Bitcoin Analyst: 'Only Michael Saylor' Can Do Strategy's Treasury Model

Economist and author Saifedean Ammous on Thursday said Strategy’s (NASDAQ:MSTR) Bitcoin treasury model may be impossible for any other company to replicate. Why Strategy Has No Real Competitor Ammous told Cointelegraph’s Proof of Thesis podcast that holding cash-flow-positive earnings in Bitcoin (CRYPTO: BTC) as a long-term treasury strategy is a sound business model with room to grow. He drew a sharp line between that and borrowing against a Bitcoin stack to fund further purchases, a model he argues only Strategy can pull off safely. Strategy holds the largest Bitcoin position of any public company, which gets it the lowest borrowing rates in the space. Even Bitcoin’s steepest drawdowns, including the 77% crash in 2021 and last year’s decline, came nowhere close to triggering a liquidation. “There’s really only Michael Saylor that can do this,” Ammous said, adding he isn’t recommending the stock, just explaining why he sees no clear second-best option among Bitcoin treasury companies. Why Bitcoin Ignores the Fed Bitcoin only looks correlated to Fed policy in the short term, according to Ammous. Its price roughly doubled during the Fed’s last rate-hiking cycle and kept climbing once the Fed started cutting. He attributed day-to-day price swings to traders selling crypto to meet margin calls on other positions, like the Nasdaq. Over a multi-year horizon, Bitcoin tracks its own four-year halving cycle rather than interest rate decisions, he argued. Ammous estimated Bitcoin’s bottom landed sometime between June of this year and a few months from now, calling mid-2026 to mid-2027 the best accumulation window of the cycle. He pointed to shrinking drawdowns across cycles as the most bullish signal: an 85% to 90% crash after the first halving cycle, 85% after the second, 77% after the third, and only 54% this time. Smaller drawdowns make Bitcoin far more attractive to risk-averse institutional allocators, Ammous argued, who previously stayed on the sidelines specifically because of the threat of an 80% collapse. Why He Isn’t Worried About Trump or Quantum Computing Trump’s administration hasn’t meaningfully moved Bitcoin’s price in either direction, Ammous argued. It has, however, made life dramatically easier for “shitcoins” by installing SEC and CFTC leadership less willing to enforce securities law against them. He expects political gridlock after the midterms to freeze that dynamic in place for roughly two years. On quantum computing, Ammous called the threat overstated, arguing Bitcoin’s UTXO set could migrate to quantum-resistant cryptography well before any real danger materializes. Where He Sees Bitcoin Heading by 2030 Using the Bitcoin power law model as his rough guide, Ammous placed a 2030 price estimate somewhere between $200,000 and $1.6 million. Moreover he also expects the actual number to land closer to the lower end of that range, given Bitcoin’s recent tendency to trade below the model’s central prediction. Photo via Shutterstock Read Also: Robinhood Traders Just Went on Their Biggest Buying Binge Ever