Author | Coinage

Compiled by | Wu Blockchain

Market Reaction and Long-Term Logic: Short-Term Voting Machine, Long-Term Weighing Machine

Zack Guzman: The sale of 32 Bitcoin has drawn global attention. Facing various market reactions, what is the one thing you most want to clarify?

Phong Le: There's an old Wall Street saying: "In the short run, the market is a voting machine, but in the long run, it is a weighing machine." We are not seeking a vote on "how we increase Bitcoin per share." We simply provide KPIs and a long-term perspective transparently. There will always be short-term overreactions, but I don't spend much time scrolling through every comment on X (Twitter). We make decisions considering daily, annual, and long-term lenses, and the long-term lens is what matters most.

We focus on whether we are continuously creating value for different classes of shareholders—common stockholders, preferred stockholders, debt holders—while also advancing the Bitcoin ecosystem itself. This isn't even the first time we've sold Bitcoin. In 2022, we sold about $2.5 million worth of Bitcoin and bought back in later. This time, we similarly sold 32 Bitcoin (about $2.5 million), while buying approximately $100 million the previous week and about $1.5 billion the week before that. We voluntarily disclose this information weekly through 8-K filings. As the world's largest corporate holder of Bitcoin, bearing the market's positive and negative feedback is a responsibility that comes with our transparency.

Proving Liquidity to the Market: Dispelling the "Death Spiral" Narrative

Zack Guzman: Some view this sale as "inoculating" the market. Others compare you to Terra, worrying that once STRC (Strategy Preferred Stock, the preferred stock product Stretch) is leveraged by other DeFi protocols, it could trigger a cascading liquidation "death spiral." Was this a concern you heard before the sale?

Phong Le: That was not a driving factor at all. We are not worried about DeFi protocols built on STRC causing a cascading collapse, because roughly 80% of STRC is held by retail investors, with a significant portion held by long-term institutions. The proportion held by DeFi protocols is very small, less than 10%.

When we say "inoculating the market," there are two main meanings:

First, our debt holders (digital credit and bondholders) want confirmation that, with nearly 100% of our assets in Bitcoin, we have the ability and willingness to utilize these assets if we truly need to pay dividends or for other purposes. At the same time, rating agencies want to see that we won't sell Bitcoin recklessly. So, by making a small one-time sale, we prove to creditors that we can sell, and to rating agencies that we have discipline.

Second, it tests our internal business processes. We disclosed our custodian information but not specific Bitcoin addresses. Once we move Bitcoin from cold storage to a hot wallet, countless people in the market will be watching, trying to guess which wallets are ours. We wanted to see how the entire sale process operates in a real-world environment and how the market reacts. Hopefully, in the future, when we sell a few million dollars' worth of Bitcoin, the market won't make a big fuss.

Goodbye Black Box: Michael Saylor and Strategy's Decision-Making Mechanism

Zack Guzman: We've seen various experiments in the crypto space, and frankly, we've reported on founders with highly concentrated power like SBF and Do Kwon. But Strategy is different. How is a decision like "selling 32 Bitcoin" actually made internally?

Phong Le: As a well-known publicly listed company on Nasdaq, Michael Saylor no longer holds a majority stake. We have 8 board members, common stock, preferred stock, and debt holders, and to some extent, we are also accountable to the broader crypto community.

At the macro level, every quarter during earnings calls and board meetings, we discuss the "optionality" of capital — we can issue equity, preferred stock, convertible bonds, buy or sell Bitcoin, or repurchase bonds. Only after reaching a consensus at this level do we move to the execution layer. At the micro level, we run extremely complex financial models every month, analyzing the impact of different actions on stock quality and credit quality. Weekly, Michael and I discuss the week's objectives. Every morning, I set the day's directives with the treasury team, investor relations team, and traders. We even use Grok sentiment analysis on X, website traffic, and Strategy App usage data to aid decision-making. This is never a gut-feel decision; it's the rigorous approach expected of a data analytics company.

Funding Mechanisms and the Highest Philosophy: "Doing Nothing"

Zack Guzman: Beyond Bitcoin, if STRC continues to trade below par value, what other funding mechanisms might you utilize in the future?

Phong Le: We have many options: issuing more equity (our stock trades $2.7 billion daily, making it one of the most liquid stocks globally), issuing other preferred stock, or issuing more convertible debt—the market is very open to us. But I want to emphasize one point: we currently hold 845,000 Bitcoin, and we absolutely have the option of "doing nothing." This was precisely our core strategy during the 2022 bear market: we paid down some senior secured notes and Bitcoin-backed debt, and then simply sat quietly on this massive Bitcoin treasury. As Bitcoin recovered, the company's valuation and Bitcoin per share naturally increased.

In a bear market, the most dangerous temptation is often the urge to "do something," like a massive panic sell-off, but we would never do that. "Doing nothing" is one of our extremely important strategic options.

Facing Volatility and Conviction: Great Companies Have All Experienced "Near-Death Experiences"

Zack Guzman: When you choose to "do nothing" and watch paper losses accumulate into the billions of dollars, how does that feel personally?

Phong Le: People sometimes forget that this company, once named MicroStrategy, was founded by Michael Saylor in 1989 and went public in 1998. We only added Bitcoin to our balance sheet in 2020. Over the 31 years from 1989 to 2020, our Executive Chairman has amassed rich experience navigating countless ups and downs, which is the very foundation of the company's resilience and strength. I've been CFO since 2015 and CEO since 2022, experiencing 11 years of storms myself. Michael's hair has turned much grayer, and so has mine.

Look at Amazon—without going through several near-death experiences and extreme volatility, it wouldn't be the Amazon of today. Tesla had its "funding secured" tweet controversy. 2022 was indeed a difficult period, but it also forged resilience for those who persevered. Why am I unshaken? Because I believe in the underlying logic. I believe Bitcoin can create sovereignty and freedom for people globally, that it is a superior way to move funds over digital rails, and a programmatically superior scarce asset. Just as Jeff Bezos firmly believed Amazon could create real value for hundreds of millions of consumers, as long as you believe in the underlying logic, all other fluctuations become manageable.

The Evolution of AI: From Creating STRC to 6 Trillion Agents Trading on Mars

Zack Guzman: There are rumors that the inspiration for the STRC product came from exploring internal AI tools. What are your long-term plans for combining AI and finance?

Phong Le: Yes. When generative AI first emerged, people thought it could only write meeting minutes. But we discovered it could help us design revolutionary products that would normally take months and might even be rejected outright by lawyers and banks. AI helped us find applicable case law and financial KPIs, shortening STRC's development cycle from three years to eight months.

But this is just the beginning. What's even more exciting is Agentic AI. Internally, we are deploying agents to automatically summarize information, perform self-healing code fixes, and more. Ultimately, the world will evolve from 6 billion humans to 6 trillion autonomously decision-making agents — imagine SpaceX deploying a million humanoid robots on Mars and the Moon. When they engage in commercial interactions and value exchange, they will absolutely not use traditional financial networks like Visa, Mastercard, or SWIFT. They will use decentralized crypto rails and seek high-yield products with Bitcoin as the underlying store of value asset. This represents an immeasurably massive tailwind for the crypto world and Bitcoin.

Bridging the Divide: Crypto Fundamentalism vs. Capital Markets

Zack Guzman: There has always been a divide in the crypto world: one faction consists of "fundamentalists" who only believe in Bitcoin, while the other knows it must connect to traditional capital markets. How does Strategy balance these two?

Phong Le: When I deeply engaged with Bitcoin, I wanted to promote it to everyone around me, but I never required them to pass an IQ test or a loyalty test, nor did I ask about their religion, nationality, sexual orientation, or professional background. If Bitcoin is to win the world, it must allow as many people as possible to gain exposure in various ways. Whether through self-custody in a hardware wallet, buying on Coinbase, holding Strategy stock, holding STRC, or through DeFi protocols and ETFs—these are all excellent ways to spread Bitcoin. Our philosophy is simply: "Spread Bitcoin with love."

Can STRC Return to Its $100 Par Value?

Zack Guzman: Will STRC compete with USDC/USDT in the stablecoin market? What do you see as the roadmap for it to return to its $100 par value?

Phong Le: STRC is only 10 months old, while Bitcoin is 18 years old. It's still in its infancy, and we are continuously learning and refining. Our goal is for it to trade between $99 and $101. Some time ago, we used our dollar reserves to repurchase $1.5 billion in convertible notes, which reduced reserves and temporarily put pressure on the STRC price. Going forward, we will replenish reserves, and coupled with the first semi-monthly dividend payment mechanism starting June 30, it will gradually return to par value. The product is extremely over-collateralized; paying dividends is not a problem at all and does not keep me up at night.

The Polymarket Controversy Settled

Zack Guzman: There was huge controversy on Polymarket regarding whether you "sold Bitcoin before May 31st." Did you actually sell?

Phong Le: I followed the entire process. What I can state clearly is this: we did sell Bitcoin during the week before May 31st, and we truthfully recorded it in the 8-K filing released the following Monday morning at 8 a.m. As for how prediction markets interpret the contract, that's their business, but I am very clear on what the company actually did internally.