AQR’s Cliff Asness Sides With Jim Chanos in Critique of Michael Saylor’s Strategy
AQR Capital Management's Cliff Asness agrees with Jim Chanos' criticism of Michael Saylor's claim that convertible debt provides downside protection for Strategy's Bitcoin purchases.
The critique centers on whether there is "recourse" for Strategy to pay back holders of its convertible bonds, with Chanos and Asness disagreeing with Saylor's assertion that the debt can be paid off with stock if Bitcoin's price tumbles.
The disagreement is part of an ongoing Wall Street battle between Chanos and Saylor, with Chanos calling Saylor's valuation model "financial gibberish" and recommending an arbitrage trade to short Strategy's shares and buy Bitcoin.
Source link:
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2025-06-20/aqr-s-cliff-asness-sides-with-jim-chanos-in-critique-of-saylor-s-strategy
Through all these discussions, the beauty of Microstrategy company is revealed more, the more discussions, the more careful you are to correct small mistakes. Whenever you discuss bonds or shares through discussions, other investors will get acquainted with this company, MSTR, and later by highlighting all these reasons and different ideas, it will be possible to reach the root of further development of Microstrategy.
You may well be correct with any suggestion that you are making to proclaim that for MSTR any publicity is good publicity, yet at the same time, it seems quite interesting that very smart people are coming out against MSTR, yet they are likely going to end up getting their asses handed to them, to the extent that they don't adequately cover any shorting that they are doing.
Surely Chanos seems to proclaim that he is covered either way since he is betting both for bitcoin by longing it, but voting against MSTR by shorting it, so that he is covered wether the BTC price goes up or goes down.. and sure, maybe the size of his bets causes this to adequately work out and to be a good employment of his resources.
Diversification within crypto hardly makes sense beyond maybe 90% bitcoin and up to 10% shitcoins, yet surely guys can do what they like, and even make dumb diversification decisions when it comes to bitcoin versus shitcoins.
Over the years, I have come across all kinds of scenarios in which guys are either ONLY allocated into shitcoins, or maybe they ONLY have 10% to 20% in bitcoin adn the rest of their value spread across various shitcoins.
in my own opinion those guys who only have 10% to 20% in bitcoin and the rest of their value spread across various shitcoins, they are investing wrongly in the crypto space. normally guys can do what they feel like to do in the crypto space, but come to think of it, how can investors with good knowledge and good understanding about cryptocurrency only chose to have 10% to 20% in bitcoin that is store of value and potential returns when buy and hold for long term, and then spread the rest of their value in shitcoins that are no store of value with potential returns. A good investor that is knowledgeable will hold 80% to 90% in bitcoin and 10% to 20% in shitcoins and not doing otherwise.
Sure. Many of us who have studied bitcoin can recognize the follies of various less than 50% allocations to bitcoin, and surely many of us would not invest any more than 10% or 20% into shitcoins, yet the mere fact that it seems that more people are learning about bitcoin and becoming wiser in regards to bitcoin as the Alpha, there are still a seemingly overwhelming quantity to folks who are new to "crypto" who either believe various shitcoin talking points or they come to conclude that there are likely ways to outperform bitcoin in terms of their being able to smartly identify various "better" projects. For sure the gamblers and the ill informed are still out there, and they are not necessarily dumb people, and there frequently are needs to learn from experience rather than being able to figure it out in advance.