Podcasters Per Share | The Hurdle Rate Podcast | Ep. 74

— Adam Livingston joins Strive as VP of Investments; his public analysis impressed leadership enough to bring him in-house despite no prior employment at the firm.

— Trust is the foundational infrastructure of capital markets, made legible through Bitcoin's 24/7 transparency and weekly balance-sheet updates from Strive and Strategy.

— The Clarity Act (600 pages of regulatory framework) aims to reduce trust costs for traditional institutions engaging with crypto and digital assets, though it does not create new risk-weighting guidance.

— AI doomerism from frontier labs (Anthropic, OpenAI) appears strategically timed to raise valuations and erect moats via government regulation, potentially locking out open-source competition.

— The 10-year Treasury yield touched 5% for the first time in months; Besant likely deploying capital gradually to build political cover for larger Treasury market intervention if yields continue rising.

— Strive hit an all-time market cap of $2.75 billion; Strategy bought back $139 million of STRC and Strive acquired 469 Bitcoin at $77,954 average cost, reaching 25,000 Bitcoin on balance sheet.

— 10-year Treasury yield hit 5% Monday; base case estimate is 5.25–5.75% before potential intervention.

— Bitcoin is up and holding near all-time highs in the face of rising yields, suggesting healthy liquidity conditions.

— STRC traded near $99, recovering from prior weakness; SEDA crossed warrant strike price ($27, expiring 12 October) and paid dividends while STRC remained relatively flat.

— Preferred equity (PFF down 1.4% over one week) vs. STRC (up 1.3%) shows 260 basis point delta, indicating stronger credit-market positioning of Bitcoin treasuries.

— 50% CAGR from current levels to 2030 yields ~$500K Bitcoin, historically "tame" relative to past 200-week moving average recoveries.

— Strive and Strategy have no debt and are structurally positioned to absorb a short-term Bitcoin drawdown to $40K–$50K if Treasury crisis forces liquidity flooding, which would then catalyze multi-year rally.

— Monitor SEDA and STRC credit spreads versus the 10-year yield; compressing spreads (as yields rise) signal that digital-credit instruments are outperforming traditional alternatives and building institutional trust.

— Prepare for volatility in the "messy middle"—small scary events (bugs, exploits, policy shocks) will occur but will not derail long-term AI or Bitcoin adoption; public acknowledgment of tail risks before they occur preserves credibility when markets recover.