How have you seen the investor base of your perpetual preferred evolve over time? And where are you hoping to see it go from here?

Yeah, right now, the vast majority of the investors in SADA are either institutional or high net worth investors.

And so it's important to note that high net worth investors are retail investors.

Someone that has $1 million, $10 million, $50 million to invest as an individual, that is a retail investor.

And when you think about the size that they're putting in, that is definitely the vast majority of the investors in CETA today.

And what's also interesting about our investor base is both on ASST and CETA, we have a lot of institutional investors.

If you look at our ASST cap table, you'll see major, major investors at the top of the cap table.

And with long-term yields rising and the Treasury becoming more active in the market through buybacks and your thesis on the dollar, you know, with the long term health of the U.S. financial system being pulled more into the mainstream and the dollar carry trade element baked into something like your common stock, at what point do you think that Main Street is going to start actually putting more weight behind that element of the trade?

So, A, how much Bitcoin does Strive have now? And, you know, is this SEDA reaching a billion, a meaningful level? Or is it, you know, just a brief stop on the way to much higher?

So we have over 24,000 Bitcoin now.

In two days, we'll have been public for one year.

We started with just over 5,000 Bitcoin.

So we've more than forexed our Bitcoin in a Bitcoin bear market.

Obviously, a tough environment for companies trying to amplify Bitcoin exposure.

But, you know, it is what it is.

So I would love to unpack what happened with MetaPlanet and your thoughts on it.

That's the debt doom loop.

If the Fed hikes, they're gonna lose the long end.

If the Fed cuts, they're gonna lose the long end.

So the Fed's only choice is, how do they wanna lose the long end? And then what do they do to try to contain it? And how big a crisis will they need to justify what they need to do to contain the long end? So what they should do is, I think, basically cut rates to zero at the front end, and then have Bessent do something at the long end.

And basically, the optimal move...

They need to make a choice at some point, and they may have...

It might already be too late.

Can you expand on this for the audience?

Can you expand on this for the audience?

Yeah, and, and there's multiple dimensions on this, and I, I wrote a series of three Bill Ackman-esque posts, and I don't normally do this, and I, and if you've listened to me over the course of the last year or so, I'm generally pretty measured in my bullishness.

I kinda underwrite about a 30% average annual compounded rate of growth for Bitcoin, and I've seen over the last few months the emergence of what I view to be a grand slam setup for Bitcoin, and, and it really comes down to a couple different dimensions.

Uh, the first one was around the US dollar, and so generally speaking, uh, obviously the US dollar is a fiat currency.

When there's weakness in the US dollar relative to other fiat currencies, that tends to be extremely bullish for Bitcoin.

And so the chart that you have popped up here, if you were to actually... and, and then, uh, if, if the audience zooms in, what you'll see is that kind of within a rising dollar, the last few bull markets in Bitcoin, so the 2017 bull market, the 2021 bull market, and the 2024, uh, bull market, 2025 bull market, were happening during minor declines in the dollar, which to me, from a macro perspective, kind of bringing back my fixed income hat, makes a lot of sense in the world, that when the reserve currency of the world is losing steam, that will likely be happening in an environment that will be bullish for scarce assets, namely Bitcoin.

But interestingly, during Bitcoin's history, it's generally been in a period of dollar strength, so Bitcoin has had its bull markets in small bearish dollar scenarios but, you know, has generally been with the dollar going up.

Yeah.

And now let's get started.

All right, Adrian, thank you very much.

Um, I'm Matt Cole.

I am a partner in Saul Ewing's Baltimore office.

Um, I lead our firm's AI team, and I'm really excited to be giving this presentation today.

Uh, IP issues in AI use and AI contracting are really glitchy, uh, important issues.

And depending on whether you are signing an agreement for use-- purely for use of AI within your organization or some kind of development agreement, developing your own system or buying a system and building on top of it, the contractual, uh, provisions, uh, have different nuances to them related to intellectual property issues.

Has it seasoned more quickly than you expected? And what's like the long-term three to five-year upside on, I guess, the addressable market for this product?

On the topic of daily dividends and building a track record, that is a important secondary effect.

The primary effect was simply to do everything we can as an issuer to reduce volatility and realizing that it actually made sense that the dividend event itself was a source of volatility and and so when we're when we're watching that and and you know you don't really have a a take for why that shouldn't be the case is this it actually should be the case that um you you get a dividend there's no interest or cruel and preferred equities that that it should drop then you know how do we reduce that well we pay a dividend every business day That way the dividend itself every day does not become an event.

That was the primary factor.

But I think to your point on building a track record, how I think about this current time for us, also strategy, even though they're so large, is that Every single action that we take in public markets every day is part of that track record.

And that doesn't mean it's a good track record or a bad track record.

It's just like you are creating over the course of the next few years a history where investors will say, kind of like Bitcoiners, right? Don't trust, verify.

But how do you think through, I guess, those metrics? Are there any metrics that are new or unique to the Bitcoin treasury space that you find particularly interesting? Or is there something internally that you could share with us that you use that the broader community may not be looking at?

What actually changes about how you run a company when every decision gets measured against Bitcoin instead of the S&P?

Yeah.

So, so Bitcoin is the hardest hurdle rate to beat.

Uh, it obviously goes up substantially over time.

It's very volatile in the short term.

And so the reason what we set that at the hur- as the hurdle rate is that if you can't, if you don't think you can beat Bitcoin, you should just buy Bitcoin.

And so that really reframes how you think about the world.

This was amazing.

Let's start there.

Yeah, so preferred stock, I'm going to focus on Seda.

Just like bonds, preferred stocks could mean a wider range, a wider array of structures.

Seda is a perpetual preferred, meaning that it exists perpetually into the future and it pays a variable interest rate.

And so Strive targets $100.

And so we as an issuer can raise or lower the rate.

And I think this kind of gets into one of the misconceptions that people have about Seda that is actually worth highlighting.

And so talk more about how you think about risk in that context, that you have this preferred equity instrument, which to a large degree does depend on the price of Bitcoin.

But before we do, why don't we just have you introduce your company, Strive, and your main product, Seda, and then explain a little bit about why you call that your main company a product, despite the fact that Strive is a Bitcoin debt.

Yeah, awesome.

I will dive right into it.

So Strive right now is the seventh largest Bitcoin company we have.

We're getting close to 20,000 Bitcoin.

We're probably on a percentage basis, the fastest accumulator of Bitcoin in the industry.

And really in the depths of the bear market, you've seen to Bitcoin treasury companies accumulating what I would say at a meaningful scale and its strategy and strive.

Do you agree or disagree with those criticisms?

We're gonna dive into all of these events and the debates around all that, but before we do, why don't we just have you introduce your company, Strive, and your main product, SEDA, and then explain a little bit about, you know, why you call that your main company, uh, uh, product, despite the fact that Strive is a Bitcoin debt.

Yeah, awesome.

I w- I will dive right into it.

So Strive right now is the seventh-largest Bitcoin company.

We have...

We're getting close to 20,000 Bitcoin.

We're probably, on a, on a percentage basis, the fastest accumulator of Bitcoin in the industry.

Do you agree or disagree with those criticisms?

Is there a structuralUh, adoption kind of curve and trend that you're noticing issuing these digital, uh, pref's to start, or these digital credit instruments and, and how are you seeing that, that pickup?

Yeah.

Strategy was the issuer that mentioned that Stretch was 80% retail.

Um, we've looked into the data ourselves on Zeta, and it's probably similar.

Uh, the data quality is really hard to actually verify.

You have different holders that have retail and institutional components within them, and they're not broken out.

And, and so it's kind of a best guess, but I would say we're probably directionally in that same direction.

But I, I am curious, like is it a, is it a sort of and where they have to kind of be bought in on both ideas, or are you tapping sort of a, a different, um, group that isn't comfortable with Bitcoin yet?

Can you just describe what is the problem that digital credit is solving?

Yeah.

Um, I've been reflecting on this a lot and, and I think the problem that it's solving is actually bigger than I first imagined.

So maybe I'll start with what I thought the problem that it was solving is and kind of what I think the problem that it's solving is now.

Um, so when, when we first launched SATA, what I viewed it as was just a preferred equity security.

It pays a high interest.

It is backed by, by Bitcoin risk.

Are there other Bitcoin-backed type of instruments or assets that you all are looking at, or do you think that it is less of a, "Let's diversify from an asset standpoint, and let's focus on just the Bitcoin-backed credit"?

I really want to talk about your background, maybe where you grew up and what you were looking to do with your career and what you studied and how you ended up in finance.

Yeah, let's get into it.

And I think that's actually critical to some of the success that Strive has had because I view Strive now first and foremost as a structured finance company.

We're taking Bitcoin and we're structuring it.

And my background was structured finance.

And so I started my career at CalPERS.

And so CalPERS, for those that don't know, is the largest pension fund in America.

What does that mean to be the first asset management company and to take that approach, and how is that similar to maybe how insurance companies work?

What are the challenges to explaining the risk to people when they're analyzing digital credit? 'Cause you still have the, uh, Peter Shiffs and-- of the world screaming about Ponzi schemes, and that's not going anywhere.

Yeah, so, so those conversations are evolving.

So when we launched Seda, it was in November of last year.

In, in November, it was, "What's gonna happen when Bitcoin goes down?" Bitcoin was over $100,000.

Then we saw Bitcoin go down more than 50%.

And with both Stretch and Seda, you saw, you know, a little bit north of a 10% decline, but then a quick rebound.

So what that means is that-In a big sell off for Bitcoin, they showed substantially less volatility than Bitcoin, and then also rebounded back to par while Bitcoin was still down, you know, kind of in the dumps in a bear market.

How do people differentiate between the two?

Um, what is SEDA? What are you trying to achieve? And [chuckles] maybe for people that are new to the space, how the heck are you able to pay 13% interest when I get in my Austrian bank account 0.3? [chuckles]

Mm-hmm.

Yeah.

So, so SEDA is a perpetual preferred stock that currently pays a 13% dividend.

The dividend is variable, uh, and so it could go up or down relative to the demand and the risk profile and, and frankly, we'll get into this, how much capital the company wants to raise, and then we want to raise a ton of capital to buy a b- ton of Bitcoin.

And all these different variables factor into the interest rate because the company is actively working to maintain the price of SEDA in a 99 to 101 range.

And so we're trying to, to the maximal extent possible, reduce the volatility of the perpetual preferred stock SEDA, pay a healthy dividend, right? Uh, 13%, to your point, is extremely attractive.

So if you're ready to mine Bitcoin, go to simplemining.io, tell them you come from Robin, and let's mine Bitcoin together.

Let's

go.

First of all, I loved Jeff's recent article about Bitcoin row.

And so that's why I was, I was saying, well, you just wrote a great article on that.

And, and I kind of think about the world the same way.

And so first off, when you zoom out and you look at Bitcoin from any four year period, nothing has changed.

We are in the business of underwriting volatility.

And this digital credit finally opens a path, an aperture for that class of investors to come in, which I think is huge.