The Hurdle Rate Podcast
@HurdleRatePod
Manhattan
strive.com/
Joined March 2025
193 Photos and videos
Welcome Back to The Hurdle Rate Episode 75: Growing Trust Grows Liquidity In this week's Hurdle Rate, the crew breaks down Strive adding 1,355 BTC, Bitcoin's breakout, and why short-term traders may miss the move. They also discuss how digital credit could reshape the next bull market, why liquidity is the clearest measure of trust, and what @saylor and Warren Buffett teach about building balance sheet companies. Here's the latest with @ColeMacro, @PunterJeff, @Werkman, and @TimKotzman Timestamps: 00:00 - Intro 02:40 - Strive's Balance Sheet Growth 06:13 - Bitcoin's Breakout 08:23 - Warrants and Short-Term Trading 13:38 - Zoom Out and Stay in the Game 21:31 - Digital Credit Changes the Bull Run 23:09 - $SATA Volume and 75 Dividends 26:00 - Liquidity Is Trust 32:03 - Why Digital Credit Isn't for Everyone 37:20 - Building Strategy's Liquidity Engine 41:49 - Lessons From @saylor and Buffett 50:04 - The Return of Balance Sheet Companies $MSTR $STRC $ASST $SATA $BTC
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Strategy ran about 40x off the bottom of the last bull market. Inside that run were several drawdowns of 40 to 50%. The point for anyone holding amplified Bitcoin exposure: sell somewhere in the middle of a move like that and the odds you bought back in and timed it well were pretty low. A handful of days carry the year. Being out of the market for them is the actual gamble. "Do you have the proper exposure to handle a 40, 50% drawdown at any point along that way?" @ColeMacro $MSTR $BTC
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Strategy $MSTR traded $6.9 billion of common stock on September 21. Ranking receipts: • 14th largest US equity by volume that day • 169th largest by market cap • Top 10 by volume for about 200 days straight in the 2024 bull run • $ASST common stock, by his count: 195th by volume, about 1,390th by market cap Volume rank running far ahead of size rank. @saylor's travel is one half of how that gets built. Multiple securities aimed at different pools of capital is the other. @PunterJeff $BTC
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This Bitcoin bull run has a component that no previous one had. In past cycles a company adding Bitcoin to its balance sheet raised through convertible debt. One injection, retail nowhere in it, 144A paper traded privately between institutions, and the buyers hedged by trading around the common stock. Volume figures on $SATA: about $12.5 million average daily in July, around $58 million over the last 10 days, 4.6x. The 75th daily dividend lands September 22. On a quarterly schedule that is 18 years of payments. "Equivalent to going back and paying a dividend since 2008." @PunterJeff $BTC $ASST
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The first Bitcoin buy went on the books at $116,610. Where that cost basis sits now: • Today: $90,610 • Reduction: $26,000 • 22.3% lower At today's Bitcoin price that position is close to being in profit. Getting there meant executing through a Bitcoin bear market, when the large chunky raises were not available and checking out was the easy option. $ASST $BTC @Werkman
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Welcome Back to The Hurdle Rate Episode 75: Growing Trust Grows Liquidity In this week's Hurdle Rate, the crew breaks down Strive adding 1,355 BTC, Bitcoin's breakout, and why short-term traders may miss the move. They also discuss how digital credit could reshape the next bull market, why liquidity is the clearest measure of trust, and what @saylor and Warren Buffett teach about building balance sheet companies. Here's the latest with @ColeMacro, @PunterJeff, @Werkman, and @TimKotzman Timestamps: 00:00 - Intro 02:40 - Strive's Balance Sheet Growth 06:13 - Bitcoin's Breakout 08:23 - Warrants and Short-Term Trading 13:38 - Zoom Out and Stay in the Game 21:31 - Digital Credit Changes the Bull Run 23:09 - $SATA Volume and 75 Dividends 26:00 - Liquidity Is Trust 32:03 - Why Digital Credit Isn't for Everyone 37:20 - Building Strategy's Liquidity Engine 41:49 - Lessons From @saylor and Buffett 50:04 - The Return of Balance Sheet Companies $MSTR $STRC $ASST $SATA $BTC
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YouTube: piped.video/yWAgmHb-LGw Rumble: rumble.com/user/TheHurdleRat… Fountain: fountain.fm/show/6NxpCsM4een… Apple: podcasts.apple.com/us/podcas… Spotify: open.spotify.com/show/7LG1LF…
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Matt Cole says open-source AI is a safeguard against a handful of companies controlling speech. His concern is a future where OpenAI and Anthropic function as a “quasi-government,” close enough to government to influence what people can say. Keeping competition open ensures there is still an alternative. “If you don’t allow the ladder to be pulled up, open source will always be a fallback option.” - @ColeMacro
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Matt Cole thinks rising Treasury yields will eventually push policymakers to intervene. His best guess is around 5.25-5.75% on the 10-year. A move above 7%, with $BTC falling to $40,000-$50,000 before a liquidity-driven rebound, is a low-probability scenario he says he doesn’t expect. The reason he remains constructive on Bitcoin is what policymakers would likely have to do in that kind of crisis. “It’s flood the market with liquidity or kill the Treasury market.” - @ColeMacro
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Jeff Walton says slowing U.S. frontier AI development creates an opening for others to win the race. Open-source developers, China, and other countries still have strong incentives to build the best models. He sees plenty of focus on what could go wrong with AI, and not enough on what could go right. “I do think there’s a need to steer the direction of these models.” - @PunterJeff
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Matt Cole says regulation by enforcement made crypto’s rules unknowable. A company could ask the SEC whether an activity was allowed, get no answer, then face an enforcement action after doing it. That makes it hard to build trust in the rules. “They won’t tell you what the rules are and then they’ll charge you as if you broke the rules after you do something.” - @ColeMacro
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Jeff Walton says regulation can make trust cheaper. Most people buy insurance without studying an insurer’s balance sheet. They trust its track record and the institutions overseeing its capital. He sees the CLARITY Act as a framework that could make it easier for traditional financial institutions to work with $BTC and crypto. The bill doesn’t create a new risk-weighting framework, but Jeff believes clearer rules could eventually influence how banks treat digital assets on their balance sheets. “Regulation itself, just the fact that some regulation exists, makes trust cheaper.” - @PunterJeff
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Ben Werkman says a bear market gave Strive $ASST a track record investors could actually judge. Buying Bitcoin $BTC through a roughly 50% drawdown showed how the company handled pressure. Waiting for markets to recover would have left less time to build the capital structure it needed. “If you don’t have the structure in place, you’re already too late to capture that.” - @Werkman
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Adam Livingston questions whether Anthropic’s messaging is contributing to public fear around AI. He points to warnings about cybersecurity and dangerous capabilities appearing around new model releases, and wonders how much that shapes increasingly negative public opinion. “You have to wonder how much of that opinion has been programmed by what I perceive to be a lot of marketing tactics from Anthropic.” - @AdamBLiv
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Matt Cole says Strive’s podcasting starts with the work inside the company. Research comes first. Talking publicly is a way to explain work the team is already doing, much like asking the players on the field to explain the game. “It’s work first, take that knowledge, and then go tell people.” - @ColeMacro
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Matt Cole says Strive $ASST was willing to walk away from $SATA’s IPO over restrictions on future issuance. Investors wanted an incurrence test that would block new SATA issuance if amplification rose above roughly 25–30%. Strive said no, negotiated additional investor protections, and has since taken amplification above 50%. “If this doesn’t work for you, we will not IPO SATA.” - @ColeMacro
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Jeff Walton says Strive $ASST has spent the past year earning investor trust through execution. When Bitcoin $BTC hit $58,000, he was on the floor of the NYSE explaining why Strive remained constructive on Bitcoin and confident in its cash reserves and capital structure. That track record builds over time. “That trust is earned. It’s not just distributed.” - @PunterJeff
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Matt Cole says Adam Livingston’s public research stood out to Strive $ASST before he ever joined the company. Strive had never paid Adam a penny. Even with internal systems, data, and access unavailable to the public, his analysis still stood out in a major way. “We need smart people with high agency that are free-minded thinkers and that love this space.” - @ColeMacro
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Welcome Back to The Hurdle Rate Episode 74: Podcasters Per Share In this week's Hurdle Rate, the crew discusses Adam Livingston joining Strive as VP of Investments. $MSTR buys back $139M of $STRC with it back near $99. $ASST adds 469 $BTC and hits an all-time high market cap of $2.75B. They get into trust as market infrastructure, the Clarity Act, AI doomers building moats ahead of their IPOs, and the 10-year touching 5%. Here's the latest with @ColeMacro, @PunterJeff, @Werkman, @AdamBLiv, and @TimKotzman. Timestamps: 00:00 - Intro 01:17 - Adam Livingston Joins Strive 08:52 - Trust as Capital Markets Infrastructure 19:48 - The Amplified Bitcoin Story and $SATA 22:44 - Building Through the Bear Market 24:54 - An Outsider's View of Strive 28:35 - The Clarity Act and Regulatory Trust 36:23 - AI Doomerism and the Messy Middle 45:03 - Don't Let the Ladder Get Pulled Up 51:28 - Macro: The 10-Year Touches 5% 55:27 - What a Bitcoin Flush Would Look Like 1:01:46 - Capital Markets Recap
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YouTube: piped.video/QTJbrb0VWQ8 Rumble: rumble.com/user/TheHurdleRat… Fountain: fountain.fm/show/6NxpCsM4een… Apple: podcasts.apple.com/us/podcas… Spotify: open.spotify.com/show/7LG1LF…
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Strategy $MSTR came out of the stress test with a changed playbook. @Werkman on what the market saw: • Common issuance used, then stopped last week • New buyback frameworks put in place • Cash on the balance sheet now being deployed • The dividend bucket separated from operating cash A management team needs flexibility with treasury assets, which means not being rigid about every dollar of cash. The whole focus over there right now is getting $STRC back to 100. "If that isn't clear, you're not paying attention."
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