As-salamu alaykum, everyone. I hope you are doing well. A red day across the board in the markets. VIX was up thirteen percent. People are nervous. That's when you buy, as I always say. Now that the VIX is close to twenty five, this is where historically you get the best returns. Obviously, the higher the risk, the lower the valuations, the better the deals. I'm not really concerned about macro. This is not because I'm a perma bull. I don't like to be a perma bull or a perma bear or a perma anything. I like to be perma right. What I'm seeing right now is a situation where the headlines are very scary. However, there's a lot of tools in our arsenal to deal with slowdowns. And also, I believe that there is hope that we will get a balanced budget and that will be extremely bullish for the economy and will place the stock market the financial markets on a much more solid footing than if we were just always reliant on monetary policy so it is possible that fiscal policy could play a much greater role in terms of getting the economy and getting the markets in a healthy spot. something that has always been, I think, the goal is to have fiscal policy be front and center, monetary policy be less important. However, what we've experienced in recent years is the opposite. I think if we get to a balanced budget, it is possible that we get to a state where, no, actually the fundamentals are driving the markets. And so that's, I think, a much more healthy state to be in. And I think there's a reasonable chance that we get there. Not only that, in terms of monetary policy, as I've mentioned in my updates to PIF members, as I mentioned on this live in a couple of days ago, it's not like we're at zero percent interest rates. If the stuff hits the fan, the Fed has ample room to cut. And I think you're seeing already the flip-flopping on a lot of tariffs. One day there's tariffs on everything. The other day, the next day, there's exceptions to the tariffs and, oh, maybe we shouldn't do that. Maybe we shouldn't do that. So I think the administration is getting settled in, said a lot of stuff when they were campaigning. And now that the rubber is meeting the road, They're discovering that there are a lot of consequences to their policies, and they have shown readiness to roll back a lot of their policies. Oh, well, tariffs are not going into effect now. They're going to affect in one month. And maybe autos will be excluded from tariffs with Canada. you can bet there'll be a lot of rollbacks of a lot of policies that are spooking investors right now but they'll be packaged as wins some way they'll be packaged as wins and not only that I do think that there's more hope now for end to a conflict between ukraine and russia than there has been Not because of Trump's policy, but I do think that on the ground, Ukraine may be able to make a breakthrough. I know that this is something that no one is talking about. No one agrees with me. But I actually don't see Russia as this really strong country that can't be beat, like a lot of people in the Trump administration see it as. I actually think that if Europe gets serious about its defense, and it seems that it has, perhaps one of the unintended consequences of Trump's kind of leaving Ukraine, Europe is going to figure out that they have to defend themselves by themselves. And they will step up. And Ukraine, I think, has a chance to make a breakthrough on the ground. And that will bring the parties together. That will bring enough pressure on Russia to be more serious about a deal and concessions that come with that. I think that's Really something that not many people are thinking about. So I think the economy may slow in the near term, but I don't think it's going to be anything that we can't handle with the many levers that can be pulled. And I think geopolitically, a lot of the ambiguity that's out there now will subside and will have greater clarity. And I think the nervousness that investors have about Trump's policies is going to subside as well as it becomes clear that Trump is mostly bark and not a lot of bite. All right. So that's with regards to macro. But I like to take advantage of these times when, you know, the VIX is close to twenty five. I like to take advantage of these times to look for opportunities. That's my job after all. So I wanted to take a deeper look into some Bitcoin proxies that I've kind of been ignoring. Now, one of these Bitcoin proxies is MicroStrategy. And I've been ignoring MicroStrategy for good reason. I'll tell you why in a second. But let's go to our presentation for today and talk about the Bitcoin proxies that I want to tell you about. And the the attractiveness of these particular Bitcoin proxies, as opposed to let's say the Bitcoin miners that we are invested in or the Bitcoin ETF that we hold, which is, a direct way of owning the asset itself. But the appeal of these Bitcoin proxies is that they give you Bitcoin yield. And what does Bitcoin yield mean? It means that when you buy a share of one of these companies, and let's say that share represents one Bitcoin today, the idea is that in twelve months that same share that you bought maybe worth one, uh, one point one Bitcoin or one point two Bitcoin. And so the same share is representing a larger number of Bitcoin with time. That's the appeal of these Bitcoin proxies that I want to take a look at. And for all of these Bitcoin proxies, by the way, I've looked at their interest income, interest expense ratios, and they pass my two point five percent. limit on these ratios, which is typically how I judge companies to answer the question, is this company too reliant on interest-bearing debt or not? And therefore, am I comfortable with it or not? So the first company that I'd like to look at is MicroStrategy. You've probably seen its founder, CEO, Michael Saylor. And an interview with him actually got me interested in Bitcoin and changed my mind on it years ago. and he's probably the most prominent bitcoin evangelist you're going to find a very smart guy he had a company called microstrategy that did business intelligence software as a service and when he found out about bitcoin he decided this thing is going to the moon and He wanted to be a part of that. And so he decided he was going to invest a lot of his or actually the entire almost the entire cash reserves of the company MicroStrategy and park it in Bitcoin. And then he figured out, oh, well, actually, I can buy more Bitcoin by issuing more shares of my company and accumulating more and more Bitcoin that way. And so this ballooned and it turned into what we see today, which is a company that primarily acts as a somewhat almost leveraged play on Bitcoin. Right now it has a market cap. This is as of their latest investor presentation. It has a market cap of less than eighty billion. Right around eighty billion, the Bitcoin that it holds, it holds four hundred and seventy one thousand Bitcoin, close to half a million. The Bitcoin that it holds has, as of this this presentation, around forty six billion. And so the multiple of the Bitcoin that they hold, the market cap to the Bitcoin that they hold is around two. So they're trading at two times the underlying Bitcoin that the company holds now. The reason why it trades at two times the underlying Bitcoin is because the bitcoin yield that investors are anticipating in addition to the bitcoin price appreciation that investors are anticipating so those two factors bitcoin's price going up and the number of bitcoin that each share represents going up those two factors are causing investors to want to own shares in MicroStrategy and causing there to be a multiple for the market cap versus the Bitcoin that the company holds. Now, in terms of debt, it has had a pretty disciplined approach to debt. That being said, their debt is not trivial. So right now they have around seven point two billion in debt. If you take the debt that they have and you compare it to their market cap, it's around nine percent. But that's not really a good way to figure out how safe a company is because market cap can change very quickly. as is evidenced by Mr's market cap or MicroStrategy's market cap that was not too long ago, the share price was trading at, let's see where the high was, it was five hundred and forty dollars. Now it's trading at three hundred dollars. So, you know, market cap can come at you fast. So that's not really a great way to judge the security of the company. Also, if you look at market cap versus the net asset value, the value of the Bitcoin that the company holds, I'm sorry, if you look at the debt and you compare it to the value of the Bitcoin that the company holds, That's around. Seventeen percent. Which makes sense. Because. The value of the Bitcoin. Is around half. Of. What the market cap is. So. The. The ratios. Are going to be double. So. So. Close to seventeen percent. Here. We're also. We're not like. You know. We're at. Crisis level. But again. Here. The Bitcoin. Now. Could drop significantly. Like. as we saw in recent days and weeks. There's nothing that guarantees Bitcoin's price continues to go up or it doesn't crash, especially considering that there are no assets backing it. It is really a matter of people still believing in it. And so I think this is a part of their risk profile that many investors don't get. I just want to bring it to your attention that just as the upside is supported by Bitcoin yield and by Bitcoin's price and looks pretty steep, the downside can come at you very fast. If the price of Bitcoin craters, then it's going to be very hard for MicroStrategy to raise money and therefore it will be very hard for microstrategy to generate any bitcoin yield for its shareholders so this is a risk that investors are taking now if you look at this company and how it has progressed in terms of the number of bitcoin that it holds It now holds close to half a million, as I mentioned, only in Q three, it had half that amount. So this company has gone really aggressive with its acquisition of Bitcoin. And it has done so at pretty favorable terms. So it uses a combination of equity. That's basically when they sell shares into the market and dilute shareholders. But when you're getting, when you're getting, you know, a multiple of the Bitcoin that you hold in terms of proceeds from selling equity, And so long as that multiple is positive, you're able to generate Bitcoin yield for your shareholders. So the dilution should be less than the amount of Bitcoin, the Bitcoin value that you buy. So, for example, if you had a thousand dollars Uh, worth, uh, the company was, uh, was valued at a thousand dollars and it holds. Five hundred dollars in Bitcoin. So two X it's valued at two X, what it holds in Bitcoin. And let's say it issues, you know, fifty percent more shares. So that generates basically, you know, five hundred dollars. And if it uses that to buy Bitcoin, it can essentially double the amount of Bitcoin that the company holds, but it only diluted shareholders by fifty percent. So the net is a is a positive Bitcoin yield for shareholders. And so that's the entire idea here behind MicroStrategy and often called sort of the infinite money glitch. So. So it has a strong capital structure and it doesn't only raise money through equity. It also raises money through convertible notes. These are basically just debt that you convert and that you can convert into common stock at a certain discount. So, and typically this debt has an interest rate now. In the case of MicroStrategy, considering how well the company has performed in terms of its stock price, it has found that investors are willing to give it that at zero percent for its convertible note, zero percent. They just want the opportunity to convert their debt into MicroStrategy shares at a discount. So that is very favorable for the company. It's managed. And this is why the interest expense ratio for the company has come in below my two point five percent limit for the for the past four quarters. And so. This is very bullish for the company, the fact that it doesn't have to worry about shelling out a lot in interest expense over the coming years. And I should say that the majority of micro strategies, cash raising activities have been through equity, not through convertible senior notes. And so the biggest convertible note it has is for three billion dollars that comes due in twenty twenty nine and the interest rate on it is zero percent. or got three billion dollars, basically free money until twenty twenty nine that it can just use to buy Bitcoin has a has a vision for Bitcoin that it's going to reach. You know, Michael Saylor has said he thinks it's going to reach thirteen million by twenty forty five and. you know has a chance of reaching a million perhaps by twenty thirty so by twenty twenty nine these convertible notes will convert into common equity and they probably won't have to even pay it back they'll just issue shares which will dilute shareholders now the twenty twenty five targets for this company is a bitcoin yield of fifteen percent year to date for twenty twenty five. This is as of February second. They're already at three percent. So they're aggressively increasing their Bitcoin holdings in a manner that isn't really diluting shareholders. And that's why its share price is Has done so well in the past years. And that's why people are looking at it right now and saying, hey, this might be a great opportunity to add. It's trading at three hundred right now. It was at five forty a few months ago. This thing could double quickly if we get out of the rut that we're in. So the arguments for investing in MicroStrategy very quickly, Bitcoin goes up in price, the Bitcoin per share of MicroStrategy goes up with time. So the number of Bitcoin represented by each share goes up with time and there's no need to own Bitcoin directly. Another company that saw what MicroStrategy is doing and said, hey, I want in on that infinite money glitch is Similar Scientific. They're actually, they're a legitimate medical devices company. They actually have a pretty good product and it's cashflow positive. They're using cash generated from operations and leveraging capital markets. So basically equity and debt and investing proceeds in Bitcoin. The core business selling of Quantaflow, that's their flagship product. It's cash generative, which supports their Bitcoin purchases as well. So far, they're a tiny drop. Compared to MicroStrategy, they've acquired three thousand one hundred and ninety two Bitcoin as of February fourteenth of this year. at a total cost of two hundred eighty million and I did the math at ninety thousand which is where bitcoin is at right now that comes out to two hundred eighty seven million so they're they're not so microstat they're new to the game they're not uh deep in the green yet microstrategy their average price for the bitcoin that half a million bitcoin that they have is sixty four thousand so they've already achieved Even after this pullback, they already have a return on their investment. We talked about market value. And the revenues for twenty twenty four were pretty solid. Fifty six million. Half of that was cash provided by operations. So they have a pretty good business. This is a solid business that they have going and they have cash of nine million dollars as of December thirty first of last year. The third company that I'd like to compare is Marathon Digital. And Marathon Digital is actually a Bitcoin miner. It's perhaps the largest Bitcoin miner in terms of market cap. However, it's not a great Bitcoin miner. The efficiency of Mara is not really great. Their fleet efficiency is twenty two point seven joules per terahash. You know, if you want to be on the leading edge, that should be closer to fifteen joules per terahash. Right now, it's probably going to be a lot lower by the end of the year. And their total cash in Bitcoin treasury is one point eight billion. They've had a hodl approach to the Bitcoin that they mine. So they basically don't take anything out or sell it. And I think what happened is they They looked at this Bitcoin mining business and were like, this is kind of hard. I mean, the efficiency is getting higher and higher every day, it seems. The network is getting harder and harder to mine Bitcoin from. Why not just hold Bitcoin and do what MicroStrategy is doing? That infinite money loop or glitch that MicroStrategy has found, that can work for us too. And so they've gone heavy into issuing convertible notes. in order to raise money, debt, basically, and pay and use it to pay for Bitcoin and acquire more Bitcoin. And they show in their investor presentation that, hey, we've done a lot better than other Bitcoin miners if you're looking at stock price. So they mentioned, oh, well, if you look since January first, twenty twenty one till now, we're up close to sixty percent. If you look at Other public miners, CleanSpark, Riot, Wolf, BitFarms, and Cypher, well, they're down compared to that date. And they diluted their shareholders way more than we did. We diluted them by two hundred percent. If you look at some of these other miners, they diluted their shareholders by close by sometimes as high as nineteen thousand percent. So, hey, we have a track record is what they're saying. And they have four point nine dollars in cash and Bitcoin per share. Now, if you look at, however, if you look at the comparison of these three. And similar scientific is a much smaller company. And I believe in the three hundred million range. The MicroStrategy, as I mentioned, close to eighty billion. Marathon Digital currently has a market cap of close to five billion. And if you look at the market cap. To Bitcoin value ratio to judge which of these companies is the cheapest. Well, Similar Scientific has the lowest ratio of market cap to Bitcoin value. So they're trading at only twenty percent more than the Bitcoin that they hold. MicroStrategy is currently trading at one point seven times. Marathon Digital is trading at one point four times. But Marathon Digital has quite a substantial asset base other than its Bitcoin mining operation. It has access to fifteen hundred megawatts of power. It has data centers, it has obviously rigs, Bitcoin mining infrastructure. So it's more than just a hodler. a lot more than, let's say, micro strategy is, which is almost a pure play on this Bitcoin yield strategy. So with that being said, looking at these companies and looking at the strategy, even though the interest income interest expense ratios are below my limits, it's still true that at least for microstrategy, I notice to be certain that using debt is, and even for Marathon, I would say this is the case as well. Not so sure about similar scientific. That's why it's kind of something that's interesting to me. I want to look more at. But what I wanted to say about microstrategy and Marathon was that their use of convertible notes, which are a form of debt, even if they hold a zero percent coupon this is not trivial their use of these convertible notes is not trivial when we're evaluating the business model for these businesses it's not trivial and therefore any debt and you have to say that convertible note is debt because ultimately it's up to the holder whether they want to collect on the debt or they want to convert to common shares so As far as MicroStrategy is concerned, they have an obligation to return what they borrowed at a certain date in the future. So this is debt. And any debt that has a expected benefit from it involves RIBA, involves prohibited RIBA. And so this is part of their business model, the use of debt. And so just this expectation of benefit from the lenders makes it haram and makes it something that I don't want to get involved with. I shouldn't say makes it haram. It makes it uncomfortable to me based on my understanding. Whereas a similar scientific, there is opportunity here, but I doubt that they're just going to stick with equity raises. I think that it's going to basically follow the other two companies. So, you know, if I'm proven wrong with any of these three companies, wherein they say, you know what, we're not doing the convertible notes thing. We're sticking to equity. This is our business model. We issue shares, we buy Bitcoin. And I see some seriousness about sticking to that strategy, which is a lot less risky than the convertible notes, even if some people can't see it right now, but it is risky. then it is something that I would consider investing in because the combination of a Bitcoin yield and the Bitcoin price appreciation that I expect is very powerful for price appreciation. So with that being said, I hope you found that beneficial. I've talked a lot. Can't believe I've been talking for thirty minutes. Leave a like if you enjoyed this live. I'll take some questions very quickly. Salaam, Osama. Nice to see you. Nice to see you, Rashad. Salam, brother Basha. Nice to see you, Dr. Boss. Always nice to see you. NASDAQ in correction territory. How long do you think there will be more pain in the markets before the march back upwards? I actually don't think it will be long. I think the market is very nervous about a lot of the headlines out there. But I think we have enough tools in our tool chest to deal with a lot of things that we're hearing about. And I also see a readiness, although not admitted readiness, but a readiness with the administration to roll back the things that cause drops in the market and that are unpopular. So I don't see things that, I think there's so many catalysts for, especially our holdings. There's so many catalysts for them. I just want to buy and take advantage of the discount. If you look at Tesla, for example, today, it's trading at a ten percent discount to what it was trading at in January of twenty twenty one. That's four years ago. Four years ago, it's trading at a ten percent discount to its price then. So I and and the company has grown a lot in four years, so I think there's a lot of great opportunities in the market right now. And you know what? So long as I'm a net buyer of stocks, I'm going to continue to accumulate so long as things are at the prices that they are. Because even if it takes longer than I expect, and I don't think it's going to take long, I think probably in a month, the sentiment around the markets will be very different than what they are today. Obviously, but that's what I think. One of the analysts said their tariffs and contracting GDP might cause a market crash this year. What is your thought? I think the contracting GDP is primarily because of the government layoffs that Doge is doing. And so I think whatever contraction in GDP is not really a contraction in goods and services produced. So I think it will be fine. It's a contraction in spending, really. Because I think a lot of, to be honest, I think a lot of the cuts that are being made are actually in unproductive areas. So yes, there'll be less spending by the government, but it's not like the goods and services will decrease in the economy. So I think that that number is going to be skewed lower, but for a short period of time, and it will quickly recover, inshallah. I don't really see a market crash this year. There's so much money sitting on the sidelines right now, so much money parked in fixed income right now. A change in interest rate is going to bring a lot of that money to risk assets. And that's going to, I think, really cause a surge in price. And I also think that some policies that I'm hearing about, like substantial tax cuts and returning some of the savings from Doge to citizens, like I heard, five thousand dollar checks going out to taxpayers, those policies are going to be extremely bullish. for the economy and for risk assets. So I don't really see a crash. Obviously, it's not impossible, but I don't think it's the base case. I actually think we have a strong... I know we started the year very weak, but I think we have a strong... Basically, almost... you know, at least from, or at latest from the middle of the year until the end, I think we have a strong market, but it's probably gonna come sooner than that. Hey bro, have you stopped making videos on YouTube? No, inshallah, I will make videos again, inshallah. I focused on live streams for now because I just found it really a lot more exciting to interact with people. But I will go back to recorded videos, inshallah, as well. As-salamu alaykum, brother. I hope Ramadan brings happiness and joy to everyone. That's a great dawah. Yeah, me too. What do you think about the Chinese move by starting the money printers? Yeah, it's not just China, but Europe as well is going to be... is going to be injecting a lot of liquidity into your system so it's not you know even though the u.s economy is the most important one it's not the only economy in the world and increasingly other economies like the chinese economy matter even more ls loving this video thanks for the most deluxe analysis well thank you ls it's uh very nice of you Rashad says, please leave a like. Well, thanks, Rashad. Yes, do leave a like. And thank you, Rashad, for moderating our chat as always. I think tomorrow's job report may come in a week. And so you have, obviously this may impact, you know, how investors view the economy, but on the flip side, it will impact the chances of a rate cut. And so which one wins out, it's hard to say, but don't be surprised if you see a weak number tomorrow. Hey, Salam Ali. Nice to see you. Regarding AMD and Nvidia. So AMD, I looked at it again because a lot of people were asking for AMD. They do have research and development in Israel. And whenever I hear research and development in Israel, I'm like, I want nothing to do with that. I know that their operations in Israel, it's fantastic. very small but research and development specifically in israel it's like oh heck no I don't want to be part of that at all right maybe you know stay you know the less the better but you know research and development specifically I kind of have a visceral reaction to that so amd is off the table and videos off the table tesla is still good inshallah I like tesla at these prices Hossam Bakhit says, Salam Erkan, good to see you. Hope all is great. Well, thank you, Hossam. I hope all is great with you. Yeah, LFMD earnings next week, inshallah. I will cover that for you guys, inshallah. I wish I had more buying power. Don't we all? Don't we all? Fred, Salam Erkan, is there any moral concern about purchasing when fear index is high? No, I don't think so at all. Almost feels like taking advantage of others. No, I wouldn't put it that way. Actually, the people who want to sell want a buyer. And you don't know what's going to happen in the future. And neither do they. So actually, I think there's mutual benefit. The person who is buying wants the thing they're buying. The person who's selling wants to part with the thing that they're selling. So I think that there is a coincidence of needs that is actually healthy. How did I pick up my amazing, spectacular Arabic? Well, the reason I picked that up is because of my parents. May Allah bless them. May Allah put barakah in their life, forgive them for any sins they may have. One of the biggest blessings that my parents gave me and my siblings is that when we were young, they took us back to Syria in order for us to learn Arabic and learn Islam. And I actually studied middle school and high school in Syria. And that's where I learned Arabic. I didn't know Arabic when I went there. I went there in sixth grade. didn't know arabic it was it was a rough first year and but I learned it and we had a dna teacher so a religious studies teacher specifically in high school that really I think like he was really good and he kind of set the foundation for my uh my understanding of of Islam I shouldn't say that but I think obviously my family set the foundation for my understanding of Islam but he kind of deepened it and he was really good I was in a school for the talented and gifted, you know, humble brag, but I was in a school for, and they made like one school like that in every district. There's fourteen districts, muhafazaat, basically, in Syria, and there was one in every one. And in that school, they put like the best teachers. And so we got a really good Diyani teacher, and he kind of deepen my understanding of Islam. So I was really, I was very fortunate. Is my question about Mara out of context? No, it's not out of context, but I think I answered it, brother, regarding, you know, they're relying on convertible debt makes it uncomfortable for me. All right, guys. So I hope you found this beneficial. Actually, ignore this ad because I'll be revealing the Ramadan discount code soon. So don't sign up now. When the Ramadan discount comes out, sign up, inshallah. We'd love to have you as a PIF member. And join our community of halal conscious great people. I'd love to see you in there. I hope you have a great rest of your day. Until next time, make sure to take care of yourself. Assalamualaikum and peace be upon you all.