President, CEO & Director, MicroStrategy Inc.
Phong Le on CNBC
00:00 — "We're net purchasers of Bitcoin." The 32 BTC sale helped inoculate the market, test our processes, and capture tax losses over time
1:47 - We balance the needs of our constituents: $MSTR and $STRC shareholders, $BTC hodlers, and debt holders
3:07 - Four-year cycles, macro volatility, geopolitical conflict, inflation uncertainty, Fed policy, Clarity
4:15 - Bitcoin is a hedge against inflation and big government
5:32 - Capital that rotates from $BTC to Al will come back to $BTC
6:42 - With clearer rules, every major bank is going to flood into $BTC and crypto
7:27 - Expanding fin...
About Phong Le
Phong Le, President and CEO of Strategy (formerly MicroStrategy), has been a frequent media presence in mid-2026 discussing the company's Bitcoin strategy and its new financial product, STRC (a perpetual preferred stock). Le stated that while the company is a net purchaser of Bitcoin, it may sell some Bitcoin before the end of the year to manage its capital structure, generate tax benefits, and satisfy obligations to its preferred stock and debt holders. He characterized this as "math over ideology," noting that the company's goal is to increase Bitcoin per share for common shareholders rather than to hold Bitcoin indefinitely. In June 2026, the company sold 32 Bitcoin, which Le described as an effort to "inoculate the market" and test their sales processes, while simultaneously buying over 1,500 Bitcoin in the same period. Le has been a primary spokesperson for STRC, which he described as "digital credit" that pays an 11.5% monthly dividend and is designed to give retail investors access to Bitcoin exposure. He stated that the product has raised $8.5 billion in 10 months and that 80% of its holders are retail investors. Le argued that Strategy is building a new asset class that sits between private credit and money markets, and that regulation providing clarity around stablecoins and tokenization would lead major banks to enter the crypto space, which he characterized as positive for Bitcoin. He also stated that the company's legacy software business, which generates around $500 million in revenue, is neither a distraction nor a material part of Strategy's overall value.
Transcript (15 segments)
✨ AI-enhanced transcript with speaker attribution
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Host0:00
Let's check on the price of Bitcoin. Roughly flat today around 61,000. Still down more than 20% over the past month and recently hit its lowest since October of 24 when it fell below 60K. Strategy is taking advantage of the drop as they bought over 1,500 more Bitcoin just about a week after selling about 32 Bitcoin. That was their first sale since 2022. Joining us now in a first interview to discuss these moves is Strategy CEO Phong Le. Jeffrey's chief market strategist David Zervos is still with us on set. It's great to have you both. Phong, let's just start with this the sequencing here. Why the sale? Why the purchase?
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Phong Le0:37
Well, I'll start with we're net purchasers of Bitcoin. And you showed a pretty nice chart there that showed on net we bought about 1,500 Bitcoin so far this month over the last month. And why the sale? A few reasons. One, we thought it was good to inoculate the market to understand that we are willing to sell Bitcoin when we need to. We haven't needed to, but it's an important thing to do. Two, it's a lot easier for us process-wise to buy Bitcoin than to sell Bitcoin. So, we want to make sure everything's working. And three, over time, we'll be able to capture assets on our balance sheet that are tax losses related to the sale of our Bitcoin. We bought Bitcoin anywhere from $10,000 up to $125,000. One reason we did not sell our Bitcoin, we did not need to sell our Bitcoin to satisfy our dividends. We were able to do that through other capital raising activities.
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Host1:28
I guess Phong, the frustration among some people that we've spoken with is that you guys kind of said, well, you'll never sell any Bitcoin and even a small sale they get frustrated by. How do you respond? What's your message to investors not only in your stock, but to maybe crypto investors that are listening understandably frustrated right now?
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Phong Le1:47
We have a set of constituents that we have to be able to answer to. One is our common stock or MSTR shareholders. Second is our preferred stock or STRC shareholders. Third are our debt holders. And fourth are our Bitcoin holders. Not necessarily in that order. And when it makes sense for our common stockholders for us to sell our Bitcoin, we will. We actually did it in 2022. And so we're going to do it now. It's again for if you're a Bitcoin holder, we're the largest holder of Bitcoin in the world. We're the largest purchaser of Bitcoin in the world. We'll continue to be.
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David Zervos2:19
This is David Zervos here. I just wonder if you could help us in the macro world understand this halving of Bitcoin. What does it mean to you from a macro setting? I know we go through these periodic repositionings. There's technicals. There's lots of things you guys are in the weeds doing, but for those of us looking and saying, is there a macro story? Is there something fundamental here? Maybe also with the weakness in gold and silver and other commodities of sorts that seem to be safety plays. It is a somewhat unsafe world and we're seeing a lot of these safety plays not really be very safe. Is there a message that we should be taking away here in the macro community from what's happened in Bitcoin over the last, well, since the halving?
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Phong Le3:07
Yeah, what's interesting is we are seeing still four-year cycles with Bitcoin related to the halving. Now, whether that continues to be the case, I don't know. But it's interesting, maybe not coincidental, that 4 years ago was the last major drawdown in Bitcoin from 66K down to 16K, about a 75% drawdown right around May of 2022. And here we sit with potentially the next drawdown in Bitcoin that would then lead to an increase. When you talk about macro, I think it's much more than the four-year cycles. We have a lot of volatility in the market right now and you talked about it earlier. We have an uncertain inflationary environment and what is the new Fed going to do with interest rates? Keep them flat, increase or decrease. We have two pretty major wars happening in the world. And with those kinds of and with crypto, we have the lack of clarity of what's going to happen with clarity. I think those are the three macro scenarios that are impacting Bitcoin price and impacting all assets overall. What do we see over the long term? I do think Bitcoin is a hedge against inflation. I think Bitcoin is a hedge against big government. And I think people realize that and that's why they've gotten into Bitcoin and that doesn't change.
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Host4:25
Why did you, Phong?
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Phong Le4:28
We sold because we wanted to inoculate the market and we sold because we want to test our processes.
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Host4:33
And what did you learn from that?
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Phong Le4:36
We learned that everything works. It is interesting, the question is why does the sale of 32 Bitcoin get so much attention? Our institutional shareholders that we talk to don't seem to be unnerved by it. I think the unnerving is the retail community that has views on never selling your Bitcoin that are crypto anarchist and, frankly, we have a lot more than just them as constituents.
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Host5:03
Phong, do you think that people are selling crypto to raise money to buy tech stocks and the SpaceX IPO, or do you think there's a fundamental shift in how people view Bitcoin and crypto?
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Phong Le5:19
I think if there's $500 billion of money that is going into SpaceX and Google and Anthropic, people look at crypto in 2021 like they look at AI this year. It is a high volume, high return asset class. And the same people that put money into crypto and have made money are going to sell it, put it into SpaceX, hope to get a 3-day pop, sell SpaceX, and turn around and buy crypto cheap. That's what's going to happen.
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David Zervos5:49
So you mentioned in the last response about clarity and I wonder how much of this is the regulatory uncertainty. It seems like the banks have gotten a little more power with the stablecoin story and all the interest payments on that, and the tide seems to have turned a little bit in Washington against crypto even though it was starting out really well at the beginning of this administration. Is that a big part of it or is that less of the story than you made it out to be?
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Phong Le6:24
I think part of it is we have about a six-month logjam of clarity getting through the Senate and getting through the House and getting through the White House. And what that opens up is a lot of definition as it relates to regulation and tokenization and stablecoins. And when we do that, every major bank is going to flood into the space. And there are folks who think that's bad for crypto. I and Strategy think that's good for crypto. You get a major financial system and all of their customers now able to buy stablecoins, buy crypto, tokenized equities. That's a great thing. And that's why the government wants to pass this. And why there's an appearance of negativity is that banks are being pulled in grudgingly, begrudgingly, and the DeFi companies and the crypto companies and the neobanks realize there's a wave of competition happening. But if you're a consumer and if you're a user of financial services, this is an amazing thing that's about to happen over the next few months and, of course, it's going to be good for Bitcoin and good for crypto.
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Host7:30
All right, Phong, we really appreciate you joining us today. Hope to check back in soon.