Morning Minute: Saylor’s Strategy Hoards Cash, Doesn’t Buy BTC

🟠 Strategy Raises $467M and Outpaces Bitcoin for Third Straight Week

The Strategy Bitcoin trading platform remained neutral last week. The company raised $467M in public offering and put it all into the currency, raising its USD Reserve to $3B. This means no Bitcoin purchases for the third week.

The raise added about 18% to Strategy’s cash reserves over the same period, giving the company more than 20 months to earn its $1.76B annual dividend and interest income. So all of this week’s stock market activity came down to strengthening the currency. Since its last Bitcoin purchase on June 22, Strategy has made about $215M from Bitcoin sales, less than half of what that single issuance brought in.

Again, Saylor is issuing common shares to pay dividends on its preferred stock. MSTR holders are reduced to pay for STRC holders. MSTR fell 4% on Monday to around $90.80, down 18% on the month, although it has been on a rally since hitting a 28-month high of $81.81 in late June. STRC is at $87.04, still below the $100 price it has been at since mid-May and pays a 12% dividend. And with Bitcoin at $62,600 versus an average price of $75,476, the 843,775-coin stack is about $11B underwater.

The big open question right now is—why aren’t they buying Bitcoin at these prices? Raising money to ease the stress of the stock market and pay off future debts made sense when he was running out of time, but now Saylor is running out of money. He has a 20-month journey, and most importantly, he has proven that he can dump MSTR shares at any time to make money. So why not buy BTC here 50% off ATH? Certainly buying any BTC in the low 60s is easier than buying in the 80s, 90s, or over 100k. Why don’t they come? And when will the next purchase hit the tape? We hope to find out soon. Or Saylor will have some explaining to do…

🏛️ Democratic opposition to the CLARITY Act Grows with Four Weeks Left

Senate Democrats are freezing the CLARITY Act, and Trump’s $1.2 billion crypto asset is (unsurprisingly) a mill.

Elizabeth Warren wrote to the Senate leadership on Mondaydemanding that the bill exempt the president, vice president, senior officials, members of Congress, and their families from profiting from the crypto industry. Anything less would be a gift to the president and his family at public expense, in his words. On Tuesday, many Senate Democrats including Chris Murphy and Chris Van Hollen are expected to hold a press conference against it, hitting all of Trump’s crypto deals and arguing that the bill weakens the financial controls that were built after the Great Depression.

The math of votes is the tricky part here. CLARITY needs 60 votes, which means at least seven Democrats need to cross, and maybe more given that the Republican bench is smaller than expected (Mitch McConnell remains in the hospital, and Lindsey Graham died suddenly over the weekend). Trump argued on Monday that the Senate should pass CLARITY in Graham’s honor, calling him a key supporter of crypto legislation. Graham took no part in the debate, never spoke on the topic, and was the only Senate Republican to co-sponsor the 2023 anti-spending bill that crypto groups called too anti-corporate.

So where does this leave us? It’s less than four weeks before the August recess, and everyone involved agrees that a miss means the bill will die in mid-November. Industry forecasters had already written it off, Galaxy had cut its chances to 50% with markets predicting a price in the 40s. The main problem is that the more Democrats insist on pushing the culture language, the more they force Republicans to choose between passing the bill and protecting the president’s interests. That’s the worst deal you have to make with the deadline.

🌎 Macro Crypto and Markets

• Crypto majors mix ahead of CPI; BTC even at $62.7k; ETH +1% at $1,795; SOL -1% on $75; HYPE -2% at $64
• HASH (+11%)INJ (+5%) and ENA (+5%) led the top managers
• Oil + 10% on $ 81; Gold -1% at $4,020
• The future mixed as oil spikes and June CPI data comes this AM; DOW -0.7%, Nasdaq +0.3%
• June CEX volume it was down 5% from Maywhile derivatives sales rose by 4%
• BTC and ETH social media posts they have fallen to the lowest level since 2020
• Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong admitted that Base “made a mess” of the coin, saying they didn’t work and that Base left earlier this year, with things going into marketing, payments, and AI assistants
• BlackRock, Goldman Sachs, and JPMorgan have joined the 54-firm UK tokenization taskforce. with the help of the governmentstarting with the tokenized repo, and a Treasury report that shows a total of $33 billion a year by 2035.
• TeraWulf CEO said “not all megawatts are created equal” in AI competitionbluntly saying “we are not interested in Bitcoin” as his $19 billion Anthropic hosting deal ends from a miner to an AI company.
• SBI Holdings blockchain company proposal rated Solana for tokenization and stablecoin issuanceleaving R3’s Corda and bringing the Solana Foundation into its partnership, with plans including payments for AI support.

Corporate Treasuries & ETFs

Meme Coin Tracker

• Meme leaders he was mostly red bottom 1-2%; DOGE though, SHIB -2%, PEPE -1%, PENGU -4%, TRUMP -1%, BONK -2%
• Robinhood memes were inspired by Cashcat +8% to $180M, WOOD +70% to $15M, Wishbone +45% to $9M
• Feb (+ 60%), three (+ 100%) and Cards +20% were Solana’s most popular movers

📈 Multi Day Market

💰 Token, Airdrop & Protocol Tracker

🚚 What is happening in NFTs?

• Directors of NFT they were mixed; Punks even at 32.4 ETH, BAYC +1% at 8.94 ETH, Pudgy -1% at 4.33 ETH; Hypurr’s -4% at 179 HYPE
• PXL NET (+60%) and Squiggles (+10%) led the top movers
• New Robinhood NFT sets jumped including RH Miners (+1350%) and 8skullz (+340%)