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Strategies & Market Trends : 2026 TeoTwawKi ... 2032 Darkest Interregnum -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?


To: TobagoJack who wrote (169531)3/15/2021 12:12:58 PM
From: Follies  Read Replies (6) | Respond to of 218836
 
BTC will have a big hiccup when US regulators seize one of the intermediaries, the on and off ramps, Coinbase, Binance.US etc. Since the intermediaries are holding (or not ha ha) the BTC in their addresses and you as an account holder only have an entry in their ledger, when the regulators seize and freeze, the account holders have nothing and the price will collapse. For how long I don’t know, but it will be a big shake up. Companies that have their balance sheets in BTC should be safe but who knows.



To: TobagoJack who wrote (169531)3/15/2021 5:46:49 PM
From: ggersh  Read Replies (1) | Respond to of 218836
 
wolfstreet.com

THE WOLF STREET REPORT: Market Manias Galore, But Long-Term Interest Rates Smell a Rat



To: TobagoJack who wrote (169531)3/15/2021 6:19:56 PM
From: sense  Read Replies (1) | Respond to of 218836
 
VIX at $20.03 right on schedule...

2021-03-15 4:13PM EDT
20.00 0.48 0.000.00 +0.38 +380.00% 87,135177,064 0.78%



To: TobagoJack who wrote (169531)3/16/2021 2:52:30 PM
From: sense  Respond to of 218836
 
A two-fer on bitcoin issues in easily trade-able form...

Or, a three-fer... starting only with the awareness that crypto features in two out of five in Motley Fool's
5 Popular Stocks to Avoid Like the Plague in March
The two crypto issues are MSTR and OBTC... and, whatever proves to be true of BTC in time, at this time, the criticisms of these two stocks are spot on...

At MSTR the issue is... the business is failing, and now is being neglected... as going "all in" on bitcoin is being used as an alternative to needing to focus on making the business work. Worse, the bitcoin strategy is based on leverage, and the leverage is of the worst possible sort in $1.6 billion in convertible debt. That should make it a fairly easy bit of math... one of the obvious reasons that all convertible debt ends up being a death-spiral issue for those that resort to it... to compute the price point at which the price of bitcoin paired with the cost of the debt forces MSTR to begin to implode... whether by conversions in dilution or otherwise...

The point there... is that if bitcoin prices drop... to that point of pain... which, as in all convertibles, is made more likely by having placed a $1.6 billion dollar incentive to enable that... ? The options trade likely indicates a distribution in (volume showing) the expectations about the nature of that risk. If and as it becomes a more real risk... MSTR will go to zero a lot faster than BTC will... with a particular inevitability and discontinuity in an inflection point that exists at a known price level. At the same time, MSTR also has greater upside leverage, as a function of the pairing in the leverage applied in buying the asset, in the nature and degree of the discount in MSTR's price, versus the value of the BTC held, and the reality of the way in which convertibles work... together with the 25% short position.

All convertibles are a bet that the company management are better/smarter risk managers than the management of the lenders... which, in practice, proves untrue more than 99% of the time. That MSTR is a strategy focused business... that is failing... seems unlikely to tip scales in their favor... so parsing what is BTC risk vs inevitability in MSTR risk requires knowing the nature of the convertibles to do the math. In the degree that company managers who do convertible deals...do understand the issues ? Assuming they're working for shareholders rather than lenders ? Always the right question. They can plan to win while you lose, because you lose... making the contest one between the risk management skills of lenders versus the risk management skills of shareholders... with the company merely the conduit facilitating the risk trade.

As long as BTC goes up faster than the debt erodes the value... MSTR survives... but, the share in BTC and value of a share is still diluted over time by the convertibles converting, or the asset shrinking (to pay the debt, or in value), or both... so share value is constantly shrinking relative to bitcoin's price, until the debt is gone... which also introduces market variables in the trade as a recognition of the risks plus investors proper evaluations of them, or not. Unless bitcoin values go up fast enough that MSTR can pay off the debt, wipe out the discount, and wipe out the 25% short position (usually also a part of the lenders trade)? All of which introduces many new variables that apply to MSTR and not BTC... which might make the leverage in the options trade more interesting, even as a variable in the skew in one vs the other.

If / as BTC exceeds lenders/shorts price performance expectations... it may generate a short squeeze in MSTR. The lure and the risk for investors is in focusing on BTC rather than the risks inherent in MSTR.

The second issue is easier... although I've not looked at the structure of the funding for OBTC. It is simply that OBTC is over-priced relative to the premium in the value relative to the bitcoin held... $15.87 in bitcoin for $20.80 per share, currently... likely to trade to a discount to the asset soon, just as the current trade is trending... mostly a question of the current pace being sustained, or not. And, then... the same issues as MSTR if (?) without the need for discounts tied to the known management concerns and convertible risks.

The Fool's prior looks make the point in a better comparison... with GBTC, its relative value to BTC charted here.

But, unfortunately, neither GBTC or OBTC are optionable.