They Called Saylor's Bitcoin Strategy a Ponzi | Here's The Math That Proves Them Wrong

Hinzugefügt: 2026-05-12

[00:00:00]Something happened 19 hours ago and that shocked the internet. What was it?

[00:00:06]>> I'm very famous for saying never sell you Bitcoin. And that's why the internet went crazy when we said we might sell it. But uh if I was being more precise, I say never be a net seller of Bitcoin.

[00:00:18]>> In this interview with David Lynn at Consensus 2026, Sailor breaks down what he really meant when he coined the maxim, >> you do not sell your Bitcoin. Never sell your Bitcoin became the theme for the Bitcoin movement worldwide. But that's not exactly what he meant. Sailor breaks down the strategy of how they plan to be a buyer of Bitcoin forever and exactly what conditions need to be met in order for that to happen. And as of today, well, the thesis still holds up. We break down whether strategy is a Ponzi scheme or not and something even important that you might be missing on this holiday. This is Dante Cook with Bitcoin simply. Let's go.

[00:00:55]So, a rumor came out that Michael Sailor is entertaining possibly selling Bitcoin. What do you mean he's entertaining selling Bitcoin? Isn't he the one that Micro Strategy keeps buying, buying, buying? Yes. He said he would never sell Bitcoin. Now he's saying he might. This was a talk of Twitter all this week. I thought Micro Strategy would never sell. Sailor coined the phrase, "Does this mean the Bitcoin movement is over? Was this in fact a Ponzi scheme all along?" Look, the the knock-on um strategy was always that numbers don't add up. If if he has tr if he has trouble raising funds through all of his creative um ways of of raising funds, uh liquid cash um to be able to pay back all those investors and pay the dividends that needed to be paid.

[00:01:39]Eventually, he was either going to have to bring in new investors or he's going to have to start selling Bitcoin. That was always a knock on him and he always said, "No, we'll never have to do that.

[00:01:46]Everything's fine." Um, I love how he's kind of spinning it here and saying that, oh, we're doing this for the benefit of the market. We're just going to test it out see so that you can see that everything's good. Uh, but I have to I you got to you got to give it to the critics here because I think they it's the numbers are not adding up the way that they're supposed to and this is potentially something more substantial and of course he's going to want to downplay it. Um, but it the like I said the knock on this has always been they don't have the cash flow to pay off the investors and the rates of return that they were giving new investors were just astronomical. How is that? It's not. And >> how is that sustainable?

[00:02:19]>> That was the argument. It was not sustainable.

[00:02:20]>> That was a clip from Patrick Bat David and Jeff Snder, and they're both credible guys, and this isn't a knock on them. But in no way does him saying that he might sell Bitcoin in order to fund dividends that are promised as the credit instrument for Stretch mean that this is a Ponzi scheme or somehow the model is unsustainable. This does not invalidate the credit engine that he's created. Look, I'm not an investor in MSTR or STRC, so I have no horse in the race. But like Sailor, I was a finance guy before a Bitcoin guy. And there's a rationale and a logic and a reason behind everything that this guy does. I mean, he's the longest active publicly traded officer. He's been in the market for almost 27 years, running a BI firm out of Washington DC when so many companies have fallen and gone by the wayside. This guy continues to create shareholder value, and he's done it from nothing. So, no, this isn't some random thing that he's doing half-hazardly.

[00:03:12]Let's hear what Sailor has to say about it. There's been a bit of confusion in the market about where did the dividends come from? You know, how do we pay the dividend? And for most of the history of the instrument, we sold common equity, MSTR equity, to pay the dividend. Um, MSTR equity is a derivative of Bitcoin.

[00:03:30]It normally trades at a premium to Bitcoin. And so, we were selling a Bitcoin derivative. But some people worried that we wouldn't be able to sell the equity in the future. And then there are short narratives that that we have to sell the equity. And then there are other narratives that the company won't sell its Bitcoin and that kind of metastasized to well if they're not going to sell their Bitcoin it must not have any value and they can never sell it and if they can't sell it then we can't count the Bitcoin as an asset on the balance sheet. So if you had $65 billion worth of something and people wanted to value it at zero it's not very good. Right? The we don't want the credit rating agencies to think the company has zero dollars of assets. We want the credit rating agencies to think we have $65 billion of assets.

[00:04:14]>> In order to issue a creditback instrument into the marketplace, well, there are these agencies that rate your credit instrument called credit agencies. They value and dictate the quality of the instrument that you're selling to the public. And so therefore, making them happy is important. If you have an asset with no flows that isn't valued by anyone in the market that you just continue to hoard and say has value, but in the actuality of the marketplace has no value, well then your credit rating is probably going to slip, which dictates the terms and the dividends that they would be able to issue for STRC in the first place.

[00:04:46]That's real world finance, not Bitcoin.

[00:04:48]So one, he has to entertain credit agencies as step number one. But also, this is just standard business practice.

[00:04:54]There are these things out there called REITs, real estate investment trusts that have been around for a long time where they value the underlying assets of the holdings and the cash flows from the rental agreements that they have to issue you a dividend on a monthly basis.

[00:05:07]And when a property gets valued and they sell some, well, that's part of what covers the dividend that they offer to you in this public instrument. It's no different in Bitcoin's case. This is what Sailor says. The analogy is like uh a real estate development company uh raises capital by issuing a credit instrument, buys land at $10,000 an acre, develops it, it's worth $100,000 an acre, and then they monetize that capital appreciation. You could sell the land at $100,000 an acre. You could rent the land after you fully developed it.

[00:05:39]You could refinance the land. But nobody questions a real estate development company that makes a capital investment with a a credit income. What we're doing is the same thing with Bitcoin. And we want to make sure that the market understands that. I'm very famous for saying never sell your Bitcoin. And that's why the internet went crazy when we said we might sell it. But uh if I was being more precise, I say never be a net seller of Bitcoin. it just wouldn't have been so viral or so catchy to say never be a net seller of Bitcoin. I think that in these periods, even if we were to sell one Bitcoin, we'd be buying 10 to 20 more Bitcoin. So, you're really talking about a situation where we buy 10 Bitcoin, sell one Bitcoin, buy nine net Bitcoin, and continue to create Bitcoin. It's it it should be a non-issue after people understand it.

[00:06:31]But right now, it's a colorful area of commentary.

[00:06:34]>> You're right. Never being a net seller of Bitcoin doesn't sell as well as never sell your Bitcoin. Bitcoin is meme money. Money with memes and ideas attached to it that help it spread virally across the world in the digital realm. Micro strategy or strategy MSTR STRC will always be net buyers of Bitcoin. And so the ratio of him selling Bitcoin isn't one. He's buying 10 Bitcoin for every one that he sells.

[00:06:59]>> Is it possible for you to comment how do you sell one Bitcoin and buy 10? Yeah.

[00:07:04]So, the number one Bitcoin accretion engine is Stretch. Uh, we sold $3.2 billion of STRC in uh, April. So, we bought $3.2 billion of Bitcoin. The dividend is about 80 to 90 million. So, in the month when we're raising 3 billion, we're we need to come up with uh 80 or 90 million to pay the dividend.

[00:07:30]So you would be in essence you would be buying 30 bitcoin selling one bitcoin >> right our um our break even rate is 2.3%.

[00:07:43]So what that means is that if we sell stretch if we issue stretch credit uh equal to 2.3% of our bitcoin holdings then that means we will be a net buyer of bitcoin forever even if we sell bitcoin to pay the dividend. Another point is that if Bitcoin appreciates 2.3% a year, we can pay the dividends forever, right? And and continue to grow value, right? And we can do it without selling any any common equity. So the break even is 2.3. Right now we're we've um sold about $5 billion of STRC in the first four months of the year. So, we're running on a pace uh to have an issuance rate of 15 or 20% this year. 2.3% is the break even. So, you buy 20, you sell two, you net 18, right? The the company, as long as it grows, is going to buy more Bitcoin than it sells. I expect will be a net buyer of uh Bitcoin in every month and every quarter going on forever. If their Bitcoin per share increases just 2.3% a year, well, they're going to be able to fund this infinite money glitch machine forever.

[00:08:55]And so far, that's their northstar metric. In the old financial world, it was earnings per share. In the Bitcoin standard, it's Bitcoin per share. And that's what they measure against. Let alone Bitcoin being an asset that is appreciated 30 or what Michael Sailor says, 40% a year. This is going to allow them to cover their dividends at Infinum. But more importantly than all of the stuff going on about Michael Sailor and Micro Strategy and STRC being a Ponzi scheme, this isn't the most important thing we need to focus on today. We need to focus on the mothers and the women in our life. It's Mother's Day after all. One great thing that we always do in Bitcoin land is we look at the price of Bitcoin on Mother's Day.

[00:09:33]And as we can see, okay, 2026 did break the trend. Was at 104K last year and it's at 80K today. But it still looks pretty dag on good from a few Mother's Days ago. Pretty nice gift to give your mother. In the Bitcoin world, there's no greater display of a mother's love than Lynn Olbert, the mother of Ross Olbert, who served 11 years being the founder and creator of Silk Road. He was released under pardon by Trump about a year ago. Lynn is a hope and an inspiration to all of us because it lets all of us know that there's always somebody, someone in your corner who's willing to fight for the death for you.

[00:10:06]She helped raise awareness and raise millions of dollars in order to fund all of the legal battles and bring about the release of her son. She brought the situation to the White House. She put herself in uncomfortable situations.

[00:10:19]This is one of the best conversations from Bitcoin 2026. A conversation between Effort, Janice McAfee, Lauren Rodriguez, and Lynch when she talked about what she did, the links that she went to to defend her son.

[00:10:33]>> Lynn Ross is home finally. Yay!

[00:10:39]So good.

[00:10:40]>> Does the fight feel different now? And is it harder or easier to keep people's attention once the personal emergency is resolved?

[00:10:49]>> Yeah. Well, the fight is different because my my main prize was going to be Ross being out and it happened. Oh my god. Thank you, God. And thank you, President Trump and everyone here who helped so many people from the Bitcoin community. couldn't have done it without you guys. Um, and so my life is not as intense or as desperate. It was, you know, adrenalinefilled.

[00:11:13]Um, like before I would force myself to do pretty scary stuff, you know, like I'm going to force myself to talk to this famous person or whatever. And one time that really stands out is what someone got me into Mara Lago at a a table and Trump came and he was sitting at his private table. It has a red uh thing around it. You know, it's his table. And um I went to the restroom and was coming back and I saw there was kind of a gap in that rope and he was just sitting there on his iPad controlling the music. And um I thought there he is.

[00:11:48]I'm going to go talk to him. And so I went up to him and, you know, said a few words. And um he was very kind. He was very nice. And um then I started talking about Ross and all of this stuff as I felt myself slowly being moved and kind of lifted by these two giant people and um Secret Service and um I was taken away to my table. They didn't they weren't horrible or anything, but I couldn't believe I did it actually.

[00:12:19]But um and there were other times when there were people that I really wanted to talk to. So I forced myself to do a lot of things and go a lot of places and keep going when it was for my son.

[00:12:30]>> Before we go any further, let's thank our sponsors. Letin has been the leader in Bitcoin back loans since 2018.

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[00:13:03]Well, it's about half of what you could get for a credit card. Learn how to stay sovereign with the leaders at Lein by going to learn.let.io/simply to get started. the Bitcoin way. Well, they're leaders in helping you to stay sovereign, which privacy is not a crime.

[00:13:16]Self- sovereignty is not a crime. And building tools around self- sovereignty should not be a crime. I mean, the mob uses Excel. They're not being held liable for creating open-source tools that everybody uses. Sovereignty is part of what makes America America. And the team at the Bitcoin Way is helping to preserve that by allowing you to take custody and full sovereignty of your Bitcoin. They'll help you to run a private node, set it up confidently, safely, and securely. Schedule a free 30-minute meeting with the team at the bitcoinway.com/partner/dante-cook.

[00:13:45]I want to end with a few thoughts for us who get to celebrate friends and family on a day like today. Don't take the women or the freedom that you have for granted. I love this clip from my friend Tarantula. They talk about what's actually going on with what happened with Ross Bert in the past and what's currently happening with the team at Samurai. Keep thinking about conversations having happened the other day about my brothers, Samurai Wall de Venio.

[00:14:11]You know, they didn't cage our brothers because they armed someone.

[00:14:16]They caged them because they wrote code that made free men harder to control.

[00:14:22]I said again and again, privacy is not a crime. Self-custody is not a crime.

[00:14:29]Building tools for sovereignty is not a crime.

[00:14:33]>> Keony Rodriguez went to prison last December. He's at the beginning of a 5-year sentence, and it's been part of his life journey and life mission with him and four other guys who created open-source privacy based tools for us as Bitcoiners to have some semblance of anonymity and the ability to keep our transactions free from other people peering in. It's no different than cash.

[00:14:56]He wrote a note from prison in West Virginia just a day ago sharing about the struggles that they've had as a family, how all of the legal fees have wiped their bank accounts out completely, and the hope that he has to always be someone who swims upstream, who fights for what's right despite what's going on in front of him. And so as we celebrate with our mothers or we're celebrating or mourning the loss of a mother because I know how hard Mother's Day can be. Holidays sometimes remind you of the people that meant most to you in life who are no longer there.

[00:15:26]You're looking at a plate. You're looking at a seat. You're smelling food.

[00:15:29]You're smelling the things that remind you of them. And so I just want to encourage you on a day like this. Don't take your freedom or your mothers, your daughters, or the women in your life for granted. If you have a daughter like me, I've got three. Hug them and kiss them because they're going to be the future mothers and the people who will fight for you when no one else will. Our thoughts and prayers today are with Lauren Rodriguez and the samurai movement. We love you and we thank you for all that you do for us. All of the sacrifice. We don't take it for granted.

[00:15:58]Happy Mother's Day and this is Dante Cook with Bitcoin simply. Happy stacking. You haven't already got started with Bitcoin mining? Well, you don't have to go at it alone. You can work with the leaders in Bitcoin mining at SAS Mining. Their team will help you to buy a Bitcoin mining rig connected to 100% clean, free, renewable energy, and have SATs flowing directly to your wallet every single day so that you can maintain the freedom, sovereignty, and privacy that Bitcoin offers. Use the QR code to get started today. Thank you, mothers, and I hope you enjoy today. You deserve it.