i'm not in Saylor's inner circle, but this $MSTR story has gotten so out of hand, my only guess is this: - MSTR could have sat and done nothing before they started pumping out $billons of prefs... it would have made MSTR boring (little buys, no sells), but it would have been stable x.com/jdorman81/status/19959… - But the push into these prefs was based on him clearly thinking $BTC was about to moon — not sure what he saw to think that (4 year cycle, flows, ???) but that's the only reason to take that sort of miscalculated risk to screw up his balance sheet so badly -- he must have thought BTC was about to fly and he could easily pay the pref dividends with future BTC sales. - Then BTC started falling, and the market got spooked because the $15 bn in prefs have a $1.5 bn/year annual dividend, so he raised $2 bn in cash via stock just to alleviate any near-term default concerns — that bought him almost 2 years of runway to pay dividends. Smart move At that point, he could have chilled for a little, and even though he now has every stakeholder pinned against each other, there was at least no near term risk x.com/jdorman81/status/20342… - But then for some unknown reason, he decides to take that cash buffer and buyback 2029 maturity bonds instead of using it to fund the annual dividends (at a discount, so it's at least mildly accretive to MSTR). This is a baffling decision for a company with cash flow problems. Why pay off 0% coupon debt with the only cash you have? The only bull case is that underestimating Saylor's capital markets chicanery has been a losing proposition for years. Maybe there was a plan? That plan may just be selling BTC, which he will have to do eventually, but if he does this while BTC is in a death spriral it's going to crush BTC and MSTR. So again, why buyback the debt now and force your hand sooner than you have to? Maybe he is going to refinance those converts with new longer-dated converts? He has sworn off converts, so I doubt it, but that would at least logically make sense. But TLDR -- this is the first time that MSTR, BTC and Pref holders are really in bind. Someone is going to lose badly here, and it will happen in the next 4 months.

The shift in the crypto fundraising landscape the past 6 months has been insane. Crypto VCs used to have to constantly be networking/writing/podcasting/going on spaces/promoting your thesis/getting on 10 deal flow calls a week, to get into good deals...now it's literally enough to just have capital to write checks. Deals are being pushed rather than dug out. Inbound if people know you have money is at an all-time high. Most firms are either 1) Out of money 2) Moved to Series A and beyond or 3) Fundraising (with no success). Deals that used to close in 2-3 weeks now close in 2-3 months. Firms with questionable business models or copy pasta of the latest trend are getting zero primary or follow-on funding (Good news!). There are now realistically <20 firms writing checks in pre-seed/seed. VCs basically have the pick of any deal they want, with more time to do DD. IMHO 25/26 are going to be historic vintages for those who stick around.

The strengths of $SHFL: - considerable real value being delivered to the token (more than most cryptocurrencies can claim) - strong, crypto-native team The weaknesses of $SHFL: - one centralised source of value - total supply too high, too much locked in treasury - generally low confidence in gamblefi from the market This year is about converting these weaknesses to strengths; I have a feeling that solving the first two leads to the third following suit. More to come.

One day soon there’s going to be a shift in investment logic from infrastructure tokens to revenue generating dapp tokens. The current meta overvalues every l1/l2 play and they all fizzle out after initial launch and tokenized incentives large mm agreements. Cycle is happening way faster, and the 50iq players that are doing stuff like longing xpl perps will be long gone from the space. Survival of the fittest.

💥 Crypto chaos: prices drop while the market buzzes!? @RaoulGMI and @richwgalvin on the latest #JourneyMan. Liquidity crunches and frantic fund flows are creating wild swings 💣

If this $DFDV $1bn buying proceeds thats v big incremental buying for $SOL - to put it in perspective thats equivalent to about ~$23bn of Saylor buys in BTC... x.com/DeFi__Tracker/status/1…

I believe @grass is one of the most underappreciated protocols in crypto, and I'm very happy to share the following report covering the $GRASS business and the economics behind its current data sales as well as upcoming products: docsend.com/v/p4fmn/grass_ar… TLDR below 🧵

🚨 Building Wealth in 2025 🚨 .@RaoulGMI The Journey Man is back with the great @richwgalvin. 👇 Watch it on RV & get 30-days of free access to Raoul & @DMattin's "The Exponentialist" app.realvision.com/video/unl…