Bloomberg Audio Studios, Podcasts, Radio News.

Welcome to Meren Talk to Your Money, the personal finance edition of Meron talks Money.

In these bonus podcasts, we talk about the best strategies for making the most of your money.

I'm Meren Thumset Web and with me senior reporter of Money Distilled author John steppegg Hi, John Hi, melm Okay.

So in this episode, we are going to talk about something actually we have never talked about before.

We've talked about bitcoin a lot, but we haven't talked about this new thing.

Bitcoin treasury is actually not that new, but relatively new to the UK.

So we think this deserves a conversation, maybe a little scrutiny.

I think possibly UK investors are beginning to be aware of what's happening.

So we've got London listed companies, mainly smaller companies, some actual companies that are originally minus we're going to talk about in a minute who are started stockpiling bitcoin in order to get their share price up.

So we're going to talk about why they're doing this, why it might be a concerning trend to investors.

Maybe there are better ways to get access to cryptocurrencies.

So to help us dig into all this, we have invited our old friend Dominic Frisbee to join us.

Now.

Dominic, many of you will know he's the author of the investment newsletter of the Flying Frisbee.

He's written a lot of very good books.

He's sings some great songs, and loyal listeners might know him as a recurring guest on the Adam Smith panel show that we do at the Frinch Festival every year.

Dominic, welcome, Thank you so much for joining us today.

It's a pleasure to be here.

Good.

Now, I've probably said everything wrong in my introduction, so let's start like this.

Will you tell us what we're talking about?

What is a bitcoin treasury?

Why have they come to the UK?

Well, it's funny enough.

Actually in your introduction I think you said absolutely everything right, and not for the first time Mary.

Thank you, Dominic.

But in your sort of intro to your intro, you said about how this is a show for people who were thinking about what to do with their money.

And this whole thing began with an American CEO called Michael Sailor who in twenty twenty was looking around at what was going on during COVID and he was wondering what to do with his corporate treasury to protect it from getting eroded by inflation, and so he knew he couldn't hold US dollars because effectively he was going to lose ten or fifteen percent to money printing every year, probably more during COVID.

I think at the moment, money printing or you know, money supply growth, whatever you want to call it, is at seven or eight percent globally, So you have to make seven or eight percent just to stand still.

If you're a corporation running a business, you have to grow at seven or eight percent just to stand still.

And I think that's quite an interesting way of framing the gradual erosion of everything that's taking place.

And so Sailor was looking around at you know, do I put my corporate treasury in really stake?

Do I put it in gold?

Do I put it in s and p track of funds?

What do I do?

And he eventually arrived at the conclusion of bitcoin, and then in quite an astounding way, he took as we call it, the orange pill.

He was orange pilled in a way that I've never seen anyone orange pill before, and has transformed himself into the most articulate proponent of bitcoin that there is.

Yeah, Ben, so just be clear, anyone who held micro Strategy shares then when he made this decision has made an atholete fortune because he's ridden the whole bitcoin wave.

So micro Strategy was what you would call a ombie company.

It had a sort of bit of a boom in during dot Com, and then basically after dot Com, for the next twenty years it just range traded between ten and twenty dollars.

It just went absolutely nowhere.

And you know, it had quite a good software business, but it wasn't changing the world, and it wasn't making fortunes for its investors and so on.

But the shinto transforming it.

Since transforming his company, he basically initially just held his corporate treasury in bitcoin.

But this model worked so well that he just kept raising more and more money and just simply buying bitcoin with it.

He was doing.

Issuing shares, using the cash to buy bitcoin and iss your debt as well, okay debt.

Stopped piling more and more bitcoin and effectively becoming a play on the bitcoin price for.

A levered play on the bitcoin price, And I think he's going to end up the richest man in the world as a result of all of this, and I think micro Strategy it's already now in the s and P five hundred in terms of market cap, and I think it'll be one of the top ten companies in the world by market cap by the end of this decade.

If you're in the US, then you want it, and you want to hold bitcoin or have a leverage play on bitcoin, micro Strategy is an obvious place to go.

Although not everyone is happy with the share price that was sleep well.

Funnily enough, a lot of his buyers came from the UK because the FCA and its wisdom made it impossible for UK investors to investing bitcoin when it was five thousand dollars.

The only way you could get exposure was to buy stock in micro Strategy, and so I remember writing articles in Money Week and on the Flying Frisbee saying to people, look, if you want exposure to bitcoin in the UK, just buy micro Strategy, and you.

Can also just open a coin based account and hold bitcoin.

You couldn't you have been able to for some years now.

It's a nightmare.

Merry.

You can do it.

Anyone can know you know how you dominice You've known me decades now, you know I can't do admin.

I've got coin Base account.

Most banks would not allow you to send money to crypto exchanges on.

My credit card.

Okay, well first Direct Okay, well you maybe First Direct was one of the most modern griovy ones, but most banks people found it impossible to send money, and Coinbase is one of the more regular ones.

Gemini too.

It's a real headache, and especially you can't buy it and your SIP and your ES and whereas you can buy micro Strategy.

It was just much much easier to buy micro Strategy stock than it was to buy bitcoin.

And in fact, the situation we have now is directly a cause of the FCA making it so impossible to buy bitcoin.

I mean it's direct, So the.

FCA has made it hard to buy bitcoin in general, but also in particular, and this possibly is the key point here, is that you cannot buy a cryptocurrency in any way inside one of the tax wrappers available in the UK, so you can't put those are the things an ISO account on Coinbase, you can't buy bitcoin or any cryptocurrency or did an NFT or anything nuse like that and shovel it into your step or your I SEP.

So what we're talking about here is the market going, well, okay, let's give you another way to do that.

Yeah.

So this is very recent in the UK, right, So Smarter Web they announced that this is what they were going to do only towards the end of April, correct, And if you look at the share price at its peak, it was up over six thousand percent from the date of that announcement.

That all these bitcoin treasury companies have now come off in the UK, so it's up four thousand percent at the moment.

I think it's two hundred and fifty p or something.

So that's still I mean, that is extraordinary shift, which by the way, surely doesn't reflect the actual value of the bitcoin that they hold.

Well, this is the next this is the big argument.

Yeah.

So actually before we get onto that, let's just talk about the other companies.

What kind of companies have done that, because I mean I've got a list of them here and there's what, there's ten eleven companies that have done this, made an announcement that they're going to adopt at bitcoin treasury strategy.

I mean, they're all companies that I have never heard of before Bluebird Mining Ventures, Vault Ventures, True Spuying Technologies, panther Metals, et cetera.

So companies that were dabbling in other things.

A couple of helium explorers, right.

Yeah, there's a couple of helium exposures of pivoting.

Yeah, I mean that's one hell of a pivot, although I suppose it's all hot.

Indeed, what you always see when you see these incredible bubbles is loads of people jump on the bandwagon.

I remember uranium in two thousand and six.

I was planning to set up a uranium explorer based on ones with Common because there was just you know, everyone was just getting in.

So there are lots of operations there.

Again, you can have a go.

I mean there are.

If you look at this list, there are a couple of you know, uranium on one'sworth common type companies and there absolutely yeah, I mean there's one.

There's one.

And I don't mean to libel you, Amazing AI, because I'm sure you're doing something good.

But the company is called Amazing AI and they only announced their strategy on the twenty fourth of Junet, not very long ago, and sadly for them, they have not gone up six thousand percent, actually down twelve percent since, Yeah.

They rose a bit and then fell back a bit, but they've only got they raised a bit naughty in a way that they raised one hundred and twenty grand and the share price was trading at four p and I think all the directors got the shares at half a p.

Right moving on, we have these bitcoinstragery companies now, and we're effectively putting them into their own sector, aren't we bitcoin treasuries.

We're forgetting anything else they ever did.

Should retail investors be buying these things?

Dominic?

Well, you know, Marin, what is a bubble?

Tell me what a bubble is, and I'll tell you what a bubble is.

Did you tell me what a bubble is?

First?

A bubble is a bull market in which you don't have a position.

Hmm, it's very easy.

You know.

Everyone has been saying bitcoin is a bubble.

Bitcoin is a bubble for fifteen years now, and it's always people that don't have a position, and it's a it's a psychological way of coping with the fact that you didn't invest and now worried about investing too late.

You dismissed it as a bubble.

Okay, Levin, I think I have to interrupt you right now.

Just ask John a question.

John, is bitcoin a bubble?

Oh?

We bitcoin itself as a postive easing.

Yeah, I'm asking him that first dominic because he's the only one of us on this podcast who doesn't have any bitcoin.

Well, I resented furiously, but I think it's a bubble, nor a doint has been that owned for two I nically, if you look at the chart, isn't very bubbily.

Okay, well you haven't.

You haven't got a coinbased account, you haven't got any bitcoin, got any other crypto.

So let's talk about John.

Let's pretend that he's too admin useless to open a coin based account, is even worse than I am.

Surely, just one thing, John, The reason I don't own bitcoin is because my bank, which was nationwide, stopped me from transfer nine hundred quid to my coin base account in twenty fifteen.

Please do not tell me how much that one hundred quid would be.

What I say, John, myself out of the window, move the first direct and just start using your credit cards.

That's all I'm saying.

But which one of these bitcoin treasury companies does John buy?

I would like him to buy panther Metals because you know, they've been looking for zinc deposits in Canada.

Maybe they'll find some of those too, So that you're hedging, John, you're hedging.

Well, yes, yes, that's a diversify portfolio.

Sure, Dominic, Sorry, we're gossiping over you do tell us what to do.

I think panther Metals might even be funding their exploration of said inc deposits with their bitcoin treasury.

I think that's the purpose of it.

You know, they only have one bitcoin, right.

Yeah, exactly.

So if we go back to the original bubble, if you like, which was tulips.

You know, there was obviously a tulip bubble in sixteen thirty eight, but that tulip bubble built an industry that has, you know, brought prosperity to Holland for four hundred years and it remains at the center of the flower industry today.

You could say the same back dot com.

Dot Com was obviously stupid, but the Internet it's bigger than it ever was, and so we're seeing that same pattern.

So if you ask me where are these stocks going next?

I will say higher and lower and lower and higher.

I mean, it's a speculative bubble, and there's obviously a lot of opportunists, but some of these companies, and the Smarter Web Company being one of them, and coincilly and being an other, are legitimate.

You know, if you like bitcoin believers and they are following the Sailor crypto model and they're not just sort of fly by nights.

And if Bitcoin goes from one ten to say one fifty or wherever it's going next, then these companies will double and triple them.

More so, if bitcoin goes back to seventy or fifty or whatever, these companies will lose similar amounts.

The only reason I'd sort of struggle with it is because they're specifically.

So let's say I'm agnostic one betcoin.

I don't know strong view either way, but why I don't quite get why I would buy what I most and investment trust trading a massive premium to its now, which is like you know, investing vet coins.

And then I suppose at least Sailor was the FoST in the space, But as far as I'm aware, it's like trading that a big premium to the bitcoin holdings up in double check that maybe I'm wrong twice.

Yeah, And I mean, you've got all these new ones, and clearly some of them are blake junior uranium minos that explored.

Does that I haven't got anything.

It's a bit like whenever the gold ETFs got launched in the gold minos that didn't ended up losing a lot of flows because people could just access gold directly, except even more so because at least the gold miners yard actually digging some gold out of the ground at a courst and then selling it, whereas with bitcoin they're just buying backcoin and then holding it.

So this is what I don't understand the nationale for these being the good ways to play backcoin.

I guess I shall attempt to explain the rationale.

I hope I'm being clear that that My overall position is that there is a lot of hot air and you know, rolics in this story, but there is also an underlying truth to it as well.

Now it's clear to me that you are saying that there's a lot of speavy companies in the space where I am.

I'm kind of windomly why does this space exist at all beyond the regulatory arbertrage element, which I think is completely.

That makes sense.

It makes sense, and as much as until there's a bitcoin eta, if evering can easily get hold of, which presumably isn't that far away.

I think the FC is looking at something on noise lanes.

The traditional way of valuing an investment trust is you go, yeah, this investment trust has got a million pounds worth of assets.

It's only trading at half a million quid.

I'm going to buy it because it's worth twice its assets.

Bizarrely, in the bitcoin treasury space, it's almost like the reverse applies.

Now.

MicroStrategy is trading at a value of roughly twice it's the value of its bitcoin.

So it's the expression is m NAV it's market cap to NAV ratio.

So Strategy has an m NAV of two.

And I think that Strategy that price is deserved because of what I call the sale at premium.

The guy's just so charismatic and such a articulate proponed to bitcoin.

You just get a premium because it's Michael Sailor, and he's the visionary and he's the leader and so on.

But some of these other companies.

There's another company called Semlar Scientific which is training on the navstat and I think it has five thousand bitcoins something like that, and its market cap is half a billion, so it's trading at an m NAV of one.

And the CEO of the company, Eric Semler, is a very nice man, but he doesn't have the charisma that Michael Sailor has, and so you get no premium for the management.

But if you look at a company like Metaplanet, I don't even know what it's m NAV is at the moment, but it's many multiples of what its actual bitcoins holdings are.

And in the case of Coincillium, for example, at one point last week, Coincillium had a market cap of maybe one hundred and twenty million quid and the value of its bitcoin holdings was less than five million quid.

And similarly, at one extra dreen point, smarter Web company at a valuation above a billion and I think it's bitcoin holdings worth maybe fifty million or something like that.

So you know, there was a huge premium to m NAV.

So there's this new thing which people talk about called time to m NAV.

So if a company has an m NAV of one, it can only issue more shares and more debt to the value of its bitcoins.

Whereas if it has an m NAV of ten, it's able to issue paper at ten times its value and buy bitcoins with this overvalued paper.

And then the idea is that the company the value of the bitcoin holdings eventually catches up with the value of the company.

So you have this thing called time to m NAV, which is a sort of measure that's been devised.

And if you can pick up a company with a greater time to m NAV, the potential of that company to grow its bitcoin holdings to reach its m NAV grows greater.

But there are also, at the same time, loads and loads of parallels, if you like, to the old fashioned pyramid scheme, and the earlier you get in the pyramid scheme, the more money you make.

And because this is just suddenly happened in the last month, everyone's really trying to get in early to be the guy who you know, makes all the money.

I was lucky enough to buy coincillion at six p ten days later it was ninety p ten day.

That includes a Saturday and a Sunday.

So did you keep it?

Did you sell it?

I took my initial steak off the table they're in, and I took a little bit more off the table, and looking back, the stock is now twenty five p.

I should have taken more off the table, but my attitude was I'll just let the run, I'll enjoy, I'll get the rest of the free and see what happens.

There are some people who are using this measure with great success.

So we can mock and scorn and all the rest of it, but they are making a great deal more money.

They're making money.

Not I get that.

I mean, I suppose that the positive side to this, John, and the thing that well we should bring out before we finish, is that it is however it happening.

It is great to see retail and festas engaged with the listed store market.

I know this is not the way you want it to happen, but I still look at it and I think that more people are engaged with the store market, the better.

And what the stock market is doing here is saying there's something you guys want, and that's what the market is supposed to do.

So we should approve of that mechanism, and we should approve of people using that mechanism to get what they want, even if you don't approve of the thing they're buying.

Am I right, Dominic work with me here.

Yes.

The thing is there's so much pent up demand over many years, and you know that sort of tap has suddenly been opened, and that's what's created this wild helter skelter ride.

You have to think psychologically, where are we in the bubble?

Where are we in the hype cycle rather than in turn of traditional investment metrics.

Dominic, thank you so much for joining us today, and John, thank you as ever.

Thanks for listening to this week's Marin Talks Your Money.

If you like us show, rate review, and subscribe wherever you listen to podcasts.

Also, be sure to follow me and John on ex or Twitter and Dominic of course, what are you on Twitter?

Dominic, I'm at Dominic Frisbee and the website is the Flying Frisbee dot com.

Thank you.

I'm at marinsw and John is John Underscore Stepic.

This episode was produced by some Asadi Productions of Broughton sound designed by Moses and Questions and comments on this show and all our shows are always welcome.

Our show email is merin Money at Bloomberg dot net.