Chanos and Saylor Clash in a Wall Street War of Words
The back and forth between famed short-seller Jim Chanos and Bitcoin billionaire Michael Saylor is becoming a Wall Street battle for the ages.
The two investors have quarreled against one another in separate Bloomberg interviews this week, with Chanos saying that Saylor's business model is 'financial gibberish' and Saylor arguing that Chanos just doesn't understand it.
The heart of their argument is over what's become one of the biggest and most successful crypto business and spawned several copy-cats, including most recently Trump Media & Technology. Saylor's firm, now branded as Strategy, pioneered the playbook of selling stock and debt, and then using those proceeds to buy Bitcoin. As Strategy shares and crypto prices keep climbing higher, the business has become a money-minting machine.
As Chanos sees it, the 'big short' lies in the yawning difference between Strategy's share price and the value of its Bitcoin holdings. The company's so-called mNAV — the stock's premium relative to the value of those crypto holdings — currently stands at about 1.8 times, nearing its historic average, and 'it should be 1,' says Chanos. He said he put on the trade and advised clients when the level was between 2.2 and 2.3 times.
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