🟩 Alpha Drop

This week, we’ve got a special guest lined up for you - the digital nomad himself, Luke Mikic! Every month, he’ll be dropping alpha the market forces helping accelerate Bitcoin’s adoption.

This week, we’re focused primarily on what in the largest institutions in the world are up to. Let’s dive in!

While we were distracted by the various recent political backflips on Bitcoin by US politicians, both the world’s largest pension fund and three new Michael Saylor copycats have quietly taken on Bitcoin exposure...

As we cover in the rest of the article below, the rapid 50% devaluation of the 3rd largest fiat currency in the world is accelerating a fiat currency attack!

As crazy as it sounds, you’re going to want to check out this South East Asian mystery we’ve solved for you today!

Strap in, this is what we have for you this week:

• 3 New Michael Saylor Copycats Join Speculative Attack

• Joe Rogan Shoutout

• World’s Largest Pension Fund Just Bought Bitcoin?

⌛️ Estimated Read Time: 0.75 Blocks (~8 Mins)

The Next Michael Saylor Joins The Speculative Attack?

Michael Saylor could go down as the greatest trader in the history of economics for his revolutionary Bitcoin play, and it looks as if other billionaires and high net worth individuals are finally recognizing, and copy his trail blazing move.

1. Metaplanet Holdings

The first, and most interesting Michael Saylor copycat comes in the form of a tiny Japanese company named ‘“Metaplanet”, who had a measly $15M market cap, before their Bitcoin play.

Their market cap has since tripled in the weeks following their recent announcement where they declared they were buying $6.56M worth of Bitcoin.

Although the $6M buy from Metaplanet doesn’t sound like a lot compared to MicroStrategy’s $14 billion Bitcoin stack, their purchase represented ~30% the size of their market capitalization.

Also noteworthy is Metaplanet’s recent announcement of another 2 Bitcoin purchases in the subsequent weeks, along with their intentions to tap the Japanese public debt market to borrow Yen in order to acquire more Bitcoin.

The reason for Metaplanet’s adoption of the Bitcoin standard (as highlighted above by Dylan LeClair) is to ‘‘hedge against the debasement of the Japanese Yen’’.

2. Semler Scientific

A number of data points that we’ll explore today are all related to Japan, which is interesting considering their fellow countrymen, TEPCO, has been mining Bitcoin since 2022.

Despite not being a household name in the West, Tepco is a $700 billion GIANT, and is also Japan’s largest energy company.

Before we talk about Japan again, and I show you how Metaplanet is related to the world’s largest pension fund’s recent Bitcoin play, I want to stay on this theme surrounding the speculative attack trend accelerating.

This topic is fascinating because a number of different companies appear to be watching the ‘‘infinite money glitch’’ Michael Saylor has discovered.

A healthcare company by the name of Semler Scientific recently sent shock waves across the internet last week by announcing that they’ve bought $40,000,000 of Bitcoin.

Following the announcement, Semler Scientific’s stock price has increased by over 25%, representing a gain of over $50,000,000 in market cap in one day, simply by adopting Bitcoin as their ‘’primary treasury reserve asset’’

Both Metaplanet and Semler Scientific are certainly bigger deals than the next few companies we’ll discuss, but these smaller companies are indicative in our opinion of a broader trend.

This trend is the increasing number of companies who are recognizing the correlation between adopting a Bitcoin standard for their treasury reserves and their corresponding stock price.

3. Nilam Resources

Nilam Resources is another company who may have figured out this Bitcoin cheat code. The company is a traditional gold mining company who recently announced they were on acquiring 24,800 Bitcoin via the acquisition of another microcap firm.

Their stock price subsequently increased by 22x in one single day following the announcement. With the stock price at the highest level in 11 years, the CEO announced his retirement the very next morning. His reason was that he apparently wasn’t informed about the Bitcoin decision, even calling his own company a ‘‘pump and dump.’’

Clearly this strategy isn’t for everyone, however what is clear is that companies both large and small are all beginning to recognize holding Bitcoin as a potential alternative to cash. 

Joe Rogan Shoutout

We’d be remiss if we didn’t discuss the one company we believe everyone is sleeping on, namely Traeger Grill.

Minimal media exposure has been given to the firm on their rather quiet announcement to both receive Bitcoin as payment, and even hold it on the balance sheet for the long term.

We had to dig through 40 pages of their recent SEC S1 filing to find the most interesting part:

’’We may accept Bitcoin for payment in the future, and we may or may not liquidate the Bitcoin upon receipt.’’

Traeger Reverse even made a video with Joe Rogan a number of years ago (see below). Have they orange-pilled Joe on Bitcoin, or did Joe orange-pill them?

Unfortunately however, we remain skeptical on whether Traeger can become the next MicroStrategy given they’re an unprofitable entity. Traeger Grills in fact lost money in 2023, unlike MicroStrategy which nets +$50M a year in profit.

Let’s now switch our attention back to Japan like we originally promised, and discuss the trillion dollar elephant in the room.

Worlds Largest Pension Fund Buying Bitcoin?

The multi-trillion dollar Japanese pension fund named GPIF, has sent shockwaves across the world when they announced they were investigating Bitcoin.

They once again, like Metaplanet, cited concerns over the long term stability of the Japanese yen. This is apparent given the Japanese Yen has lost over 35% of its purchasing power against the US Dollar over the last 5 years alone.

When a trillion dollar firm announce they need protection against fiat debasement, how long will it take for the rest of the world to take notice?

Well, it looks like many others in Japan look are waking up to a similar conclusion, with the government even recently passing a law which would permit venture capital firms to hold Bitcoin on their balance sheet.

This theme was already implemented by US life insurance companies back in December of 2020, when Mass Mutual, a 172-year-old insurance giant bought $100 million of Bitcoin.

Recently however, we saw this trend expand into US pension funds as the 9th largest pension fund in America (the State of Wisconsin Investment Board aka “SWIB”) announced a $160M Bitcoin buy.

Although representing just 0.1% of their total asset under management, these institutional firms typically start with smaller exposures and scale up over time.

Key Takeaways

The broad takeaways from the above are relatively obvious. Large, institutional allocators of capital continue to show substantial interest in obtaining exposure to Bitcoin.

Given the high degree of reputational risk that these large financial institutions incur by taking on Bitcoin exposure, Bitcoin appears to have crossed the Rubicon of public perception.

Coupled with the strong ETF flows and likely additional FOMO as ~55,000 public companies around the world slowly begin to recognize the potential benefit to their share price simply by adding Bitcoin to their balance sheet.