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- [00:00]
A
Welcome back to the Bitcoin Treasuries podcast. I'm Tim Kotsman. I'm here with Chris Reed of the Bitcoin Mindset podcast. Chris, thanks for joining us today.
- [00:09]
B
Hey, thanks for having me, Tim.
- [00:11]
A
Can you tell us a little bit about your background, your journey to bitcoin? I don't think I've heard the story yet.
- [00:17]
B
Yeah, so, like, a lot of people found bitcoin as kind of like a speculation in 2017 and was fortunate enough to find safety bitcoin Standard. And in 2018, I'd say 2018, 2019 was the, you know, going down the, the reading rabbit hole around just what bitcoin was and monetary history and things I had never studied before. I had, you know, speculated around markets since about 2015, traded everything from, you know, commodities to levered gold mining, ETFs back in 1516 and biotech stocks, things like that. And that speculation led me to bitcoin and again found Bitcoin standard and several books that Andreas Wentes, some of the early pioneers in bitcoin, that really helped me with the framework with it that turned into, hey, bitcoin's the best Asset, alongside Robert Kiyosaki, Rich Dad, Poor dad, another seminal book for me, it was like, all right, what's the best asset? And through my experience and Peter on markets, figured out bitcoin was the best asset ever since then. And from there, anything that's been kind of bitcoin laced with MSTR starting in August 2020, then obviously with Stretch and some of the other products of the last year and a half or so. Just been really interested in that.
- [01:31]
A
What's your kind of general take general view on bitcoin treasury companies, maybe from like a macro general helicopter view. And then let's get into your reaction to the earnings call that strategy just had yesterday evening.
- [01:48]
B
Yeah, I mean, they kind of had their IPO moment in a way, almost kind of like a 99 or 2000 moment with some from bitcoin treasury companies, in my opinion, in 2024, 2025. It was interesting because, you know, Sailor and, and the team, they had been having conferences and talking about companies being on a bitcoin standard for a long time, but it kind of just hit that escape velocity after the election in 2024. So that was that kind of moment in 25. And now you've had this washout and now it's going to come down to companies that operate at a high level. It's more than just jawboning saying, oh, yeah, we're going to buy bitcoin and we're on a bitcoin standard. That's great. But who's going to operate at the highest level? And one of the things I put out, I guess maybe it's been a couple of years ago about with strategy is they were having not just them, but companies having to defend their M navigation, having to have an operation around their business, you know, how their playbook was going to get tested. And we saw that the last three to six months. So a lot of these companies, you know, need to have their own playbook. Now there's a lot of jurisdictional headwinds, potentially depending on what country they're in, what kind of capital market they're able to tap into. So there's a lot of nuance to it. But you know, right now it's going to be the, the ones that are operating very high level, kind of across the top.
- [03:05]
A
What was if you had to pick one takeaway from the earnings call? Like for me it was 1.22m nav is like where accretion begins. What was there one thing for you that kind of stood out?
- [03:17]
B
One thing is, and I put a tweet out yesterday as I was listening and selling STRC to buy back the common is a very interesting concept that I think got overlooked, you know, because I think the big thing was, oh, they're going to sell bitcoin and everybody's kind of freaking out and stuff. So putting that aside, you know, selling it be. Be being able to sell STRC when the demand is there to defend the common equity for shareholders, I think it was a very interesting message. And the one of the bigger takeaways is it was, it was the number one thing they said towards the end is they are trying, they are operating for shareholders the equity, right? And they are doing whatever it takes to bring maximum shareholder value. And again, the word is obviously optionality. And optionality has been something that we've talked about with them for a very long time and that, that was the biggest theme throughout everything. The call is that now they have all these levers and I've never seen it explained the way they explained it, how they can pull each lever depending on what the market gives them. So, you know, big picture, nothing real new necessarily because I mean they just, they're all about optionality. But the way they described it was at another level. But I'm very interested to see as it seasons more and as the scale grows with strc, how it can, how it can defend the common equity. As well.
- [04:39]
A
So I feel like a lot of the commentary and maybe noise right now is around them reiterating that they will buy bitcoin, they will sell bitcoin in, in pursuit of buying even more bitcoin and all of the nuances of that, which some people have called a narrative violation. But 40 minutes ago, Jeff Walton, the chief risk officer at Strive, tweeted, I hope Strive gets the opportunity to buy strategy's high basis bitcoin. We would be happy to rebase it. I take that as the bitcoin wouldn't even hit the market, which is another kind of added bonus of teamwork makes the dream work. What's your reaction to that sort of tweet?
- [05:27]
B
I think the biggest thing too is it'll be so minuscule if they do stale. It's not like it's going to bring down, it's going to harm the network, it's going to harm the bitcoin market in general. People just want to take a headline and run with it type thing because it sounds sexy or it gets clicks and things like that. But the scale in which that they would be in the market selling air quote their bitcoin, you wouldn't even really feel it because of how liquid the bitcoin market is and things like that. So there's dynamics with that that kind of pushes that to the side and doesn't make that, in my opinion, that big of a deal. But people want to kind of run with narratives and get themselves clicks when it comes to that. But again, it's just the language, the fact that they brought that up within their language and in their profile as far as we can, if we need to. But it's about listening to what the market gives them. And again, in any business, the more optionality you have, the more value you bring to your shareholders. If you're a publicly traded company, where
- [06:26]
A
can people reach out to you and connect?
- [06:30]
B
Yeah, on X. So it's Chris Reed on X. I'm also at LinkedIn and just under my name, Chris Reed as well.
- [06:36]
A
Awesome. Chris, appreciate your time today. Thanks for joining us on the Bitcoin Treasuries podcast.
- [06:41]
B
Yeah, take care.
- [06:42]
A
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