Global Games: The Prospect of a Speculative Attack on MSTR

Key Insights

• Strategy has locked in a large, inflexible funding burden, with most of its $767 million in annual obligations coming from perpetual preferred dividends rather than manageable, low-coupon debt.
• The core software business of Strategy generates no meaningful cash, so every dollar of its growing obligations must be funded by capital markets rather than operations.
• Strategy’s main funding channel is its ATM program, but as mNAV compresses toward 1, each new share sold buys fewer BTC per share, turning that lifeline into a progressively more dilutive and fragile source of capital.
• Fixed obligations, zero cash flow, and a shrinking mNAV transform Strategy into a global game setup, where a shift in expectations about dilution can trigger a self-fulfilling run on the common stock.

Introduction

Bank runs and currency collapses often begin long before the underlying structures weaken. Even with substantial reserves, once an event breaches the narrative threshold, perceptions of what other investors think take precedence over fundamentals and trigger a self-fulfilling prophecy.