The top executive at bitcoin’s biggest corporate owner has laid out the parameters that would force his company to sell some of its $56 billion worth of the cryptocurrency.
Phong Le, CEO of Strategy, said bitcoin would be sold if if the company’s multiple to net asset value (mNAV) — a valuation metric that divides the company’s market capitalization by the market value of the Bitcoin it holds — fell below 1.
“So now, as we’re looking at bitcoin winter, as we see our mNAV compressing, my hope is our mNAV doesn’t go below one. But if we did and we didn’t have other access to capital, we would sell bitcoin,” he told a podcast interview that published Friday. “That would be a last resort.”
The mNAV for the company formerly known as MicroStrategy, whose share are down 38% this year, currently stands at 1.19, but reached as high as 2.5 times in 2024 and around 1.7 times in June. An mNAV above 1 means Strategy trades at a premium to its bitcoin holdings.
Bitcoin’s price has dropped 7% this year, but selling in recent weeks has driven it 31% below its all-time high of $126,080 reached Oct. 6.
“We don’t really want to be the company that’s selling bitcoin,” Le said. “We have the most bitcoin. Us selling bitcoin wouldn’t be good for the ecosystem, it wouldn’t be good for the narrative.”
Le said he remains optimistic on bitcoin going forward, saying that as long as bitcoin can double the performance of the S&P 500, gaining say 30% a year on the index’s 14%, then “we’re going to win.”
“I think for the foreseeable future, we’re still talking 50% to 40% annualized returns over a four- to five-year period,” he said. “It’s an amazing technology, it has an amazing store value asset, it’s non-sovereign, it has a limited supply.”
Le’s comments came as bitcoin appeared to be pulling back from a bounce that began just before Thanksgiving that drove the crypto trading to nearly $93,000 on Friday. Bitcoin was down over 4% at $86,722 on Monday, with U.S. stock futures also pulling lower. That’s as the correlation between stocks and bitcoin has been climbing.
“It feels like investors, big and small are feeling very cautious towards cryptos in the short term at least, amid fears about overvaluations in risk assets that have prompted traders to cut their positions in speculative assets like cryptos,” said Victoria Scholar, head of investment at interactive investor, in a note to clients.
“It looks like $80k is the next major support level to watch with a break below providing a potential catalyst for further weakness,” Scholar said.