I am the VP of Corporate Strategy at GameStop.
I prepared the investor presentation for a $35 billion Bitcoin acquisition plan. The company is worth $4.6 billion.
Nobody on the board asked me to reconcile those two numbers.
That's strategic vision.
Ryan wants to convert the company into a Bitcoin holding vehicle. I wrote the deck. Forty-seven slides. The first slide says "Transforming GameStop for the Digital Future." The second slide has a Bitcoin chart that goes up and to the right. Slides three through forty-six explain how we will acquire an asset worth 7.6 times our entire market capitalization. Slide forty-seven says "Questions?" There were no questions. The board approved it in under forty minutes. One member was on his phone.
That's board alignment.
I should explain what GameStop does. We sell video games. Physically. In stores. That people drive to. In 2026. We also sell collectible figurines and refurbished controllers. Annual revenue has declined for five consecutive years. Same-store sales dropped 28% last year. Foot traffic is down 41%. The core business model requires people to leave their house, get in a car, drive to a strip mall, and purchase a physical disc for a console that downloads games digitally.
That's our legacy business.
Store #4471 in Lima, Ohio, closed in February. The manager's name was Brian. He had been there nine years. He ran a Saturday Smash Bros tournament for neighborhood kids. Forty kids, every weekend, in a store that smelled like used controller rubber and carpet cleaner. I know because he wrote to investor relations. He wanted to know if his location was closing. I forwarded the email to Facilities. They said they would follow up. The store closed three weeks later. We used the lease savings in the Bitcoin acquisition cost model. Cell B7. I labeled it "Operational Reallocation." The lease savings for store #4471 were $6,200 per month. The Bitcoin acquisition target is $35 billion. Brian's store paid for 0.000003% of the plan.
That's capital efficiency.
The MicroStrategy playbook is simple. You stop pretending the business will recover. You use the stock to buy Bitcoin. The Bitcoin appreciates. The stock appreciates. The stock appreciation lets you buy more Bitcoin. The business underneath becomes irrelevant. I explained this to a junior analyst named Priya. She said "so we just stop being a store?" I said we stop being a store and start being a balance sheet. She asked what happens if Bitcoin goes down. I said that is not on the slides. She asked if I had modeled it. I said the model assumes Bitcoin goes up.
That's risk management.
In 2021 the retail investors saved us. They bought the stock to fight hedge funds. They held it to prove a point. They made GameStop a symbol of the little guy against the system. They lost money to prove that Wall Street was rigged. We put a framed screenshot of the stock chart in the Grapevine headquarters lobby. The plaque says "The Power of Our Community."
We are now asking that community to approve a plan worth 7.6 times the company to buy a speculative asset none of them voted to buy. The proxy statement calls it "treasury diversification." The community that saved us from Wall Street is being asked to let us become Wall Street.
That's stakeholder engagement.
The company is worth $4.6 billion. The plan costs $35 billion. I put both numbers on the same slide. Nobody asked about the gap. The gap is the point. If you understand the gap, you understand that the company is not the business. The company is the stock. The stock is the vehicle. The vehicle buys Bitcoin.
The product is the stock price. The stock price is the product. I have been here four years and I still cannot tell you what we sell.
I am the VP of Corporate Strategy. The strategy is to stop having one.
Viel spannendere Frage als was am Golf oder in der deutschen Koalition passiert. Who is John Galt?
Pinned: Falls Ihr mir hier folgt, aber meinen Newsletter noch nicht abonniert habt - heute ist ein guter Zeitpunkt! In der aktuellen Ausgabe von BlingBling geht es um die Identität von #Satoshi Nakamoto, den Erfinder von #Bitcoin. Link hier und in der Bio
Two topics that get 100x more airtime than they deserve on fintwit:
1) Trillions in Tbills constantly maturing and getting bought again by the same balance sheets that hold them now.
2) The Treasury issuing some on-the-run debt to buy back some of its own off-the-run debt.
BREAKING: US GDP growth falls from 4.4% to 0.5% in Q4 2025, well below the initially expected +2.8% growth.
European leaders helping to negotiate ceasefire in Iran
FT reporting Iran taking bitcoin to pay transit fees
No one can be happy about this chart!
Deutsche wissen am besten, was gut für 23 Millionen Taiwaner ist…
Die Weltwoche ist auch verloren
Deutsche Eskalationsinteressenten am Hyperventilieren.
MAP OF THE DAY: Overnight, Iranian media have announced two alternative routes for he Strait of Hormuz to avoid "the presence of various types of anti-ship mines in the main traffic zone."
The new Traffic Separation Scheme runs north of the old ones, and into Iranian waters.
Wer sind die Gewinner und wer sind die Verlierer des Krieges am Persischen Golf? Auch für Investoren wurden wichtige Weichen gestellt. Heute in Tichys Börsenwecker mit @PhilippMattheis
https://www.tichyseinblick.de/podcast/tichys-boersenwecker-am-9-april-2026/
BREAKING: President Trump says "all US ships, aircraft, and military personnel and anything else that is appropriate and necessary for the lethal prosecution and destruction of Iran, will remain in place in, and around, Iran, until such time as the real agreement is reached is fully complied with."
"If for any reason it is not, which is highly unlikely, then the 'Shootin’ Starts,' bigger, and better, and stronger than anyone has ever seen before," he says.
Pinned: Die New York Times will #Satoshi Nakamoto enttarnt haben: Adam #Back Das gab es schon öfter. Aber mit der neuen Bedrohung von #Bitcoin durch Quanten-Computer erhält die Frage eine neue Relevanz.
https://blingbling.substack.com/p/er-ist-back
I’ll believe Iran is charging a toll in $BTC when I see a tx linked to a vessel’s toll payment. Otherwise it’s just the IRGC trolling the western filthy fiat financial system.
crazy that Bitcoin is now being used to *prevent* boating accidents
BREAKING: Iran has told mediators it will be limiting the number of ships crossing the Strait of Hormuz to around 12 per day and impose tolls under the ceasefire, per WSJ.
This is a sharp reversal from last night's statements from President Trump claiming a "complete opening" of the Strait of Hormuz.
Today, just 4 ships have passed through the Strait of Hormuz, the fewest of any day in April so far.
The US is still pushing publicly for a free and open strait, but Iran is "not showing a willingness to loosen its grip."
Oil prices are back above $95/barrel.
Bitcoin will ultimately be have a monopoly on international settlements. It's the only asset all governments can trust.
The main losers of this war has been the Gulf States. Being frontline states for a declining hegemon is a disaster, as Ukraine and Europe will also at some point recognise. Frontline states in Asia, such as South Korea, Japan and Taiwan, are now having these discussions. The hegemon is gone and its alliance systems such as NATO must be replaced with inclusive security arrangements. Make peace with your neighbours!
🚢OMANI MINISTER OF TRANSPORT: WE HAVE SIGNED ALL AGREEMENTS RELATED TO MARITIME TRANSPORT STIPULATING THAT NO FEES WILL BE IMPOSED FOR PASSAGE THROUGH THE STRAIT OF #HORMUZ.
(https://mktnews.com/flashDetail.html?id=019d6c40-f6fd-799c-926e-0085b9c83676)
Bangchak Crude Oil Tanker With 700,000 Barrels from the Middle East Arrives Safely at Sriracha Refinery.
https://thepattayanews.com/2026/04/08/bangchak-crude-oil-tanker-with-700000-barrels-from-the-middle-east-arrives-safely-at-sriracha-refinery-in-thailand/
Alles über Trumps #TACO und die Reaktion der asiatischen Märkte hier im Börsenwecker👇
So there was never a toll on passage through the strait to begin with, and now we are supposed to celebrate Trump as the one "who opened the strait"?
It's beyond hilarious. IQ 70-level celebrations. 😂
Not even sure the daycare owners will buy this one.
Flow through the Strait of Hormuz doesn't need to re-reach pre-war levels to normalize global balances thanks to rerouting (and constant Iran flow)
But we still have ~13 MMbpd of production shut-in
That's how much more we'll need to push through Hormuz before this is done
After this “2-week ceasefire”, the U.S. says Iran’s 10-point plan is a “workable basis on which to negotiate”; Iran’s (powerless?) foreign minister is “considering” the opposed 15-point U.S. plan; Israel is hitting Iran; Iran is hitting Israel & the GCC; no U.S. forces have been withdrawn; Iran is taking tolls from Hormuz with Oman; and a pro-Iran source says only 10-15 ships per day will be allowed to pass, so Hormuz isn’t “open.”
And oil prices have collapsed.
Let’s see where we are in a few days - or hours.
🇮🇷🇺🇸IRAN SUPREME LEADER ORDERS ALL MILITARY UNITS TO CEASE FIRE: IRIB (https://mktnews.com/flashDetail.html?id=019d6a9f-a14e-7ee3-b7a5-e1ae8d2fac59)
Iran’s strategy all along has been to impose an unbearable economic cost on the US if Trump continued the war via oil and the closure of the Strait of Hormuz.
Now, oil is down ~20% well below $100 a barrel. From that perspective, it’s clear who benefits most from the 2-week ceasefire off ramp. That’s Trump.
But the question is: would Tehran extract significant concessions in the negotiations in terms of sanctions relief and/or somehow Hormuz control? Perhaps that’s the quid pro quo.
BREAKING: Iran says it has "forced" the US to accept its "10-point plan" which includes the following terms:
1. Commitment to non-aggression
2. Iran’s control over the Strait of Hormuz
3. Acceptance of Iran's uranium enrichment
4. Lifting of all primary sanctions
5. Lifting of all secondary sanctions
6. Termination of all UN Security Council resolutions
7. Termination of all Board of Governors resolutions
8. Paying compensation to Iran
9. Withdrawal of US combat forces from the region
10. Cessation of war on all fronts, including in Lebanon
Trump says this plan is "a workable basis."
BREAKING: Iran's Foreign Minister Araghchi releases a statement responding to President Trump's two-week ceasefire announcement.
Full statement below:
"On behalf of the Islamic Republic of Iran, I express gratitude and appreciation for my dear brothers HE Prime Minister of Pakistan Sharif and HE Field Marshal Munir for their tireless efforts to end the war in the region.
In response to the brotherly request of PM Sharif in his tweet, and considering the request by the U.S. for negotiations based on its 15-point proposal as well as announcement by POTUS about acceptance of the general framework of Iran’s 10-point proposal as a basis for negotiations, I hereby declare on behalf of Iran’s Supreme National Security Council:
If attacks against Iran are halted, our Powerful Armed Forces will cease their defensive operations.
For a period of two weeks, safe passage through the Strait of Hormuz will be possible via coordination with Iran’s Armed Forces and with due consideration of technical limitations."
BREAKING: Iran has accepted the 2-week ceasefire proposal and it has been approved by the country's new Supreme Leader, Mojtaba Khamenei, per NYT.
Die große Tragik in diesen Stunden: So viele sonst doch kluge Köpfe versagen so schrecklich mit Blick auf den Iran. Getragen von einem Hau-Drauf-Wunschdenken wurde etwa wochenlang von Aufständen fabuliert, die es nie gab. @mmatussek @jreichelt @Steinhoefel
Klingt wie die Prophezeiung an König Kroesus. Sollten Nuklearwaffen zum Einsatz kommen, das das Ende der amerikanischen Zivilisation, nicht der persischen.
The biggest crypto cycle in history ended here