#20 We lied to you: we sold Bitcoin

We did. A few days ago we closed the credit line we held with Binance, and to close it we had to sell Bitcoin.

Not because we wanted to. Because we were left no other option.

Let’s start with the uncomfortable part, because we owe you the truth before the context. Yes, we sold Bitcoin. And we sold it at one of the worst possible moments in the cycle. If anyone wants to read the headline as “Sobtree capitulated,” that’s their right. We’d rather tell you exactly what happened, because the lesson is worth more than the face we make while telling it.

We held debt against our Bitcoin at a rate between 3% and 4%. Excellent. It was the centerpiece of the strategy: never sell, borrow against the asset, repay over time, and let the Bitcoin keep working. It’s how rational actors deal with an appreciating asset. It’s not a trick. It’s discipline.

And then came MiCA.

Binance, adapting its credit product in the European Economic Area to the new regulation, closed the line. It wasn’t our decision. It was a third party adjusting to a regulatory framework, and we, tied to that credit, were forced to repay. At the worst moment. With no say in the timing.

Here is the lesson, and it’s the only one that matters.

The fragility was not in the Bitcoin. The Bitcoin didn’t fail. It remains, in our conviction, the best store of value that has ever existed and ever will: fixed supply, no issuer, no one able to inflate it away. The fragility was in the plumbing of the leverage. The asset was sovereign. The credit was not. We borrowed against something no one could take from us, through a channel they could shut down. And they shut it down.

That’s the difference most people don’t see until they live it. One thing is the soundness of what you own. A very different thing is the soundness of the pipe you finance it through. Confusing the two is expensive, and we just paid the tuition.

So here we are. Zero debt.

And that changes everything that comes next. With zero debt, no third party can force our hand again. No one can liquidate us at the worst moment in the cycle. There’s no line to close, no maturity to meet, no counterparty deciding for us. We’re back in control of our own calendar, which is the only thing that truly matters when you play in decades, not quarters.

We are exactly as convinced as we were on day one. We keep accumulating. No debt, no counterparties, no one standing between our thesis and our Bitcoin.

If you want to see where we stand today, we’re not asking you to take our word for it. You have it in real time, verifiable, at sobtree.com.

The question we take away from all of this isn’t whether Bitcoin holds. We already knew that. It’s another one: how many of those who believe they’re sovereign actually are, and how many only are until a third party decides otherwise?