Strategy Trades at 0.79x Its Bitcoin. The 1.14x Print Is Wrong.
There is a number going around tonight that says Strategy trades at 1.14 times the value of the bitcoin it holds, a premium compressing from 1.18. The arithmetic does not support it. On the same marks, the company's market capitalisation is $54.33bn against $68.35bn of coin, which is 0.795 times — a discount, not a premium. The distinction is not cosmetic. At a premium, issuing shares buys more bitcoin than it sells and the preferred stack is accretive. At a discount, every new share sells coin cheaper than it buys it, and the only accretive capital action is retirement. The sign decides the trade, and the market is being handed the wrong sign.
The number going around is wrong
A read circulating today puts Strategy's mNAV at 1.14x, described as a premium compressing from 1.18x and inside a 0.98–1.33x year. That framing assumes the equity trades above the coin. It does not.
The check takes four lines and no opinion: bitcoin held, bitcoin price, shares outstanding, share price. Everything else — premium, discount, accretion, dilution — follows from those four.
The arithmetic, line by line
Strategy holds 846,000 BTC. At $80,797.73, that is $68.35bn of coin.
It has 384.23m shares. Coin per share is 0.00220181 BTC, and at tonight's bitcoin price that is a net asset value of $177.90 per share.
The shares closed at $141.40, which capitalises the equity at $54.33bn. Divide that by the coin value and the mNAV is 0.795x.
Add roughly $4bn of preferred claims — STRK, STRF, STRC — and enterprise value is about $58.3bn, or 0.85x the coin. Still below one, on the most generous reading.
Why the sign flips the capital-structure trade
At 1.14x, a share sale exchanges $1.14 of market value for $1.00 of bitcoin, so issuance adds coin per share. The preferred is accretive for the same reason, and the correct posture is to issue into the premium.
At 0.79x, the same sale exchanges $0.79 of market value for $1.00 of coin, so it destroys coin per share. The correct posture inverts: retire stock. That is what the $3bn repurchase authorisation — raised from $2bn — and the $204.9m of STRC retired last week are for.
Anyone short because 'the premium is compressing' is short a discount. Anyone long because '1.14x is still a premium' owns a thesis that does not exist on the tape.
The trade
Long Strategy, short bitcoin, beta-adjusted. The pair isolates the discount rather than the coin, which is the actual dislocation.
Entry at 0.795x: Strategy $141.40, bitcoin $80,797.73. Target 0.95x — still a discount, but 19.5% higher on the ratio. Stop 0.72x, a 9.4% loss. Reward to risk is about 2.1 to 1.
The hedge is 0.00220181 BTC short per share, adjusted to realised beta between 0.85 and 1.15. Index and ETF flows hit the equity leg, not the coin leg, which is where the discount comes from.
Catalysts: the enlarged buyback, continued preferred retirement, and any signal that the company will not issue equity into a discount. Risks: a bitcoin drawdown marks both legs, the short carries borrow and funding cost, and convert or preferred terms can change the claim stack.
What kills it
Three things, any one of which closes the thesis: mNAV below 0.72x, bitcoin below $70,000, or an equity raise announced at a discount. The third is the one to watch — it is the company choosing dilution over the re-rating.
Why publish this
The value is not another view on Strategy. It is catching a sign error before it costs money, and showing the arithmetic that caught it.
The same discipline turned the $80.8bn Anthropic headline into a $72.4bn fair-value mark and a $0.7bn operating loss. Every load-bearing number gets recomputed from the primary source before it goes out under this name.
MacroTape Desk sells that check: EUR 2,500 for a bespoke note, EUR 99 a month for the weekly desk note and daily levels. One client covers the data and the site.
The Curve Peaks at 20 Years — The long-end read that sets the pair's rate backdrop.