Prominent financial analysts engaged in a heated public debate this weekend over the performance and mechanics of Strategy’s (MSTR) bitcoin-focused corporate strategy, highlighting deep divisions over the company’s valuation premium.
Premium Fuel: Experts Debate MSTR’s Outperformance vs. Bitcoin
The exchange featured Lyn Alden, founder of Lyn Alden Investment Strategy and a noted bitcoin bull; Jim Chanos, founder of Kynikos Associates and famed short-seller; and Andy Constin, CEO of Damped Spring Advisors. It centered on Alden’s assertion that Strategy (formerly Microstrategy) shareholders who invested when the company adopted its bitcoin accumulation strategy in August 2020 would have outperformed owning bitcoin itself, even if Strategy’s metric for bitcoin holdings per share (“mNAV”) fell to 1x current bitcoin prices.
Strategy, a business intelligence (BI) firm, essentially functions as a publicly traded bitcoin ( BTC) treasury company, using capital raises and debt issuance primarily to acquire and hold bitcoin on its balance sheet. Jim Chanos challenged Alden’s analysis, implying she overlooked a critical factor: “You don’t need a ‘long form article’ to understand that each share of MSTR has had an increased amount of bitcoin per share since 2020. The mNAV trade is dynamic, not static.”
He later posed a fundamental question:
Does the business model (raising money to buy bitcoin) create the mNAV premium, or does the mNAV premium allow such a model to exist/continue?
Andy Constin entered the debate, accusing Alden of ignoring dilution effects. He argued that Strategy’s market capitalization growth stemmed significantly from issuing shares at premiums well above mNAV (e.g., 1.4x, 1.8x), benefiting early shareholders at the expense of later entrants. “Most if not all of the excess return over BTC is coming from most of the market cap of the company coming at a high MNAV,” Constin stated, likening early entry advantage to a “Ponzi scheme.”
Alden defended her position, acknowledging the premium but arguing it reflected unique value. She noted Strategy offered institutional investors exposure to bitcoin combined with long-term, non-callable debt – a structure unavailable via spot bitcoin exchange-traded funds (ETFs) or to funds restricted to stocks/bonds. “Attaching multi-year non-callable debt to bitcoin offers a product that corps can do, but investors and most funds cannot do, so they pay a premium for it,” Alden explained.
She emphasized repeatedly advising caution and trimming positions when mNAV premiums soared to 3x, stating buyers at 1x-2x NAV generally benefited over the past five years, even as BTC per share increased. Chanos, known for publicly shorting MSTR while holding bitcoin long as an arbitrage trade, and Constin (claiming 83 years of combined experience with Chanos) maintained Alden deflected their core critique about premium-fueled returns.
Alden countered that the strategy’s longevity and persistent, unmet institutional demand justified the premium, predicting it would fade only when similar products became ubiquitous. “Eventually when that ability is ubiquitously diffused everywhere, the premium will dry up,” she concluded. The debate ended with Constin suggesting Alden acknowledge their point and Alden reiterating the strategy’s appeal to specific investor mandates.
#Binance #wendy #BTC $BTC
