I'd look that up with an accountant if I were you :-)

A share is a declaration of debt in the form of ownership. In other words, a shareholder gives the face value of a share to the company and the company acknowledgeds that debt in the form of a share of ownership. It is generally an irredeemable and interest free debt unless the company is liquidated at a balance, but it is still a debt.

The premium a shareholder gets from that share is the share price, the debt owed by the company to the share holder is the face value.

Yeah, technically, the term debt refers to something that will be paid off and earns an interest, whereas stock equity is not paid off and any 'interest' paid is called dividends, but in practice it is the same thing. You sell shares and increase your debt (or stock equity).

Otherwise, issuing shares would be an income for the company, which it certainly isn't.

Look, the technicalities of book keeping is irrelevant to the discussion. Even if a share holder is comfortable with the return they have gotten, that return is still tied to a promise made at the IPO by the company and the expectation of the share holder that those promises will be kept. The risk the share holder puts on the possibility of a default on those promises, plus whatever earning they expect from their investment, is the price they expect to get from an eventual sale.

At this point, it seems nobody has any clear answers to how we can evaluate that risk. That uncertainty should make an investor uncomfortable at some level, regardless of whether they believe in a bright future for Bitcoin or cryptocurrencies in general.

.b