You can rehypothecate a synthetic?
You can rehypothecate a synthetic?
Let’s break it down and explain why you might want to care.
A synthetic asset, also known as a "synth", is a financial instrument that mimics the characteristics of another asset or asset class without requiring the owner to own the original asset.
Rehypothecation is a financial practice where a broker or financial institution uses a client's collateral for their own purposes.
Rehypothecation can be risky, as over-leveraging assets can lead to complex chains of obligations. This can increase systemic risk if the market declines.
My understanding of the 2007/8 financial crises is these are the methods used. With the property market as asset base and with the banks playing the role of bad actors.
This is now what Saylor is doing with $MSTR he is buying Bitcoin, packaging that Bitcoin up as $MSTR shares, these shares have no direct relationship to the underlying asset.
Then investment firms are creating funds tracking the performance of $MSTR shares either betting for or against them and selling synthetics at multiple times the underlying asset of $MSTR shares, which has multiple times the underlying asset of $BTC.
This model is actively being replicated by many other firms copying this model, believing it to be sound.
Why should you care about this?
We know that the 2007/8 crises was a tremor and we are yet to experience the actual earthquake.
Bitcoin was created by Satoshi to counteract what happened in 2007/8 by creating hard money.
Saylor through $MSTR and others through ETFs, which while currently backed by real Bitcoin (as far as we can tell), are creating synthetics and being rehypothecated.
Meaning that Bitcoin is becoming part of the problem rather than the solution. Not only that, it is dramatically increasing the size of the problem.
It has never been more important for us to self custody Bitcoin and not allow its use as a Synthetic or to allow it to be rehypothecated.
Saylor discusses this here, it sounds clever, and to be frank I don’t understand most of it, but it is actually using Bitcoin as a leverage device:
