Saylor says Strategy stock under attack from bot army bankrolled by short sellers

13d ago•

DL News

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Who is Strategy’s biggest bear?

Not the market, if you ask its chairman Michael Saylor — it’s a paid legion of bots, deployed by short sellers.

In a recent interview with podcaster Natalie Brunell, Saylor said online criticism of Strategy, the $97 billion software-firm-turned-Bitcoin treasury company he co-founded, is being amplified by bots posing as real users, orchestrated by investors betting against the stock.

“A short seller in my stock has actually paid a digital marketing organisation to spin up a bunch of bots to post a bunch of nasty, awful, skeptical cynicism,” he said. “It’s very transparent to me that someone paid some money to create the appearance of a protest.”

Strategy shares have indeed slumped in recent weeks. The stock fell to $323 last week, marking a five-month low, even as Bitcoin itself is down only 8% from last month’s record.

But the allegations of manipulation didn’t sit well with at least one of Strategy’s most prominent critics.

“This is a pretty serious allegation stated as a fact,” wrote Jim Chanos on X, calling on Saylor to present evidence. “Most of the mNAV bears have been pretty transparent on their reasoning.”

Chanos, the legendary short seller who exposed Enron’s collapse in 2001, has been among the loudest skeptics of Bitcoin treasury firms, comparing them to the frothy heights of the 2021 SPAC boom. “We are seeing SPAC-like 2021 numbers in the Bitcoin treasury market right now,” he warned in July.

In June, Chanos was even more critical, calling Strategy’s bid to reinvent the corporate bond market with Bitcoin-backed preferred stock “complete financial gibberish.”

At the heart of his critique is the company’s strategy of issuing perpetual yield instruments to buy more Bitcoin, while encouraging investors to apply a multiple not just to its current holdings, but to the growth of those holdings over time.

“Mr. Saylor wants you to value his business based not only on the net value of his Bitcoin holdings, but additionally with a multiple on the change in that NAV,” Chanos said. “Because now he can leverage his balance sheet, lol.”