Waiting Room

22 nov.

The 100k BTC mark has been a mythological target for crypto traders for a very long time. It felt so near back in 2021, yet proved to be so far. In the end, we even went below 20k again before going back up this year. When you are reading this, 1 Bitcoin might well already be worth over $100,000. But for now, over the past 24h, it has continued to remain tantalisingly close to the magic number. Crossing this price point would be yet another major milestone in a year that has already seen the approval of Bitcoin and Ethereum ETFs. It is now a waiting game.

Once that 100k threshold will be inevitably crossed, all eyes will be set on what is next. Of course, as usual in moments of euphoria, crypto bulls compete with each other to set ever higher price targets. Will 1M be the next one? Or is 500k already big enough? Many Bitcoiners will argue that the next target is gold Market Cap parity. After all, Bitcoin claims to be the digital gold with all of gold's benefits such as scarcity but with far easier movability and programmability on top. Gold's current market cap is $18 trillion. Bitcoin's market cap in the meantime is at around $2 trillion. The potential upside if this thesis plays out still seems juicy, particularly for traditional funds and investors who value Bitcoin's 'established' status as macro asset.

One of the main characters in the current market environment remains Michael Saylor, founder of Microstrategy (MSTR). Microstrategy is a legacy tech company that had seen its previous all-time high before the dotcom bubble burst in 2000. Since starting to accumulate Bitcoin in 2020, Michael Saylor has turned MSTR into a leveraged proxy for the Bitcoin price. Over the years, Microstrategy has sold additional shares and then used the proceeds of those sales to purchase Bitcoin. In addition, the company issues convertible debt offerings at 0% interest and uses the funds to buy more Bitcoin. These offerings are appealing to institutional investors because they offer exposure to Bitcoin while limiting the downside risk. The company's 2027 convertible bond, which also has 0% interest rate, trades 200% over par. MSTR's stock as well as its convertible bonds are now proxies of Bitcoin exposure. Microstrategy's Bitcoin holdings now stand at 331,200 BTC, worth $30.4 billion. This is almost 1.6% the entire Bitcoin supply. Meanwhile, the company's market cap is at $80 billion, showing a more than 2x premium over the company's Bitcoin holdings.

Many traders of course are deeply sceptical about this setup. Too much post-traumatic stress from the 2022 blowup not just of Luna/Terra but also of the Grayscale trade remains. For those who do not remember, the Grayscale Bitcoin fund was a pre-ETF Bitcoin fund that was open to traditional investors. It was essentially a proxy for holding Bitcoin. For years, it traded at a premium.  Funds, such as Three Arrow Capital, would leverage up on Bitcoin, deposit into the fund and then sell fund shares at a premium. But when the premium flipped negative in 2021, it signalled the beginning of the end for many overleveraged funds and traders. The case of MSTR seems somewhat different, but traders should watch the amount of leverage at play and which direction the MSTR premium over Bitcoin will go for an indication of the market cycle. 

Whichever way this goes, it certainly does fill like the markets still have room to run. So for now we all remain in the $100,000 Waiting Room. It should not be much longer from here.