Merlin

Personal notes 📝

[Merlin @__Merlino__]

#Bitcoin https://t.co/bqp7Iljr96

[Michael Saylor @saylor]

When I gave this speech in October 2022, Bitcoin traded near $20,000, Strategy held 130,000 BTC worth about $2.6 billion, and $MSTR was ~$24 split-adjusted. Weeks later, after Bitcoin fell below $16,000, our debt exceeded the combined value of our BTC and cash reserves by ~$300 million, and $MSTR fell into the $13 range by year-end.

We stayed focused, strengthened the company, and executed our strategy. Since then, Strategy has raised over $60 billion of additional capital and invested it in Bitcoin, adding more than 716,000 BTC. Today, our BTC and USD reserves exceed debt by ~$48 billion. Thank you to everyone who believed, endured, and took the long view.

[RhinoInsight @RhinoInsight]

Bill Ackman: >30y investing → $20B AUM

Leonard Aschenbrenner: <1y investing → $20B AUM

Lesson: Never underestimate a kid with an AI thesis and a 165-page PDF.

[Thierry from arvy 🇨🇭 @ThierryBorgeat]

Oh, I forgot the best part.

Months before the IPO, SpaceX took $17.5 billion of old junk debt from xAI and X and parked it on its own balance sheet through a $20 billion bridge loan.

The terms? Repaid within six months of listing.

So part of the $75 billion that retail and index funds just handed over is already spoken for. Not for Mars. Not for rockets. To clear debts piling up at Elon's other companies.

You bought the rocket ship.

You're on the hook for the loans.

BEST. ENGINEERING. EVER.

[Quinten | 048.eth @QuintenFrancois]

Only ~5% of SpaceX stock is floating right now

~95% $SPCX is still locked

Most don’t realize bearish pressure often comes later, when insiders finally get liquidity

Unlock schedule below ⬇️

[Mario Nawfal @MarioNawfal]

🇮🇷🇺🇸 Iran just published all 14 clauses of the MoU. Read them carefully, because this is not the deal Trump described.

The headline numbers: $300 billion in reconstruction commitments from the US and allies. $24 billion in released frozen funds, half before negotiations even start. Complete naval blockade lifted within 30 days. US forces withdrawn from around Iran.

Here's the big one: Hormuz reopens under Iranian arrangements, meaning Iran keeps management of the strait.

The nuclear clause is Clause 9: Iran reiterates its commitment not to produce nuclear weapons. That's it. No enrichment cap. No dismantlement. No inspector access beyond existing frameworks.

The actual nuclear terms get negotiated in a separate 60-day window, and Clause 14 explicitly removes Iran's missile program and support for resistance groups from the agenda entirely. Permanently.

Iran's Deputy FM called it a total victory this morning. He wasn't spinning.

Source: Mehr News / Writer: Oliver

[Gergely Orosz @GergelyOrosz]

Meta had a SEV-0 outage today… less than two weeks after Meta’s most embarrassing undetected-for-too-long account takeover (also an outage)

It’s impossible to unsee Meta pushing AI for code + reviews and the end result being more massive outages vs before

They are connected

[Amazon Web Services @awscloud]

More AI-generated code doesn't make your team faster. It might actually slow you down.

[Chamath Palihapitiya @chamath]

Well, it was good while it lasted I guess…

[SpaceX @SpaceX]

Watch @ElonMusk provide a technical update on SpaceX’s capability to manufacture, launch, and operate AI satellites at scale → https://t.co/PSCyWrNsOg

[Merlin @__Merlino__]

@APompliano @BLight21M @amitisinvesting You are wrong about everything you little man

[Bull Theory @BullTheoryio]

🚨Michael Burry just said Elon Musk and Nvidia's deal is built on fake numbers.

Burry published a detailed breakdown calling the entire structure "Fugazi", his word for fake.

He is alleging that billions of dollars in Nvidia chips are being hidden off balance sheets, and that American retirees are unknowingly funding the whole thing.

Nvidia, the world's largest AI chip company sold $5.4 billion worth of its most advanced GPUs, the GB200, to a company called Valor.

Valor is not a real operating business. It is a special purpose vehicle, a shell company created specifically to hold these chips and nothing else. Nvidia also invested $1.9 billion of its own money directly into Valor on top of the sale.

Those 100,000+ chips are now physically inside xAI's data center. xAI is Elon Musk's artificial intelligence company, the one that builds Grok. xAI is using every single one of those chips right now to run its AI models.

But here is what Burry is flagging.

Neither Nvidia nor xAI owns those chips on paper. Valor, the shell company holds legal title. That means $5.4 billion in GPU assets do not show up on Nvidia's balance sheet as inventory.

They do not show up on xAI's balance sheet as assets. They are legally invisible to both companies.

Nvidia gets to book the $5.4 billion as a completed sale and record it as revenue. xAI gets full use of the chips without owning them. And the risk disappears into a shell company in the middle.

Now here is where American retirees enter the picture.

Valor needed $3.5 billion in debt to fund this structure. Apollo provided it. Apollo is one of the largest asset managers on earth with $1.03 trillion under management and $834 billion specifically in private credit.

Apollo raised the $3.5 billion, packaged it into debt securities, and sold those securities to Athene.

Athene is Apollo's own insurance company. It sells fixed and indexed annuities, retirement savings products, to ordinary Americans.

When a retiree buys an Athene annuity, they believe their money is sitting in safe, stable investments. That money is now inside a structure funding Elon Musk's AI data center.

The numbers inside Athene are most alarming.

Athene holds $74.2 billion in reserves. It has moved $217 billion in assets into a captive insurer based in Bermuda, meaning those assets sit outside normal US insurance regulation and oversight.

Of the entire portfolio, 34.7%, equal to $103 billion, is classified as Level 3 assets.

Level 3 is an accounting classification that means there is no observable market price for these assets. No outside party can independently verify what they are actually worth.

The leverage sitting on top of those unpriced assets is 16 times.

Burry's says:
Every step of this structure is technically legal and publicly disclosed. But the entire thing was deliberately engineered across 8 to 12 steps to move credit risk off balance sheets and away from any market pricing.

- Nvidia books the revenue.
- Apollo collects the fees.
- xAI gets the computing power.
- And retirees sitting at the bottom of a 16x leveraged Bermuda insurance structure, holding $103 billion in assets with no market price carry the risk without knowing it exists.

[Eric Balchunas @EricBalchunas]

Great look at the SpaceX shares unlock schedule as well as the potential passive buying schedule from @JSeyff @FrancisSharoon Depending on the early post-IPO returns, this could really play with and disperse the returns of "passive" funds (which is why there's arguably no such thing as passive). $SPCX

[Dep @0xDepressionn]

https://t.co/EKKW7dS4zk

[Jeremy Allaire - jerallaire.arc @jerallaire]

Incredible.

$1.87 in USDC paid by an agentic analyst to build a world class investment committee memo on SpaceX IPO.

The agentic economy has arrived.

[_Checkmate 🟠🔑⚡☢️🛢️ @_Checkmatey_]

If you try to save in cash and a bank account, it takes the median salary fourty years to save a deposit for the median home. You get destroyed by inflation and income tax.

To shorten that to a decade, you MUST invest, and take advantage of the 50% CGT.

If you're holding savings in cash for a decade, you have no idea how the game works, and have no chance of buying a home.

Source: myself, a young Australian whos been saving for a home for over a decade, and is still behind the curve.

[Merlin @__Merlino__]

@_Checkmatey_ @7_jenkinson Would be very interesting if you could write an article about it with the full math

[Autopilot @joinautopilot]

Update: Leopold's tracker is growing super fast

Yesterday: $15,000,000
Today: $17,000,000

The Leopold Aschenbrenner tracker in two months is already up 84%

According to his recent filings, he entered the year managing $5.29B

That portfolio is now expected to have nearly doubled

[Captured the perfect moment @MemesCIub]

Yeah, God has his favorites 🤷‍♀️

[Merlin @__Merlino__]

Look at what they do, not what they say

[Startup Anthropologist @0xCircusLover]

Brian sold $550m in $COIN before he fired 14% of his workforce

Brian Armstrong but handsweek kek

[Merlin @__Merlino__]

@APompliano @aaalexhl Anthony is a clown, spitting “facts” everyday on this platform when he knows and understands nothing