AQR’s Cliff Asness Sides With Jim Chanos in Critique of Michael Saylor’s Strategy | Company Business News-OxBig News Network

(Bloomberg) — AQR Capital Management’s Cliff Asness says he’s in agreement with famed short seller Jim Chanos when it comes to his criticism of Strategy founder Michael Saylor’s claim that the use of convertible debt affords the leveraged Bitcoin proxy downside protection while continuing to accumulate the cryptocurrency.  

The critique is centered around whether there is “recourse” for the company formally known as MicroStrategy Inc. to pay back holders of its convertible bonds, through which Strategy raised roughly $10 billion to fund Bitcoin purchases. While Saylor said this type of debt “is not going to get called” and can be paid off with stock if the price of Bitcoin tumbles, both Asness and Chanos disagreed. In a Friday post on social media platform X, Asness said Chanos “is of course right.”

It is yet another twist as the back and forth between Chanos and Saylor is becoming a Wall Street battle for the ages. In separate Bloomberg interviews last week, Chanos said the Saylor’s model to value the crypto-treasury firm is “financial gibberish” while Saylor argued that Chanos just does not understand it.

Earlier, Chanos recommended an arbitrage trade to short the shares of Strategy and buy Bitcoin, betting the large premium the stock commands over the value of its token holdings will shrink. 

Shares of Strategy were little changed on Friday, and have risen 27% so far this year. The stock had surged more than 3,000% since Saylor began buying Bitcoin in the middle of 2020.  

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