Bitcoin's Price Has Stalled and Arthur Hayes Says Strategy Pays the Price

Key Takeaways

• Arthur Hayes says Strategy’s mNAV premium sat near 0.74x on August 27, erasing its old edge.
• Strategy holds 840,447 BTC but owes about $1.5 billion a year in STRK and STRC dividends.
• Hayes says Saylor must either issue equity, sell more bitcoin, or trim dividends going forward.

The Premium Problem

For years, Strategy Inc. (Nasdaq: MSTR) traded like a leveraged bet on bitcoin’s price, often commanding double or triple the value of the coins sitting on its balance sheet. That gap, known as market value to net asset value (mNAV), is what let the company sell new shares, buy more bitcoin, and repeat the cycle.

In a recent appearance on Laura Shin’s Unchained Podcast, Hayes argued that the cycle is running out of road now that bitcoin’s price growth has slowed rather than reversed. He noted that bitcoin does not need to fall for Strategy’s model to break. It just has to stop accelerating.

Bitcoin briefly topped $81,000 on August 25 before easing back toward the high $70,000s, a kind of sideways grind that Hayes says punishes Strategy’s structure. With the stock’s enterprise mNAV compressed to roughly 1.01x and its basic and diluted measures sitting near 0.73x and 0.74x as of August 27, Strategy now trades close to the raw value of the 840,447 BTC on its books. That leaves almost no premium left to fund another buying cycle.