Jim Chanos, the veteran investor who made his name shorting Enron, is betting on bitcoin (BTC) trade while shorting Strategy (MSTR), the largest corporate holder of the biggest cryptocurrency.
In an interview at the Sohn Investment Conference in New York with CNBC, Chanos detailed the bet. “We’re selling MicroStrategy stock and buying bitcoin,” Chanos said, calling it an arbitrage move: “Basically buying something for $1, selling it for $2.50.”
Strategy started acquiring bitcoin in 2020 and has since morphed into a bitcoin proxy for investors. The firm has issued debt and equity to accumulate the cryptocurrency, and now has a 568,840 BTC hoard bought at an average cost of $69,287 per coin.
The aggressive bitcoin accumulation, backed by Wall Street analysts, has made its stock sensitive not just to bitcoin’s price, but also to investor appetite for risk. Strategy’s shares are up 3,500% in the last five years to now trade at $416 a piece, giving it a $115 billion market capitalization.
To Chanos, Strategy’s valuation doesn’t make sense as MSTR shares have surged more than the price of bitcoin.
The fund manager argues that this rise reflects retail speculation more than fundamentals, a theme he believes is echoed by other firms now trying to replicate Strategy’s bitcoin accumulation strategy.