"Bitcoin is collateral" seems to be the new slogan. So let's break down why it's so stupid. Collateral is what backs the money. It is not the money. Gold was collateral. Then Nixon closed the window and it became a rock people speculate on. You didn't get promoted. You got repurposed. Saylor's own words: STRC is the bridge between Bitcoin, "the world's Digital Capital," and stablecoins, "the world's Digital Currency." He just told you which one is the money. It's the dollar-denominated one. Collateral gets sold to defend the liability. Every time. That's the entire function. Aug 3–9: Strategy sold 1,690 BTC at $64,262. Below their own cost basis. To buy back a 12% preferred. That's not a bug in the collateral thesis. That's the collateral thesis working exactly as designed. You can't post self-custodied bitcoin as collateral. Someone else has to hold it, a court has to enforce it, and a counterparty has to be able to take it. "Not your keys, not your coins" was never an argument against being collateral. It's a description of what collateral is. Seventeen years of "peer-to-peer electronic cash." The new pitch is that it's really good at being the thing other money gets borrowed against. That's not the same project. That's the consolation prize.

I can define spam extremely easily: SPAM: when you artificially limit capacity, some transactions can't fit into a block. The otherwise valid transactions that can't fit must be labeled as spam to avoid looking like censorship.