Strive had gone far too long without hiring a podcaster. As our Bitcoin holdings have grown exponentially through accretive capital formation, our podcasters-per-share metric was beginning to move in the wrong direction. Several astute investors have been calling on us to defend our lead in this critical metric, and I agree with them: now is the time to lean in. Today, I’m excited to announce that @AdamBLiv has joined @Strive. Adam represents true excellence as a podcaster, but the reason for this hire is rooted in one of Strive’s foundational principles: meritocracy. Strive has been publicly opposed to DEI from the beginning, but we have also consistently opposed credentialism. Rejecting credentialism has been one of the main reasons we have been able to hire with excellence throughout Strive’s Bitcoin journey. Credentialism causes institutions to outsource their judgment to resumes, pedigrees, titles, and conventional career paths. It puts too much weight on what someone has previously been permitted to do and not enough on the agency, principles, original thinking, work ethic, and demonstrated ability of the person in front of you. At Strive, we give people significant responsibility because of how they think and what they have demonstrated they can do. The results speak for themselves. Our board and management team are young by public-company standards because we select for deep, principled belief in Bitcoin and demonstrated track records, not age, pedigree, or the number of boards someone has served on or executive positions they have already held. When True North was getting started, I publicly supported the “kid analysts” there because they represented the same principle. They were not waiting for an institution to give them permission or a title. They were doing the work, publishing thinking that was better than both traditional media and institutional investment analysis at the time, and allowing the public to judge the quality of it. Adam is an exceptionally clear example of that principle. Before becoming a Bitcoin analyst and creator, his last full-time role was as a manager at @Target. A credentialist sees a former Target manager and asks why he should hold an important analytical role at a public financial company. A meritocrat studies Adam’s body of work and asks how quickly he can start. Adam has consistently published deeply researched, first-principles analysis. He works extraordinarily hard, communicates complex ideas clearly, and has the courage to put contrarian views into the public record where everyone can evaluate them. It also does not hurt that he is freaking hilarious. Nowhere has that been clearer than in his work on Strive. When Strive was at its weakest point in terms of public perception, Adam was buying and explaining why. What impressed me was not simply that he was bullish. It was that he independently arrived at his view through rigorous, first-principles work when sentiment was terrible and almost nobody else saw what he saw. Without any affiliation with Strive or access to internal information, his work was remarkably consistent with what we were seeing from the inside and, at times, even pushed our own analysis a step further. His analysis of Strive’s future growth has been among the most holistic I have seen anywhere, including internally. Most importantly, he was right. There was real value in having such a credible and completely independent voice analyzing Strive. But Strive has too many opportunities, too much complexity, and too much work ahead of us not to bring the best talent we can find in-house. I view Adam as a potential generational talent in financial analysis. The idea that someone could go from being a manager at Target to helping the most ambitious public company in capital markets navigate an extraordinarily complex competitive landscape may seem absurd to a credentialist. To me, it is meritocracy working exactly as intended. Adam will join Strive as Vice President of Investments, working within our investment function and reporting to our Chief Investment Officer, @Werkman. He will build a systematic research function around the most important companies across the pure-play Bitcoin landscape. He will read every consequential filing, analyze capital structures and capital-markets decisions, and continuously evaluate positioning, valuation, growth rates, competitive dynamics, risks, and forward trajectories. Adam will apply an even deeper level of that same rigor to Strive, now with full access to our internal data and dashboards. His work will help us pressure-test our assumptions, identify opportunities earlier, and make better long-term decisions for our shareholders. He was able to see Strive with extraordinary clarity from the outside. Imagine what he will be able to do from the inside. We also intend for Adam to continue publishing through his existing channel under the @TNorth brand, now with the appropriate disclosures and responsibilities that come with working for a public company. His ability to research deeply and communicate complex ideas in an entertaining way is part of what makes him special, and we want him to keep doing it. The bad news for public markets is that what I consider the best source of independent Strive analysis will no longer be independent. The good news for Strive shareholders is that we are bringing that mind in-house and putting it to work for them. Adam did not earn this opportunity despite lacking a conventional Wall Street resume. He earned it because his public body of work is better evidence of his ability than any conventional résumé could be. Credentialism would have missed Adam. Meritocracy brought him to Strive. Welcome to Strive, Adam. $ASST $SATA