On June 20, 2026, Michael Saylor posted on X, recalling his speech from 2022: At that time, Bitcoin was around $20,000, Strategy held about 130,000 BTC, and stock prices were hovering at low levels. Looking back now, it feels more like a status report on this "gamble." He didn’t make any direct calls; he simply shared the numbers from that year, creating a stark contrast with today's market cap. According to multiple media reports, Strategy's net asset reserve is now believed to exceed its debt by approximately $48 billion. This amplified difference is almost implicitly equated to the "floating profits" after betting on Bitcoin. Just as Bitcoin bulls regarded this as a victory sample, another post from Huang Licheng on X shifted the topic from price outcomes to the on-chain world: this investor, deeply engaged in Ethereum DeFi, publicly @Saylor, suggesting he package his Bitcoin and store it in a lending protocol on Ethereum, using it as collateral to exchange for on-chain funding priced in USD, thereby clearing all company debts at once. Memes like "Apes together strong" and "to Valhalla" packaged this highly leveraged, high-risk on-chain play as a romantic collective charge, suddenly pushing what was initially seen as a victory in traditional asset-liability management to a fork in the road of "continue being the guardian of the Bitcoin treasury or stake everything on Ethereum DeFi leverage."
From 20,000 to a net gain of 48 billion: The settlement day of the gamble
Let’s turn back time to that speech he later referenced repeatedly. In October 2022, Saylor pointed to the price curve on stage, stating Bitcoin was down to about $20,000 while Strategy had already captured about 130,000 BTC, valued at around $2.6 billion according to the market price at the time. According to a single source's statistics, after stock splits, MSTR's stock price was only about $24 — this means that since 2020, the Bitcoin purchased through convertible bonds and stock issuances appeared for a long time more like a high-risk bet rather than the "corporate treasury strategy" that is praised today.
The real "settlement day" occurred on June 20, 2026. Saylor posted on X again, once more sharing the figures of the $20,000 price and 130,000 BTC holdings from 2022, equivalent to showing the market the current stage's accounting results of this gamble. According to multiple media reports, Strategy’s current net asset reserve is considered to exceed its debt by approximately $48 billion, although the specific debt structure has not been disclosed in detail; meanwhile, some media directly stated in headlines that Strategy's Bitcoin holdings "have expanded to about 840,000 BTC"; however, this number has only been seen in the headlines of a single media outlet and has not been officially confirmed by Strategy, so it can only be regarded as an unverified claim. What is certain is that that batch of Bitcoin, starting at $20,000 and continually increasing during the lows, has now created a buffer of assets for the company far above its accounting liabilities, and it is this buffer that makes Huang Licheng's notion of "staking everything on Ethereum leverage" seem exceptionally bold.
Convertible bonds boost Bitcoin: Wall Street's gameplay pushed to the limit
This asset buffer was not built from a one-time all-in investment, but rather from Strategy's repeated "bloodletting" on Wall Street since 2020, continuously pouring back into Bitcoin. The company first announced Bitcoin as a primary reserve asset and then raised funds through traditional instruments such as issuing convertible bonds and adding stock over several years, continuously exchanging these newly acquired USD for BTC. By October 2022, Saylor mentioned in his speech that when Bitcoin was approximately $20,000, Strategy had already secured about 130,000 BTC, valued at about $2.6 billion; thereafter, the company continued to follow the same path of investment, ultimately becoming one of the largest publicly traded companies holding Bitcoin globally. According to multiple media reports, their net asset reserve is now considered to exceed their debt by about $48 billion.
The essence of this structure is to transform the company’s balance sheet into a long-duration bullish betting table on Bitcoin: the asset side is nearly filled with BTC, while the liability side consists of long-term, relatively low-cost convertible debt and equity. When Bitcoin rises, the asset side's market value expands, and the debt scale relatively lightens, benefiting shareholders; when Bitcoin falls, it is the equity that suffers the market value evaporation first, while creditors hold bonds with fixed terms or rights to future stock conversions, shifting risk backward toward equity. By extending the debt duration and locking in financing costs within a relatively controllable range, Strategy effectively hedges against short-term price fluctuations with time, allowing itself to avoid being pushed to the edge of "forced selling" with every drop, instead binding the entire company to the long-term trend of Bitcoin.
Huang Licheng moves bricks to Ethereum: Using DeFi to pay debts
As Saylor reminisced about this ongoing "Bitcoin gamble" on X, a familiar figure in the Ethereum community quickly provided an entirely different continuation proposal. Taiwanese artist Huang Licheng, who is also a deep participant in Ethereum DeFi, directly dropped a visually striking suggestion in the comments: the gist was "Deposit your Bitcoin into Ethereum, use the collateralized on-chain assets pegged to USD to repay all debts, let’s go to Valhalla," coupled with "Apes together strong," a phrase from the crypto community, translating a complex on-chain financing structure into a few empowering shouts.
If we break down this suggestion, the logic is quite clear: first, cross-chain or package the Bitcoin at hand into BTC assets on Ethereum, then store it in lending protocols that accept such assets as collateral, generating USD-denominated assets tied to the collateral value on-chain, using these to hedge or repay real-world debts, without selling the spot Bitcoin and transforming the chips that were originally "lying in the treasury" into reusable financing tools. This line of thinking isn’t new in the Ethereum DeFi context; there are already protocols that accept packaged Bitcoin as collateral, but they inherently come with a full set of risk management issues such as liquidation thresholds, price volatility, and contract security. Huang Licheng, using phrases like "Apes together strong" and "to Valhalla," intentionally or unintentionally romanticizes these risks into a "let’s shoulder this together" collective narrative; however, as of now, there are no public indications that Strategy has actually moved its large Bitcoin positions onto Ethereum protocols, which feels more like a high-leverage fantasy version thrown from the Ethereum world to the Bitcoin treasury.
Bitcoin treasury vs. DeFi leverage: Which risk is higher?
If Strategy has been doing "corporate hoarding of coins" over the past few years, it has taken an extremely traditional path: Bitcoin is locked in the company treasury as a long-term reserve asset, while leveraging up with convertible bonds, corporate debts, and stock increases. As of now, there's no record of Strategy depositing this batch of Bitcoin into on-chain lending protocols, and it mainly bears two types of risks: one is the long-term volatility of Bitcoin prices, and the other is whether future bonds can be successfully rolled over and whether the interest rate environment is favorable, all of which are documented in prospectuses, bond terms, and financial statements.
What Huang Licheng offers is the crypto-native version: packaging Bitcoin and migrating to Ethereum, collateralizing it in mainstream lending protocols, borrowing on-chain debt tokens pegged to fiat currency to repay all debts, theoretically neither selling coins nor immediately releasing a substantial cash flow. This design is indeed more aggressive in terms of asset efficiency—one Bitcoin serves both as a long-term bullish chip and as collateral for rolling financing—but the risk spectrum is entirely rewritten: as soon as the Bitcoin price falls below the protocol's liquidation threshold, it triggers forced liquidations, automatically selling positions, unlike corporate bonds that have board meetings, negotiations, and time windows for maneuvering; additionally, the lending protocols carry technical risks such as smart contract vulnerabilities, oracle manipulation, and cross-chain bridge attacks, which would not appear in traditional convertible bonds' risk disclosure documents. In comparing these two pathways, the Bitcoin treasury resembles a low-efficiency but resilient long-term machine, whereas Ethereum-based DeFi leverage acts like a sharper and more easily breakable knife, reflecting the choice between allowing risks to be borne by traditional financial terms or entrusting them to those lines of code on-chain that can never be rewritten.
What’s the next move for institutions: on-chain adventure or sticking to the treasury?
Ultimately, this debate asks: companies like Strategy should continue to be the maximalist "corporate treasury" for Bitcoin, or are they willing to stake everything on Ethereum DeFi, breaking down substantial positions into efficient but fragile on-chain collateral? As of June 2026, publicly reported information remains centered around Saylor's retrospective and Huang Licheng's high-leverage idea on X, with no visible signs that Strategy has imported Bitcoin into Ethereum lending protocols or taken formal action at the company level to "store coins, borrow USD-pegged tokens, and then pay off all debts." Considering that Strategy operates under multiple constraints of corporate governance, audits, and regulations, it is likely that sustaining the "low-efficiency but resilient" treasury path in the short term fits its governance structure better than stepping into liquidation zones. The variables that are truly worth monitoring moving forward include whether other holding institutions take the lead in migrating large Bitcoin positions into Ethereum lending protocols for testing, whether regulatory attitudes toward corporate use of on-chain lending tools will loosen, and whether, in the event of a market correction similar to the deep dips of 2022, these extreme accumulation strategies can hold up between on-chain liquidation points and real-world debt sheets.
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