If you buy MSTR, beside the leveraged BTC product, you are buying the biggest BTC holder with a corporate infraestructure and free cash flows from being index funds bought all over the world. They have the possibility of becoming the world's biggest Bitcoin bank in the future.
Yes, that's more or less in line from what I read that in the future they could lend or "stake" their Bitcoins (ETFs can't do that, to my knowledge; some ETP however can). But would that be enough to justify such a high premium?
Apart from that we could also question if having big "Bitcoin banks" is desirable or even viable, if Bitcoin was made and provides features to reduce the importance of banks (and bailouts, see genesis block).
Of course for the question I'm asking here Satoshi's ideology doesn't matter, what does matter is the commercial viability of a "Big Bitcoin Bank". But would people need Bitcoin banks and pay fees for their services? Maybe for some use case where Bitcoin credits make sense, but would they need big banks, i.e. centralization? We talk all the time about decentralization, so would people continue to support Strategy also in the future just because they're "the biggest one"? Or would that business model eventually erode?
The best investments are usually monopolies. And MSTR is a monopoly because they simply were there first [...]
I agree that a part of the investments in MSTR probably was attracted because the business model was unique and that in fact they were a monopoly.
But now we return to the topic of the thread: they aren't alone now, 21 Capital is one of the first of a potential larger group of competitors. So the "monopoly bonus" doesn't apply already. There's still a first mover advantage for MSTR. But in the banking sector for example, the oldest banks aren't necessarily the biggest banks, so they can't rely on that in the future.
I guess that once the market has been more populated we would see smaller premiums, and that means that the earlier investors would tend to lose money in comparison to direct BTC investments or leveraged ETF exposure.
I don't know who satoshi was, but Hal Finney was a solid proponent and in case someone that was in constant conversation with satoshi. It was predicted decades ago by Hal Finney how this Bitcoin bank model could be useful in the future, where you would have a free market of interest rates by banks.
As far as why people should or not should invest in MSTR. Well that comes down to personal preference. Of course holding your own BTC will always give you more control over your money, but there will always be businesses and people trying to come up with ways to beat the market. This is like claiming people should not invest in MAG7 companies because it's already very centralized there. People will invest in whatever they think will return the most on their investment. If they can predict MSTR will continue to outperform BTC, they will keep investing. There will always be people that want a BTC proxy because they don't trust themselves with holding the keys and they may trust Saylor's team above Blackrock and so this could be an ETF alternative with some extra perks. It's a free market after all. And in any case, the concept of Bitcoin banks would be very different from regular banks. I would personally own both, have a BTC stack and then have some MSTR proxies for better liquidity. You can buy and sell millions worth of MSTR shares at any moment, but BTC is very cumbersome to deal with banks as you need audits and so on.