← Coin Stories with Natalie Brunell
Coin Stories with Natalie Brunell
News Block: Strategy Selling Bitcoin is Bullish, S&P 500 is Ripping, and Bitcoin Is Still 30% Below Its All-Time High
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Welcome to the Coin Stories news block, powered exclusively by LEDN. I'm Natalie Brunel and in about 10 minutes or less, I'll provide you with insightful updates on Bitcoin, financial markets and the global economy. Everything you need to know in one block. Let's go. Strategy just evolved its bitcoin playbook in a big way, and almost nobody understood it correctly. Last Tuesday, on the company's Q1 2026 earnings call, Michael Saylor and CEO Fong Li announced that strategy is willing to willing to sell Bitcoin. And once you understand why, this starts to look less like a concession and more like a major upgrade. But online, the reaction was swift and some on Bitcoin X were quick to criticize. Here's what actually happened. For four years, the brand was simple. Strategy buys bitcoin, holds it, never sells it. That message was clear, powerful, and it helped build one of the most remarkable corporate balance sheets in history. Over 818,000 bitcoin worth roughly 65 billion doll. But strategy isn't a guy with a hardware wallet. It's a publicly traded company managing preferred stocks, convertible debt, tax obligations, index eligibility, credit ratings and fiduciary duties to shareholders at a certain scale. Never sell stops being the best strategy and starts being a constraint. So strategy removed the constraint. Fong Li said it plainly. Strategy can sell Bitcoin to fund dividends or retire debt as long as doing so is accretive to bitcoin per share. The that's the key. The bar isn't do we feel like selling the bar is does this sale result in us owning more bitcoin per share than we did before? And Saylor clarified at consensus 2026, strategy should never be a net seller of Bitcoin. He expects the company to be a net buyer every month and every quarter indefinitely. So never sell bitcoin was the slogan. Never be a net seller is the actual capital allocation strategy. Once you understand the difference, this stops looking like a walk back and and starts looking like a company that's playing the game at the level its balance sheet deserves. And let's get into what this actually unlocks. The loudest bear case against strategy for months has been the dividend question. How does this company fund $1.5 billion in annual obligations without perpetually issuing equity? The shorts called it a Ponzi. They argued the structure only works as long as the capital markets window stays open and the moment it closes, the whole thing unwinds. Sailors answer, you're ignoring the balance sheet. The math is pretty simple. That $1.5 billion dividend bill is roughly 2% of a $65 billion Bitcoin position. And the company already has 2.25 billion in cash reserves set aside enough to cover about 18 months of dividends without selling a single Sat or raising another dollar. And if Bitcoin appreciates at more than 2% annually, that compounding alone can fund the dividend indefinitely. So that is not a Ponzi. That is a balance sheet doing what a balance sheet is supposed to do. And then there's the credit rating story. And this is what most people are sleeping on. Last October, S and P assigned Strategy a B minus credit rating with a stable outlook and spelled out three conditions for an upgrade. Improve dollar liquidity, reduce reliance on convertible debt, and demonstrate capital markets access during Bitcoin stress. Strategy has already checked two of those three boxes. Now, reducing convertible debt is exactly what selling a small amount of Bitcoin to retire converts would solve. This matters because credit ratings determine which institutional capital pools can buy your securities. The unrated corporate credit market is about $2.8 trillion. High yield where strategy sits now is 4.9 trillion. Investment grade triple B to triple A is $23.6 trillion, 11 times bigger. Every notch up the credit ladder unlocks a step change in demand for Stretch and Strategy's other preferred products. More demand means capital raised at a lower cost and cheaper capital is how Strategy keeps accelerating its Bitcoin accumulation. And that's all before S&P 500 inclusion, which would convert millions of passive index buyers into automatic structural buyers of MSTR equity. And one more thing that doesn't get enough attention, the tax angle Strategy has roughly $2.2 billion in tax loss harvesting potential on its balance sheet. Bitcoin is treated as property under US Tax code, which means wash sale rules don't apply. You can sell, harvest the loss, repurchase the same exposure immediately, and carry those tax assets forward to offset future gains. That's not betraying Bitcoin. That's sophisticated corporate treasury management. So zoom out. Selling a small amount of Bitcoin lets Strategy retire debt, improve its credit rating, expand its addressable market by potentially 11 times harvest billions in tax assets. Neutralize the loudest short thesis and position for S&P 500 inclusion. And JP Morgan published a note last week estimating that Strategy's 2026 Bitcoin purchases could reach $30 billion, significantly higher than the roughly $22 billion purchased in each of 2024 and 2025. Strategy has already added more than 145,000 Bitcoin year to date. So the uproar over potentially selling a sliver starts to look pretty overblown when Wall street is forecasting the company will be a record net buyer this year. Strategy didn't abandon the bitcoin strategy. The company graduated to a more sophisticated version of it. The objective was never ideological purity. The objective is maximizing long term bitcoin per share. And as Saylor put it, if they sell one, they'd buy 20 more. That's the whole thesis. For investors who want to hear more directly from the team, I'll be hosting a live Retail Investor Q and A with Michael Saylor and Fong Li. You can submit your questions. We're already getting some great ones, so please join us on May 13th at 5pm Eastern on X and YouTube. If you head to thenewsblock.substack.com, you can find the QR code where you can submit questions. Leden just introduced their lowest rates ever. The larger the loan, the lower the rate. These new rates apply to all new loans, refinances and renewals. With LEDN's gold standard protection, your bitcoin stays custodied, never lent out. You can activate auto top ups and alerts so you're never caught off guard and you can repay anytime with zero penalties. Don't choose between a great rate and the safety of your bitcoin. Get both at LEADN and a quarter percentage point off your first loan at leadn.IO Natalie all right, let's talk bitcoin price action. Bitcoin reclaimed $80,000 last week, but here's the context that matters. The S&P 500 is near record highs. The NASDAQ has also been ripping, but bitcoin is really still playing catch up, down around 5% on the year and sitting more than 30% below its all time high. But the question is, is bitcoin about to close that gap? A few notable voices think it might. Luke Gromen, founder of fftt, sold a meaningful portion of his bitcoin in November, right before the major correction. It was a great call. So when he tells subscribers he's buying back in, the market should listen. His thesis is that the recent volatility in treasuries and equities looks a lot like liquidity was quietly injected into the system. And bitcoin, which Groman has long called the last functioning smoke alarm for liquidity, responded immediately, rallying nearly 25% in a month. So when the analyst who timed the top yet again is now timing a reentry. It's worth noting. And on May 6, John Bollinger, the man who created the Bollinger Bands indicator that traders worldwide have used for 40 years, posted that his trend model for bitcoin had turned positive and his fund was now fully invested in bitcoin. That came right as bitcoin closed above its upper Bollinger band for only the second time since January after the tightest band reading ever recorded. In technical terms, that's a squeeze setup. Compressed volatility often precedes a big directional move, and the indicator's own creator is signaling the move might be just getting started. The level to watch is $83,200, Bitcoin's 200 day moving average. A clean break above it could force shorts to close, which means more buying, pushing prices higher, which forces more shorts to close. And that's a short squeeze. And one more thing. Every time Bitcoin has fallen 50% or more from an all time high. 12 month returns have averaged 162%. Three years later, 335%. Now none of this is guaranteed, but when you put the picture together, Groman re entering Bollinger going fully invested, the setup looks compelling. The smart money is nibbling, the shorts are loaded and the chart is coiled. Sometimes the best trades are the boring ones. Buy when the headlines are negative, when volatility has compressed, and when the people on the other side of the trade are running out of the room. This might be one of those moments. Thanks for joining me on this week's news block. Our next interview episode on Coin Stories is featuring Giovanni Santostasi and we're going to be talking all about Bitcoin power law. Don't miss it. That's it for the news block. Your weekly bitcoin and economic news update. Powered exclusively by ledn. I'm Natalie Brunel. Make sure you're subscribed to Coinstory so you never miss an episode. This show is for educational purposes and should not be construed as investment advice. Until next time, keep stacking.