In Episode 25, True North Episode 25: The team dives into market trends, an MSTR Q1 earnings preview, and insights from the recent Bitcoin for Corporations event hosted by Bitwise. Key discussion points include swan’s getting to werk, mstr tn world, mstr by the numbers, narrative shift, investing strategy. Market context: MSTR closed at $380.11 with mNAV at ~2.13.
Market Snapshot
- Date: 4/30/25
- MSTR Open/Close: $373.78 / $380.11
- Volume: 13,713,700 shares
- mNAV: ~2.13
- Market Cap: ~$103.74B
- U.S. Market Cap Rank: 86
- BTC Held: 553,555
Chapters
- 00:00:00 — Kickoff: Back from Bitwise, upcoming MSTR TN World and Agenda
- 00:03:30 — Swan’s getting to Werk: Ben’s new CIO role
- 00:07:17 — MSTR TN World: Latest updates from the team
- 00:14:13 — MSTR by the Numbers: BTC holdings, leverage ratio and capital position
- 00:19:30 — Narrative Shift: From ETF doubts to MSTR dominance and growing moat
- 00:24:00 — Investing Strategy: Picking BTC treasury companies
- 00:27:01 — MSTR’s Moat: Why competitors can’t catch up
- 00:30:42 — Trust and Debt: Why MSTR is built on a network of trust
- 00:34:40 — Credit Spreads: Relative risk comparisons for $MSTR vs others
- 00:42:35 — Meeting Saylor: Converts, marketing and insights
- 00:47:52 — Market Maturity: New derivative products and options
- 00:53:00 — Bitcoin Flywheel: Ecosystem growth, financialization and cooperation
- 01:07:20 — Corporate BTC: How adoption could spread fast
- 01:13:06 — Earnings Preview: Mark-to-market impact and Q1 outlook
- 01:18:13 — Future Forecast: MSTR as a top-10 stock if BTC hits $150K
- 01:22:04 — S&P 500 Talk: What MSTR inclusion could mean
- 01:24:00 — Final Words: Event prep, gratitude, and next steps
Episode Summary
Key Themes: Fair-value earnings; institutional bewilderment; S&P 500 qualification; preferred mispricing; digital credit; Strategy’s scale advantage; treasury-company competition; trust as a moat.
The Coming Collision
Episode 25 takes place before Strategy’s first quarterly earnings report under fair-value Bitcoin accounting, setting up what the panel expects to be another major collision between the company’s economic reality and traditional Wall Street analysis. The group also prepares for Strategy World and the inaugural True North World event, while celebrating Ben Werkman’s move into the Bitcoin industry. His appointment reinforces a broader theme: Bitcoin treasury companies are multiplying rapidly, creating new careers, investment vehicles, and financial structures faster than the traditional market can absorb them.
Scale Bias
Strategy entered earnings holding approximately 553,555 Bitcoin worth more than $52 billion. Despite adding over 100,000 Bitcoin since year-end, its leverage remained below 20%, with assets growing much faster than liabilities. The panel again rejects the view that the company is dangerously indebted. Instead, it sees a conservatively financed balance sheet with substantial capacity to issue more securities and acquire more Bitcoin. Dan and Adrian warn against “scale bias”—the instinct to assume Strategy cannot keep accumulating simply because its existing holdings already seem enormous. The company has repeatedly exceeded previous assumptions about the upper limit of its Bitcoin ownership.
Trust as the Moat
The explosion of new Bitcoin treasury companies creates a difficult portfolio question. Smaller entrants may initially produce faster percentage growth and higher Bitcoin yield, but they lack Strategy’s liquidity, five-year track record, financing relationships, and proven management team. Mason argues that Strategy’s most important moat may be trust: when the company raises capital, investors know the proceeds will quickly be deployed into Bitcoin. That credibility cannot be created through a press release. The panel expects leveraged Bitcoin equities eventually to become their own asset category, with Strategy serving as the large, institutionally accessible core while smaller companies occupy higher-risk growth positions.
Mispriced Preferreds
A substantial portion of the episode focuses on STRF and STRK. Following Saylor’s presentation at a Bitwise event, the group argues that both securities remain substantially mispriced relative to their collateral and competing fixed-income instruments. STRF offered a yield near 11%, representing a spread of roughly 670 basis points over the ten-year Treasury, despite being heavily overcollateralized by Strategy’s Bitcoin. Jeff contrasts that with preferred securities issued by companies exposed to physical infrastructure, wildfire liability, declining businesses, and other operational risks that offer much lower yields.
Liquid Digital Credit
STRK adds a perpetual conversion option into MSTR, making it part income product and part equity option. Because these preferreds are publicly traded and liquid, investors can move in and out more easily than with private convertible bonds. The panel views them as the beginning of a broad digital credit market that could eventually support an entire Bitcoin-based portfolio across different risk levels. Strategy can use the preferred ATMs to raise capital and purchase Bitcoin without the immediate common-stock pressure associated with convertible-bond hedging, potentially accelerating Bitcoin-per-share growth.
An Ugly Headline Quarter
The immediate earnings report, however, was expected to look terrible. Because Bitcoin fell during the first quarter, fair-value accounting would likely produce a roughly $5 billion mark-to-market loss and deeply negative earnings per share, far below analysts’ published expectations. The panel predicts headlines presenting this accounting loss as evidence that Strategy is failing, even though Bitcoin had already recovered during the second quarter. The problem is that traditional quarterly accounting captures a volatile asset at one arbitrary point in time, while Bitcoin trades continuously.
The Tesla Parallel
The longer-term consequence could be far more bullish. Every $10,000 increase in Bitcoin’s price creates billions of dollars of earnings for Strategy. A sufficiently strong quarter could place its profits alongside America’s largest companies and formally satisfy the earnings requirement for S&P 500 inclusion. The panel compares this setup with Tesla, whose market capitalization surged between first qualifying for the index and eventually being added. Passive flows, active front-running, greater visibility, and more efficient capital issuance could then strengthen every part of Strategy’s flywheel.
Main Takeaway: The first fair-value earnings report may create short-term confusion, but Strategy’s growing Bitcoin balance sheet, underpriced digital credit products, institutional trust, and potential S&P 500 qualification are positioning it to become increasingly difficult for traditional finance to ignore.