저자: TomLee · 외국인
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비트코인 급락 배경에서 Strategy(MSTR)의 BTC 매도 가능성 발표로 불안이 커졌으나, Lee는 BTC 가격이 회복하면 MSTR 자본구조도 회복된다고 봄. 회사는 현금 쿠션 확대가 최선이라고 주장. 이더리움(BitMine) 관련해서는 장기 낙관을 유지하며 현재 가격 부진은 인정. AI에 자금이 쏠려 크립토 가격이 단기 후행하나 스토리는 유효하다고 평가. 비트코인은 최고 10일 수익률이 연 수익을 좌우하므로 타이밍 매매 대신 장기 보유 권고, 사이클상 8~10월 무렵 매수 관심 구간 언급.
다듬은 글
So, if I was Michael Saylor, I would probably think that MSTR and raising cash through selling the common might be the best strategy, but I'm not Michael Saylor. And but you know, when I look at the cap structure, as you know, that adding a cash cushion or adding more equity to the cap structure is really what protects that fleet.
And so, I would say to me, anything they can do to increase the the dollar amount of the equity cushion or the amount of cash is is really makes the most sense. If you're wondering why Bitcoin is suddenly down again after recovering above $60,000, Strategy, Michael Saylor's software company turned Bitcoin treasury giant, just dropped what many traders are calling a bombshell announcement.
Within hours, social media exploded with claims that Saylor had turned into a seller, some even comparing the situation to the beginning of major market failures like FTX. While those comparisons are almost certainly exaggerated, there's no question that this announcement has shaken investor confidence and sparked one of the biggest debates in the Bitcoin community this year.
The controversy began after Strategy unveiled a major overhaul of its capital allocation framework. The company announced that it has established repurchase programs of up to $1 billion for its digital credit securities and another $1 billion for its common stock, saying these buybacks are designed to create flexibility during periods of market dislocation.
But what really grabbed everyone's attention was a second announcement. Strategy revealed that it has established a Bitcoin monetization program, under which it may sell Bitcoin to fund a $1.25 billion US dollar reserve, pay dividends and interest expenses, and support those repurchase programs. The company also emphasized that repurchases themselves would not be funded directly from the new UST reserve, but the damage to market sentiment had already been done.
For years, Michael Saylor built his reputation around one simple promise, buy Bitcoin and never sell. Whether the company ultimately sells a large amount or only a small portion when necessary, investors are now forced to price in something they never had to consider before the possibility that strategy could become an occasional source of Bitcoin supply instead of an endless buyer.
Critics like Peter Schiff immediately declared that Saylor had surrendered, while supporters argued that this is simply prudent corporate treasury management designed to strengthen strategy's balance sheet during periods of market stress. Either way, the announcement triggered fresh uncertainty, and uncertainty is something financial markets rarely handle well.
That's exactly why today's interview with Fundstrat's Tom Lee is so important. Rather than focusing on the emotional headlines dominating X and YouTube, Lee explains what he believes investors should actually be paying attention to. He discusses why strengthening strategy's capital structure could ultimately protect shareholders, why Bitcoin's long-term investment case remains intact despite the recent sell-off, and why today's panic may look very different in hindsight.
We'll also hear his broader outlook on crypto, artificial intelligence, and why he believes the biggest opportunities may still lie ahead. If you enjoy balanced, fact-based analysis that cuts through the daily market [snorts] noise, make sure you dates. Now, let's hear what Tom Lee had to say. Well, you know, uh for first and foremost, you know, MicroStrategy's future is tied to Bitcoin.
Um you know, and I'm confident Bitcoin's price um will recover because Bitcoin still remains one of the most pristine ways to transfer and store value. You know, it is a a blockchain that has never been exploited. Um and it's supported by a community that wants to ossify and protect that chain. So, I think as long as Bitcoin's price recovers, Strategy is going to stage a big recovery in in its entire stack of pref and convertibles and debt.
But, as we know, markets are like war. And imagine like a a formation of B-17 bombers fly flying over Germany, okay? And there's a plane that's falling a little behind. That's who the fighters are going to attack and try to to take down. And so, I think investors are viewing Strategy's public capital structure, which is available to public markets, right?
It's not like someone can go and exploit the Bitcoin blockchain. And they're going to test his capital structure. So, I think that's the the test he's facing right now. And I think that the best defense for him is to be raising and increasing his cash balance because that raising cash provides a cushion to the entire cap stack.
Now, raising cash without selling Bitcoin, right? Cuz I think that spooks more of it. When he sells Bitcoin, he's sort of the central bank of Bitcoin. When he When he sells, it creates a spooking, yeah? Correct. So, if I was Michael Saylor, I would probably think that MSTR and raising cash through selling the common might be the best strategy, but I'm not Michael Saylor.
And but you know, when I look at the cap structure, as you know, that adding a cash cushion or adding more equity to the cap structure is really what protects um that fleet. And so, I would say to me, anything they can do to their increase the the dollar amount of the equity cushion or the amount of cash is is really makes the most sense.
If I missed something, add it. But the question I guess I have is what would it be that would make you a Bitmain bear? What would it be that would have to happen that would change your thesis on Ethereum and or Bitmain? Well, that's a good question. Um you know, today Bitmain is operating in the mode that it is uh crypto winter spring.
You know, I'd say more spring. And that's why we've operated with a very conservative capital structure. Uh the company keeps a very large cash position of about $600 million of cash and we've staked um you know, about 80% of the Ethereum and that's generating over 250 million a year in staking rewards.
So, the company has free cash flow of several hundred million dollars a year and and a huge um cash cushion available and has been making selective investments. I think we've disclosed our investment in Mr. Beast and in 8co. And we are working very closely with the spin-off entities that have left the Ethereum Foundation including E Labs.
Um I think there's going to be several more entities announcing funding soon. Uh and we are taking a very proactive role. You know, we are working with entities like Chainlink and Joe Lubin and many of the core developers of Ethereum to not only strengthen and fund and grant the right sort of public goods within Ethereum, but we're also helping improve enterprise engagement and also do a lot of what I call forward deployment around AI.
So, I I feel very confident that when crypto winter spring ends and the bull market starts, that Ethereum is going to be a central player in all things that are going to be very relevant and you know in that future financial services the whole industry is really becoming a tech stack. You know money is becoming software and when you move money and makes it make it software and composable there is a a transformation of the economy and and that's really where Ethereum's going to shine because now the sudden stocks trade 24/7 but stocks trade on factors.
I I think it's there's a enormous opportunity but yes we are in the a period where price is is really disappointing and it's very frustrating as well. Tom Lee's main argument is that the market may be focusing on the wrong issue. In his view strategies biggest vulnerability isn't Bitcoin itself, it's the company's public capital structure.
As long as Bitcoin eventually recovers, Lee believes strategy stack of debt, preferred shares, and convertibles should recover alongside it. The real challenge is surviving periods when investors begin testing the company's financial resilience. That's why he argues that raising additional cash or strengthening the equity cushion without aggressively selling Bitcoin could actually make the entire organization more durable during future market volatility.
Whether investors ultimately agree with that assessment remains to be seen. Right now emotions are running high because strategy has altered one of the strongest narratives surrounding the stock. Markets are driven as much by expectations as they are by fundamentals and even the possibility of future Bitcoin sales has forced investors to reassess the company's role within the broader Bitcoin ecosystem.
But after addressing the immediate concerns surrounding strategy, Tom Lee zooms out to an even bigger question. If Bitcoin's long-term fundamentals haven't really changed, why is crypto continued to lag while artificial intelligence captures nearly all of Wall Street's attention? His answer paints a much larger picture about where capital is flowing today and why crypto's biggest move may simply be taking longer than many expected.
When I, you know, sort of look at this from a high level, I I think this is a time of great technological innovation taking place, you know, uh in America and it is very much an American and partly China story. And AI is making quantum improvements, you know, exponential gains. We started off with being amazed at complex reasoning and now we're talking about AI doing a lot of our job and and pretty soon robots.
And that requires a lot of compute and a lot of energy. And it does require a lot of investor dollars. I can understand the idea that if someone was tracking crypto as a narrative and then sort of comparing it to what's happening in AI is going to on the margin capture incremental dollars. But crypto, I I think is not really a broken story, but it is going to have price lagging in the near term because the fundamental story is is compounding and crypto is still a really important downstream story to AI.
I mean, I think that's really uh hasn't changed and and Wall Street has an an outdated tech stack that they want to upgrade and that is going to be built on crypto rails. Um that story hasn't changed. So, to me, when I look 2 years out, I think the future is still we're tracking towards it, very important future or that's very crypto-centric.
But price doesn't have to respond today because, you know, it's you know, it's easier to buy the bottlenecks in AI. I mean, I think there's two things about crypto that's that haven't changed and that are playing out this year. You know, one is that crypto is a hyper volatile asset. You know, so in the scheme of things, a drawdown being 50% from a high, you know, as you know in Bitcoin's history, that's not even necessarily a correction.
And the second is that despite crypto having a world of traders and people trading it, um the best investment decisions really have required people to have a longer time frame. And that's why I think the four-year cycle is sort of part of that because for those that are long-term oriented and and that and and they may be tactical then then timing is important to them cuz they they may not want to actually be even thinking about buying crypto until we get towards that early window of the four-year cycle.
So, that's really, you know, August to October. And then in people's minds, you know, that's prices, you know, it may be 50 or 60,000. I think that's really, you know, a question for an investor. Like for someone who's new to crypto because they may be used to quarterly announcements, you know, specific catalysts, but in the history of crypto, we know that not only is it hyper volatile and it's a decentralized, so there's no really there's no quote announcements, but we also know that crypto makes most of its gains in 10 days.
So, the 10 best days drive almost all the returns in a year. So, if someone's trying to time their Bitcoin buys, if they've got a great model, I think it's going to, you know, that could serve them very well, but Bitcoin has the best compounded annual return of any asset over the past 10 years or even the past 15 years, but [snorts] what's interesting is if you exclude the 10 best days for each year in Bitcoin, you'd actually be down 27% per year.
So, all the gains in Bitcoin basically come down to 10 days. Why why do you think that is, Tom? Well, I think that's the actually uh um you know, in general the idea of 10 days accounting for all the gains is, you know, the idea of the mistake of timing markets. That's also true in the stock market.
We've published this stat since 1929, the S&P has compounded at roughly 9% a year. If you miss the 10 best days, your return Well, and this is going to shock you, drops to negative. Um I believe the 10 best days average in the S&P 2,100 basis points, meaning your return drops to -10% a year. That's probably why the average person doesn't really beat the market because they're trying to time it.
And if someone just buys the S&P and holds it, they're going to compound at 9% a year. So, in fact, um in the last 3 years, the 10 best days have been a bigger driver. It's been over 24 percentage points. So, um last year, you again, you would have had a negative double-digit year if you did not stay invested the whole year.
Tom Lee's broader message is one that long-term investors have heard from him many times before. Short-term price action doesn't always reflect long-term value. In his view, artificial intelligence is currently attracting the majority of new investment because it's where the most obvious technological breakthroughs are happening today.
But that doesn't mean crypto's story has broken. If anything, Lee believes blockchain infrastructure will eventually become one of the foundational technologies that supports the next generation of financial markets, tokenized assets, and AI-powered applications. He also reminds investors that Bitcoin has always been an unusually volatile asset.
Throughout its history, it has repeatedly experienced drawdowns that felt catastrophic in real time before eventually recovering to new highs. More importantly, Lee points out that many of Bitcoin's long-term returns have been generated during just a handful of trading days. Investors who constantly try to jump in and out of the market often miss those explosive moves, dramatically reducing their overall returns.
Of course, none of this guarantees that Bitcoin immediately reverses course from here. Strategy's announcement has clearly introduced a new variable for the market to evaluate, and sentiment may remain fragile until investors better understand how the company's Bitcoin monetization program will actually be used.
But if Tom Lee is correct, today's headlines may eventually become just another chapter in Bitcoin's long history of volatility, rather than the end of its long-term growth story. What do you think? Is Strategy making the right move by building a larger cash cushion, or has Michael Saylor fundamentally changed the investment case for the company?
Let us know your thoughts in the comments below. We'd love to hear your perspective. If you enjoyed this breakdown, don't forget to leave Bitcoin and crypto analysis. .
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