THE ERIC KIM READING — “THE TREASURY OF MICHAEL SAYLOR”
This isn’t a book; it’s a blueprint for weaponizing volatility. Saylor isn’t just hoarding sats—he’s engineering a thermodynamic capital engine that turns fiat chaos into Bitcoin compounding. Your move is to internalize the gears, then build your own machine. Let’s go deeper, giga-beast style.
1) Core Thesis — Money = Energy. Bitcoin = Perfect Battery.
Patel frames money as economic energy; the problem of civilization is storing/transmitting that energy across time/space/jurisdiction. Bitcoin is the first tech that binds economic energy to the holder—shared, immutable, correct ledger (the “ideal model of money”). That’s not poetry; it’s engineering.
Eric read: Treat every dollar like joules. Stop leaking power via CPI illusions, fees, taxes, and counterparty risk. Only hard-cap math fixes the leak.
2) The Governor Metaphor — From Watt’s Steam to Saylor’s Flywheel
Pysh’s foreword is the cipher: Watt’s flyball governor saved the Industrial Revolution by stabilizing power, not muting it. Saylor’s flywheel does the same for capital:
- Gear A: Issue equity when the NAV premium is fat.
- Gear B: Convert proceeds to BTC, increasing BTC/share.
- Gear C: Market premium expands → repeat.
When conditions shift, the transmission shifts: convertibles in choppy regimes; perpetual preferred (STRC) when yield demand rules. STRC (launched July 2025; ~$2.5B) is an automatic transmission with variable dividends to continuously attract fiat flow without roadshow friction. Result: monetary entropy → Bitcoin accretion. Copyable.
Eric read: That’s a playbook, not a personality cult. The machine matters more than the man.
3) Kill the CPI Mirage — Price Reality by What You Actually Want
The book torches CPI as a cherry-picked, deflation-weighted basket. Real life inflates in five buckets—deflating goods; flat services; scarce products (elite med/edu up ~6–8%); scarce assets (equities/prime real estate up ~8–24%); and Bitcoin (>25% CAGR buckets historically). If your goal-set lives in buckets 3–5, CPI is a sedative. Optimize for asset inflation, not talking-head narratives.
Eric read: Act where the scarcity gradient is steepest.
4) Currency vs. Capital — and the Legal-Tender Trap
Currency = spendable grease; Capital = enduring store. States grant legal-tender status to currency (tax-efficient, no basis tracking) and designate stores of value (gold, S&P, BTC) as property (tax on every disposition). Answer: trade currency often, trade property rarely. Design your flow so property turnover is minimal and deliberate.
Eric read: Fewer taxable dispositions. Max hold. Engineer your cadence.
5) Wealth Half-Life — Why “Boring” Assets Quietly Bleed
Patel/Saylor give you a way to think in useful life (L = V/M) and show how fees, inflation, taxes, torts, obsolescence, politics, and catastrophe decay capital. Financial assets tend to last ~30 years net of frictions; physicals often top out around 50–75 years (property taxes alone slowly vampirize land). Bitcoin is engineered to minimize entropy without an issuer.
Eric read: Stop romanticizing granite. Mobility > immobility. Portable property wins.
6) Power Laws of Culture — Energy → Agriculture → Manufacturing → Banking → Politics
Saylor’s history lens: civilizations ascend by concentrating energy and projecting power; decay when money/banking/politics corrupt the flow. Bitcoin re-routes savings from politicized pipes to open consensus rails. That’s not ideology; it’s attack-surface reduction.
Eric read: Build where coercion can’t cheaply intervene.
7) Saylor’s Capital Machine — Risks & Counter-Moves (the part most miss)
Risks:
- Convertible arb/short pressure around strikes → mutes upside.
- Regime shifts (rates/liquidity) → window for equity issuance slams shut.
- Tax/jurisdiction friction (BTC as property) → operational drag.
- Premium compression (BTC up, multiple down) → flywheel slows.
Counter-moves encoded in the book:
- Rotate instruments (ATM equity → convertibles → perpetual preferred STRC) to fit regime.
- Keep issuance programmatic, not episodic.
- Operate with long duration and low turnover of the BTC core.
- Communicate a singular objective (accumulate, hold, educate) to align holders.
Eric read: The edge isn’t bravado—it’s instrument agility plus doctrinal clarity.
8) ENTREPRENEUR PLAYBOOK (ERIC EDITION)
- Mission Lock: Publish a one-sentence treasury doctrine: “All surplus energy flows to BTC; all operations minimize taxable dispositions.” Post it where investors, partners, and future-you can’t miss it.
- Transmission Design: Plan your 3-gear capital engine now (equity/partner capital → BTC core; revenue flywheel feeds buyback/accumulation; optional preferred for yield investors). Don’t improvise under stress.
- Disposition Discipline: Separate spend (currency) vs store (property/BTC) at the account/ops level. No commingling. Reduce realized events.
- Scarcity Stack: Build your brand on scarce outputs (original IP, hard-to-replicate experiences, premium coaching/education)—price in the inflation bucket that’s actually rising.
- Volatility Mindset: Treat drawdowns as protocol-native price discovery, not failure. “Volatility is Vitality.” Build media that teaches this muscle to your audience so they become anti-fragile with you.
9) What This Book Really Gives You
- A systems diagram for money that collapses ideology into physics and incentives.
- A repeatable corporate treasury regimen (raise → deploy → amplify) with a menu of instruments you can rotate as the macro shifts (the real innovation of STRC).
- A cultural play: educate faster than detractors can obfuscate. Lummis’ foreword makes it explicit—policy moves where understanding grows. Be the amplifier.
10) One-Pager, Eric-style (tattoo this on your whiteboard)
- ENERGY: Don’t just earn it—store it.
- MONEY: Shared. Immutable. Correct. Or it’s credit cosplay.
- ENGINE: Encode issuance → BTC → premium loop. Shift gears with conditions.
- ENTROPY: Fees, CPI mirages, and taxes are slow knives. Minimize surfaces.
- ETHOS: Educate relentlessly. Volatility is the toll to cross into sovereignty.
—
If you want, I’ll spin this into a one-page “ERIC KIM TREASURY DOCTRINE” plus a checklist for individuals vs. companies vs. cities, distilled from the book’s “21 Rules” and STRC mechanics—your laminated field card for god-mode execution.