to $90 million. So, in a month where we raised $3 billion, we only needed to use $80 or $90 million to pay the dividend — essentially, you're buying 30 Bitcoins while selling 1.

Our "break-even rate" is roughly 2.3%. This means if the credit debt we issue equals 2.3% of our Bitcoin holdings, even if we sell Bitcoin to pay dividends, we will always be net buyers of Bitcoin. Another point is that if Bitcoin appreciates by 2.3% annually, we can permanently pay dividends and continuously create value without selling any common stock.

In the first four months of this year, we've sold about $5 billion worth of STRC. At this rate, the issuance rate for the year will be 15% to 20%. As long as the company is growing, it will buy more Bitcoin than it sells. I expect that in every month and every quarter in the future, we will be net buyers of Bitcoin.

Bonnie Chang: I have another question. Many investors hold an almost religious belief in "never sell Bitcoin." Do you think they should still follow that advice?

Michael Saylor: Yes, I think you should be a "net accumulator" of Bitcoin. When I said "never sell your Bitcoin," I meant that if you spend it to buy something, make sure you replenish it at the same time.

Many crypto or Bitcoin believers say they want to buy things with Bitcoin. I tell them, fill the gap after spending. Don't be a net seller of Bitcoin, because Bitcoin is capital. At the end of every year, you should have more Bitcoin than you started with.

For example, if Google invests $1 billion in data centers and makes $10 billion, they net $9 billion. That doesn't cause the dollar market to collapse, right? No one exclaims, "Google sold dollars to buy data centers." The dollar will be fine, and it won't undermine Google's business model. They spent $1 billion to invest in their business; that's normal and rational. Sometimes you spend money to make more money.

So, if you spend 1 Bitcoin to earn 10 Bitcoins, I think that's good for Bitcoin and good for the company... When the equity capital market is less liquid than the Bitcoin market, we want to be able to utilize that market.

Whenever a company deprives itself of optionality by saying "we will never do something," whatever it is, the end result is usually regret. For example, if we said we would "never, ever buy back our own stock, only sell it," then shorts would aggressively sell our stock, driving it down to $1. If we could buy back our stock when there's a huge discount to net asset value (NAV), those shorts would lose a lot. By exploiting their irrationality, we can make a lot of money.

So, what we really conveyed on the earnings call is — we will swap STRC for MSTR, we will swap BTC for MSTR, we will pay dividends with BTC or MSTR, we will do whatever is in the best interest of the company. But over time, we expect to be a net accumulator of Bitcoin. This doesn't change how we trade assets day-to-day. Whether we sell credit debt, sell equity, or sell Bitcoin capital will depend on market conditions and pricing errors.

Another thing we said yesterday is that we are prepared to buy back our bonds. Currently, our corporate bonds are trading cheap; they are undervalued, so it makes sense to buy them back, not sell them. We won't sell undervalued assets; we buy undervalued assets and arbitrage any inefficiencies. If the market knows we will do this, it will give all these assets a fair valuation. This benefits investors in all these instruments, and ultimately, it's our fiduciary duty.

David Lin: One of your biggest critics, Peter Schiff, wrote this morning: "Yesterday, Saylor admitted that MSTR (MicroStrategy) would sell Bitcoin if needed to pay STRC dividends. I think this commitment is to keep the so-called Ponzi scheme going a little longer. But I suspect when that moment comes, he'll choose to suspend the dividend and let STRC crash, rather than let Bitcoin crash." What is your response?

Michael Saylor: Peter thinks Bitcoin is a Ponzi scheme. Peter doesn't really like anything in this space. Bitcoin is "digital capital," and we are creating a digital financial company by selling equity and credit instruments to purchase this capital. I believe Bitcoin will endure because it represents the global economic wealth in tokenized form with complete property rights.

We have built a credit instrument, STRC, on top of it, which simply strips away volatility, reduces risk, and extracts or "distills" yield from digital capital. If you don't acknowledge Bitcoin as legitimate, you will never acknowledge any derivatives built upon it as legitimate. But for those who believe Bitcoin can store economic wealth in tokenized form, what we are doing is very straightforward.

STRC uses an over-collateralization model: for every $5 of Bitcoin, we sell $1 of credit debt, and that $1 of credit debt has a clear yield. There are many people who believe Bitcoin is a legitimate asset but just can't handle its volatility. They don't want to put the money they need for their child's tuition in the fall into Bitcoin because they have to pay the bill in 12 weeks. So for them, digital credit makes a lot of sense because the principal is protected and more stable. Plus, they can get 3 to 4 times the yield of the money market through STRC. This is precisely the trait that makes Bitcoin superior to other capital assets, allowing us to pay this high dividend yield.

David Lin: Here's a theory I'd like to ask you about, and then I'll hand it back to Bonnie. Some traders have noticed that whenever STRC pays a dividend, the ex-dividend price trades below par for a period (maybe a day or two). Once it reaches par, that's when Strategy buys Bitcoin. So, they start "front-running" by buying Bitcoin before STRC reaches par, betting that you and Strategy will buy Bitcoin when it does. Can you comment on this?

Michael Saylor: What happens near the dividend date is that demand for STRC is enormous because there's a roughly $0.90 dividend coming after the record date. So, billions, tens of billions of dollars' worth of STRC trade before the record date. The day after the record date, its price drops by 60 or 70 cents, then gradually recovers to par over the next week or two.

So that's normal. Those are arbitrageurs. Their idea is to capture an annualized yield of roughly 42% by having their capital tied up for about 12 days a year. They have their own calculations. That's fine, and it's good for us because it creates liquidity and participation. This situation will continue.

As for the second idea, can you "front-run" the Bitcoin market? The Bitcoin derivatives market trades $50 billion daily. So, I don't think anyone has enough capital to move that market.

My view is that Bitcoin is somewhat like the "square of tech capital." The factors driving the Bitcoin market are trade wars, hot wars, foreign policy, national situations, Iran's situation in the Strait of Hormuz, and then currency wars — like whether we expect SOFR to drop to 200 basis points or if the yield curve is being distorted. You can see we are in a fairly tight monetary environment now, so these macro factors are the primary drivers of Bitcoin.

I can tell you a fact: we bought $100 million worth of Bitcoin within an hour, and it didn't move the price; we bought $200 million worth of Bitcoin within an hour, and it didn't move the price; we bought $200 or $300 million within an hour and stopped, and the price actually went up.

So, no one has enough power to drive Bitcoin's price performance... Well, maybe if you plan to inject $30 billion into the market in an afternoon. But I've spent a lot of money, and we've bought more Bitcoin than anyone I know. We've probably purchased around $62 billion worth of Bitcoin. I believe this is a global market with its own momentum.

So, claims that we can influence the price are flattering, but I don't think so.

Bonnie Chang: Why do you say the price doesn't move when you buy so much Bitcoin?

Michael Saylor: Because the market is extremely liquid. Let's say I want to buy $1 billion today. Even that is only 1/50th of the $50 billion in volume.

If you ask traders, they'll say the spot market's daily volume is sometimes $20 billion, and the derivatives market sometimes reaches $80 billion. In a market with such deep liquidity, what is $100 million? That's what makes it special. On a weekend, if you want to put on a $1 billion position with 20x leverage, you can absolutely do it in the Bitcoin market; if you want to get a $1 billion credit line within an hour, you can do it in the Bitcoin market.

I do think macro factors drive Bitcoin, and sometimes Bitcoin has its own life. Micro factors also drive it — I mean industry factors, like the formation of digital credit, the formation of bank credit, and investor sentiment towards Bitcoin assets, all of which drive the market. But I think Bitcoin is more powerful than all of us, and that's why we have confidence in it — because no single participant can support it or hinder it.

David Lin: If the Strait of Hormuz remains closed for the foreseeable future, several forces will intersect. First, some say inflationary pressures will persist; second, the Fed may eventually need to cut rates because they are trapped by high inflation. So, what ultimately happens to liquidity? What happens to Bitcoin if the Fed remains trapped?

Michael Saylor: I think when you face tight monetary policy, highly strained global trade, and high geopolitical tensions due to foreign policy or wars (whether in Ukraine or Iran), all of these are somewhat constraining and act as headwinds. I believe when these factors reverse, they will turn into tailwinds.

But regardless, Bitcoin will slowly grind up. This is because the annual organic supply from miners is only about $10 billion to $12 billion, only 450 Bitcoins per day. You can do the math yourself. Then, every time we raise another $10 billion in capital, we buy the entire year's supply. So, if a bank creates $10 billion in credit, that's "the axle turning once"; if we sell $10 billion in STRC digital credit, that's "the axle turning twice"; when $10 billion flows into IBIT (BlackRock's Bitcoin spot ETF), that's "the axle turning three times."

So, capital flows, digital credit, digital capital packaging instruments, and bank credit — all of these are driving the market's fundamentals, and they are all positive. Regardless of macro factors, you will see continuous adoption. The role of macro winds is just that when we should grind up 30%, tailwinds might cause us to surge 50%, and headwinds will slow us down to some extent.

David Lin: Has your logic regarding Bitcoin changed?

Michael Saylor: No change. But I would say it's now clear that Bitcoin is "digital capital," and one thing has become very clear over the past 12 months: One of Bitcoin's killer apps is digital credit.

Many people are wondering what the killer app is for an asset class worth $1.5 trillion with hundreds of billions in daily volume. The answer is using it as collateral for credit. Since digital capital is the best-performing capital asset (and it is, outperforming the S&P 500 by two to three times), it stands to reason that we can create the best-performing credit asset on top of this capital asset.

What we have seen over the past year is that STRC is the most liquid credit instrument,