After yesterday’s abysmal 5-year Treasury auction (5.033%, BTC 2.21, ~3.1 bp tail),all eyes will be on today’s $44 billion 7-year auction. A big tail is unexpected after yesterday’s weakness, with investors already anticipating a higher yield. Instead, watch for BTC under 2.5, high dealer allocation (>12%), and indirect (foreign) demand under 60% for signaled weakness. An auction like this will show increasing market dysfunction.

Good afternoon. Bitcoin selling off here because the Clarity Act failed today presents a strong buying opportunity. Bitcoin does not need this legislation at all to continue to grow. Have a great day.

There are a lot of Bitcoin accounts on X. These are 10 I think you should be following right now: @bensig — Ben Sigman Ben is on fire. One post hit 5M views this month. He’s also putting together Bitcoin Alpha with me for the third time. @sminston_with — Sminston His quant takes are moving him into pole position. Amazing charts. Second to none. @peruvian_bull — Roberto Rios My favorite macro voice these days. Consistently sees things others miss. He’ll be at Bitcoin Alpha. @LukeGromen — Luke Gromen Took plenty of arrows for selling most of his BTC around $95K, but his recent work has been excellent — especially on the private-credit bubble. @ProofOfMoney — Terence Michael My favorite Bitcoin host. Bitcoin Today is consistently one of the best Bitcoin shows out there. He’ll be at Bitcoin Alpha. @1basemoney — Matthew Mežinskis Amazing charts, especially on global money-supply growth. Keynoted Bitcoin Alpha last year. @Werkman — Ben Werkman Arguably one of the strongest voices on the Bitcoin treasury side right now. @dmweisberger — David Weisberger One of the sharpest voices on Bitcoin market structure. Deep experience in liquidity, exchanges, execution, ETFs and institutional plumbing. @LynAldenContact — Lyn Alden One of the best macro thinkers in Bitcoin. Exceptional on liquidity, fiscal dominance, debt and the monetary system. @jameslavish — James Lavish One of my favorite voices on rates, credit and Bitcoin. Especially strong on what’s happening beneath the surface in bond and credit markets. Follow all 10.

With the Treasury's $5.1 billion debt buyback all but failing to hold the long end of the curve from sailing away, yields on the 10 year US Treasury traded within a basis point of 5.0% this morning. Your move, Kevin.

I want every Bitcoin treasury company to recruit and retain exceptional people, and I believe strong teams should be rewarded for strong results. I also generally avoid commenting on how peers compensate their teams. But Strive has repeatedly been cited as equivalent to another compensation structure in a way that I do not believe is factually accurate. Because this concerns our company and our shareholders, I want to clarify the record. David wrote that “a perpetual non-dilutive option creates misalignment.” I agree. That principle applies at every stage, especially for a Bitcoin treasury company whose strategy includes accretive equity issuance. The comparison to Strive does not hold because it combines three fundamentally different categories: legacy founder ownership, merger consideration distributed to all legacy shareholders, and forward-looking compensation for current management. Those categories are not interchangeable. Founder equity originates at formation. The founding owners collectively own the company, then dilute alongside other shareholders as investors come in. A founder like Michael Saylor retaining 65% after an IPO holds the remainder of an existing stake after dilution. It is not a new 65% compensation award. That is fundamentally different from an ongoing award whose share count automatically increases with future issuances to preserve management’s ownership percentage. Strive’s 270.5 million pre-split Class B shares were merger consideration issued to all premerger Strive equityholders, including investors. They were not a 270.5 million-share management award. Class B was the security used for the merger consideration, not a compensation pool reserved for founders or employees. Vivek was Strive’s sole shareholder at founding, which is where his founder ownership originated. Since then, he has received no additional equity as compensation. Any additional securities he acquired were purchased by investing capital into Strive, including through private financings and SATA’s initial public offering. Vivek is not a current officer or director, and he has not had a single share vest since I became CEO in April 2023, including throughout our entire Bitcoin treasury strategy. His public-company shares reflect his founder ownership and invested capital carried through the merger, not compensation for managing that strategy. The relevant question is how current management is paid for future results. Under Strive’s current program, no management award automatically increases with future share issuances to preserve a fixed ownership percentage. Management dilutes alongside shareholders, and my current vested economic ownership is well below 1% of the company. As I laid out in my September 2 post linked below, we designed our compensation framework through a methodical process that can be clearly explained and evaluated. Under the Strive Board’s direction, we worked with Mercer to build the framework and began by benchmarking overall compensation around the 50th percentile for comparable roles. We started there because this was a new strategy and results had not yet been demonstrated. It was a starting benchmark, not a permanent ceiling. Sustained exceptional performance can justify reassessing compensation through the same disciplined process, just as underperformance should reduce compensation and bring management accountability. At the roughly $2.1 billion equity value cited in that post, target annual equity compensation for our entire 30+ person team was approximately $21 million, less than 1% by value. Long-term awards are earned over three years and tied to outperforming Bitcoin, which is our hurdle rate, alongside performance against a broad-based stock market index. Shareholders can agree or disagree with the resulting package, but its purpose, benchmarking, cost, vesting period, dilution, and performance hurdles are transparent. That clarity comes from the process used to build it. The Bitcoin treasury sector has evolved extraordinarily quickly, and Metaplanet’s prior compensation program predated its Bitcoin treasury strategy. At that earlier stage, neither the scale of its future success nor all the alignment implications at today’s size may have been apparent. Metaplanet has delivered substantial value for shareholders over the course of its Bitcoin journey, and its team deserves credit for that performance. I also recognize that Metaplanet has removed the future adjustment mechanism from its prior program and is reviewing its compensation approach. I view that as constructive, and I hope the resulting framework strongly aligns management with shareholders. That progress does not change my view that the prior structure created misalignment, nor does it make that structure comparable to Strive’s compensation framework. I believe strong management teams should have meaningful upside when they deliver exceptional long-term results. Our objective is to make that upside transparent, performance-based, and aligned with the shareholders alongside whom we are building the company. Here is my full post discussing Strive’s framework:

Strive acquired an additional 1,375 BTC for $109M at an average cost of $79,281 per bitcoin, bringing total holdings to ₿24,531. 70% of the capital raised last week came from $SATA, which now has $999M notional outstanding. Time to break the billion-dollar wall. $ASST $SATA

Here’s my conversation with @TheBitcoin__ covering Bitcoin, macro, Strive, digital credit, AI, and the evolution of Bitcoin treasury companies. TIMESTAMPS 0:00 Intro 2:47 Matt’s Bitcoin Journey 7:18 Leaving CalPERS and Building Strive 9:21 The Fight Against ESG and DEI 17:04 Bitcoin’s Strongest Macro Setup 24:00 Corporate Bitcoin Treasury Strategy 26:42 AI, Abundance, and Bitcoin Scarcity 33:49 The Future of Digital Credit 36:30 SATA and Institutional Investors 38:09 Bitcoin in Pension Portfolios 45:17 Strive’s Future Plans 48:15 The Worst Argument Against Bitcoin Treasuries 50:17 Bitcoin and the Future of the United States 52:23 Bitcoin’s Next All-Time High 53:36 Closing Thoughts

Most investors forget that Strive effectively owns a 2030 LEAP tied to our own common equity. If $ASST is above ~$102 at expiry, it maxes out at approximately $40M of value to Strive. Not our biggest asset, but IMHO our most fun forgotten one.

Just wrapped up a great conversation with @jameslavish on the markets and the bigger macro picture. James is one of the macro voices I genuinely enjoy following. Give him a follow There’s something powerful about combining a macro thinker with a technician - two different lenses looking at the same market. We may be cooking up a few collab ideas as well for the near future.. More to come. 😉

@jameslavish, as usual, nails it here. A report that beat job creation expectations by less than the STANDARD ERROR, with wages AT expectations should not matter from a policy perspective, even in the short term. BUT, in the long term: PRINTER IS COMING!