Thomas Perfumo, CFA | thomasp.eth 🐒

Chief Economist @krakenfx. 💰 Former L/S Special Sits Analyst @ Moore Capital. 📈 Amateur astronomer. 🔭 Thoughts are mine. Vires in Numeris. #Bitcoin #crypto

[Thomas Perfumo, CFA | thomasp.eth 🐒 @ThomasPerfumo]

https://t.co/xlBhVeKA0Q

[Thomas Perfumo, CFA | thomasp.eth 🐒 @ThomasPerfumo]

Competition within AI space is brutal. It's fought across multiple fronts: (a) access to materials; (b) access to power; (c) access to compute; etc.

The current frontier is increasingly shifting towards (d) access to capital. There's a race to fundraise, which is zero sum.

[Thomas Perfumo, CFA | thomasp.eth 🐒 @ThomasPerfumo]

The market already trying to price the rotation in liquidity.

[zerohedge @zerohedge]

Ringing The Bell: Meta Plunges On Report It May Sell "Tens Of Billions" In New Stock https://t.co/k6bw7rW7LD

[FINTECH.TV @FINTECHTVglobal]

May NFP lands at +172K with unemployment at 4.3% as the S&P 500 looks for a 10th straight weekly gain.

@JeffreyJRoach (@LPL), @perkinscr97, @hamrickisms (@Bankrate), @ThomasPerfumo (@krakenfx), @PacSun & @AstraZeneca join @RemyBlaireNews on Market Movers.
https://t.co/4TywvVimow

[xStocks @xStocksFi]

It's official. SpaceX ($SPCXx) is the first IPO on xStocks.

Onchain. Available on Kraken & other xStocks Alliance members.

[Thomas Perfumo, CFA | thomasp.eth 🐒 @ThomasPerfumo]

Bad math. The equivalent of P/EBITDA or P/Revenue multiples.

Makes zero sense.

[Glenn Cameron @GlennOnrampBTC]

I want to talk about the mNAV that everyone refers to on here for $MSTR

The thing I see is people saying something like “mNAV is 1.2 so relax”

Let me show you what that number quietly leaves out or hides. I want everyone to follow so I’m going to explain it simply, because it can be confusing.

Think of the company as a house made out of Bitcoin. Worth about $54bn right now, call it 843,000 coins.

But theres a mortgage on the house. They owe roughly $22bn to people who get paid before the owner or the house (ordinary shareholders). Say $7bn to bondholders and $15bn to the preferred holders, STRC and its cousins.

So what do shareholders actually own?

House minus the mortgage. About $32bn. Just that part.

Now there’s two ways people measure the shares against the Bitcoin (2 ways to measure mNAV)

The one everyone uses and makes you feel good takes the whole mortgage, adds it back on top of the shares, divides by the house. Comes out near 1.2. Above one, all fine, all looks good.

The simpler one just compares the value of shares against the house. Near 0.84 currently.

Here’s the trick. By adding the mortgage back in, the 1.2 cancels out the borrowing.

The thing that makes things difficult to see, the debt, which is added back into the sum so you cant see it. Fine for comparing two companies on a quiet day. No use for the way this hurts you.

The part nobody wants to talk about is what happens to your Bitcoin per share when they print more shares.

In a bull market it works. Sell shares for more than the value of the Bitcoin, buy more coins, everyone’s BTC per share nudges up. In a bull market.

Trouble is the shares now trade below the Bitcoin sitting behind them. So printing shares to buy coins today actually drags your Bitcoin per share down. The number they publish themselves.

And worse than that, when they print shares not to buy Bitcoin but just to pay bills, thats not clever, it’s just pure dilution. More shares, same coins, thinner slice.

Before anyone says I’m making it up: last week of May. They sold about $128m of new shares and bought zero Bitcoin with it. Nothing. Same week they sold 32 coins to help pay the preferred dividend. More shares knocking about, fewer coins in the pot, everyone holding it left with less Bitcoin per share. Thats not a flywheel.

The preferred’s pull the same stunt to cover the dividend. Sell more STRC just to pay this months bill and the mortgage gets bigger while the house stays the same size. Its remortgaging the house to pay the mortgage. Debt up, house flat, your slice bleeding. And Bitcoin hasnt even dropped yet.

Now let’s see what happens if the house price (Bitcoin) drops.

The mortgage doesnt move. $22bn whether Bitcoin’s at 64 grand or 20. Doesnt shrink because the house did. So when the house falls, who takes it on the chin? The owner of the house. First, and all of it. Bitcoin falls 15% and your slice doesnt fall 15, it falls nearer 25. Debt sits still, house sinks, the whole lot lands on the equity. Leverage in reverse.

Real numbers. Bitcoin’s about 64k. It only has to fall around 60%, to about 26k, and the owners has nothing left. Gone. Fall to about 8k and even the “safe, senior, stable” preferred has nothing under it.

And heres the bit that I want you to notice. What do the two numbers do while thats happening?

The comforting 1.2 doesnt fall as the owner gets wiped out. Using today’s figures it actually goes up. 1.25 now, about 1.61 by the time the owners slice hits zero. Looks healthier the worse it gets, cause the fixed amounts are now a bigger chunk of a smaller house.

The 0.84 simpler one falls (basic mNAV) on the other hand falls to 0.71, then 0.61. Moves with the damage.

So when someone says 1.2, relax, have a think about what that really means. Thats the version of mNAV that moves the wrong way when it all goes south, by design.

Want to know what’s actually happening when Bitcoin drops, watch the simple one (basic mNAV)

[Thomas Perfumo, CFA | thomasp.eth 🐒 @ThomasPerfumo]

@NateGeraci Capital raising is zero sum. A lot of professional investors dislike the reality that they couldn’t compete for the capital position.

[xStocks @xStocksFi]

$SPCXx launching soon.

Trading 24/7 when it's live.

Only with xStocks

[Thomas Perfumo, CFA | thomasp.eth 🐒 @ThomasPerfumo]

Presented without comment.

[Eric Balchunas @EricBalchunas]

$DRAM is at $15b now after just 60 days on mkt and yes, it broke IBIT's record (barely.. altho the two of them are in league of own). Here's top 10 ETFs to hit $15b the fastest for context of how crazy this is..

[Thomas Perfumo, CFA | thomasp.eth 🐒 @ThomasPerfumo]

Will say it again: $MSTR is not the reason bitcoin:native is trading lower right now.

ETFs are on a record streak of net outflows, now 13 sessions deep (nearly 2x the prior record). $4.4B sold.

This is happening 1 week prior to the largest IPO in history (SPCX) and several major capital markets moves amongst $GOOG, Anthropic, and OpenAI.

@Strategy is not a forced seller at any level here for at least the next 12 months. See my article here: https://t.co/dDlrSfCetx.

Can @Strategy become an overhang? Of course. But let's play out this "6 month runway" narrative. Assume the company does nothing for the next 30 days. No BTC sales, they pay dividends out of the USD reserve, etc.

Is the market going to remain in panic mode for another 30 days sequentially? Only way I see that happening is if ETFs continue to sell for the next 30 days. My thesis is the selling is tied to rotation and it doesn't last forever. But that's not a @Strategy problem, that's an ETF problem.

[Thomas Perfumo, CFA | thomasp.eth 🐒 @ThomasPerfumo]

I believed entering the industry professionally in 2017 that there was a 50/50 chance it would be forcibly quashed.

Bear markets are frustrating because you have to fight the "would've, could've, should've" demons. Looking back, the progress we've made is extraordinary.

[Matt @MattFiebach]

I hear a lot of people losing interesting in their crypto careers because "this bear market is different" (it's not)

Or even "this is the worst one ever" (it's not)

In '17/'18 we had the first real institutional interest and legendary macro names (PTJ etc.) starting to pay attention. Felt giga bullish. Then we wicked down 70% and slow bled down 85%.

In 2014-15 crypto was actually dead. No CT, just dead reddits. No revenue, no apps anyone used, nobody building real rails. Main use case for crypto was fake ids and deep web.

Compared to that? Today we have actual users, actual revenue, actual infra, and institutions that aren't going anywhere.

I think the next year or two will be rough for token price action. But I also think this is the most bullish bear market we've ever been in. 

[Thomas Perfumo, CFA | thomasp.eth 🐒 @ThomasPerfumo]

@pinkhasov Claude will write you the TL;DR you deserve.

I just made sure it wouldn't get fed garbage. :)

[Thomas Perfumo, CFA | thomasp.eth 🐒 @ThomasPerfumo]

@dampedspring @pinkhasov I think this analogy is off. A typical ETF is open-ended and designed to track performance. When the price of the ETF falls more quickly than underlying holding, the ETF faces redemptions.

MSTR is an actively managed closed end fund.

https://t.co/Fkln2ybeJl

[Thomas Perfumo, CFA | thomasp.eth 🐒 @ThomasPerfumo]

https://t.co/xlBhVeKA0Q

[Thomas Perfumo, CFA | thomasp.eth 🐒 @ThomasPerfumo]

bitcoin:native bounced pretty hard after briefly crossing below the 200W moving average of $61.6K.

Never know how things can trade in short-run and I'm convinced SpaceX and equities rotation is a big driver of this drawdown, but risk-reward is tempting allocation.

[Thomas Perfumo, CFA | thomasp.eth 🐒 @ThomasPerfumo]

27% of @PeterSchiff's tweets reference Bitcoin and/or @Strategy since October 2025.

bitcoin:native truly lives rent free.

[Thomas Perfumo, CFA | thomasp.eth 🐒 @ThomasPerfumo]

@Evan_ss6 It's not a first, but it is uncommon. Since January 2025, an estimated 61% of trading sessions see positive inflows.

We're now in the longest sequential streak of negative outflows (11 days). Nearly double the prior record. All a week before the biggest IPO in history.

[Thomas Perfumo, CFA | thomasp.eth 🐒 @ThomasPerfumo]

@BigpictureBTC The price-to-NAV is 1.3x, not 0.8x.

[Kraken Pro @krakenpro]

$BTC realized and implied volatility both hit year-to-date lows.

Historically when realized vol drops this low, it lasts a median of 4 weeks before breaking out, either direction.

The clock is ticking.

Watch this week's Macro Minute with @ThomasPerfumo👇

[Thomas Perfumo, CFA | thomasp.eth 🐒 @ThomasPerfumo]

I spoke with an FA at a bulge bracket today and he mentioned he still has bids in IBIT at $33 from February that haven’t hit yet.

The sad thing with all bitcoin:native cycles is watching the true crypto natives stretch themselves on allocation so much so that they panic exit.

The patient capital allocators had a 2% position that they’re now rebalancing up from 1.5%.

The attitude between the marginal buyer in TradFi vs the long-time crypto believer could not be more different.

[Hunter Horsley @HHorsley]

Vibe right now —

Crypto twitter: “after 15 years, this might be the year it’s over for [new recent reason]”

Financial advisor I’m with at happy hour in Florida: “saw price is down, it’s time to buy right? It’s amazing to finally have access.”

Somehow the roles have flipped upside down in 2026.