At the time of this writing, bitcoin was $86,503 (CoinGecko, 2:23 ET, 22 September). Bitcoin moves several percent in the time it takes to write a paragraph, so treat that as a stamp, not a forecast. Every other number here comes from a filing or from the CEBE Tracker feed, and each one is dated where it sits.

Strip a bitcoin treasury company down and there is one question left. How much bitcoin is left for the common stock after the debt and the preferred are paid, and what does the market charge you for it?

CEBE Tracker runs that arithmetic the same way for every company. Debt plus preferred, less cash, less any senior paper the company itself holds. Convert to coins at today's price. Whatever is left is the shareholders' bitcoin. Then compare it to the market value of the stock.

Here is the feed at 1:42 PM ET on 22 September, with bitcoin at $86,471.

Two of them cost more than the bitcoin inside them. Two of them cost less.

One caveat, and it belongs up here rather than in a footnote. Strategy and Strive filed bitcoin counts last week. Nakamoto and Twenty One have not filed one since 30 June, so their claims and coins are June numbers marked at today's price. That is CEBE's snapshot basis and it is stated in the feed.

Strategy filed on 21 September, covering 14 to 20 September. Three sentences in that filing do the work.

It sold no shares under its at-the-market program. None the week before either.

It bought 950 bitcoin for $75.7 million, at $79,670 a coin, paid out of cash. That takes the pile to 846,000 bitcoin at an average of $75,416.

And it bought back 1,771,238 shares of its own STRC preferred stock for $174.0 million, also out of cash. The week before, another 1,420,467 shares for $139.3 million.

Two weeks. $313.3 million buying its own preferred. $75.7 million buying bitcoin.

He says it himself, and in that order. The bitcoin comes first in the sentence and second in the money.

The buyback still has $875.1 million of room left, and there is another billion authorized for the common stock. The company holds a $5.04 billion reserve to pay dividends and interest, and it spent $57.4 million of that reserve last week doing exactly that.

None of this is hidden. It is in the table, in the same filing, in the same week. The bitcoin company's favorite thing to buy right now is the bitcoin company.

What it buys the shareholder is stability. Senior claims sit at 20.3% of the bitcoin, and each share carries 160,288 satoshis after those claims come out. That is the highest count on the board by a distance, and the market pays $1.22 for it.

Strive filed the same day, covering 14 to 18 September.

It bought 1,355 bitcoin at about $79,475. Strategy bought 950. Strategy owns 846,000 bitcoin. Strive owns 26,355.

The small one outbought the big one, and the filing shows what moved to make that happen. Class A shares went from 85,730,853 to 87,804,613. The preferred, SATA, went from 10,397,966 shares to 11,184,160. Cash went up $25.4 million. Strive also still holds 505,000 shares of Strategy's STRC, worth $49.7 million, which CEBE nets against its own claims.

Run the two growth rates against each other, because that is the whole story of this instrument.

The bitcoin pile grew 5.4% in five days. The preferred count grew 7.6%.

That last number is not in the 8-K. Matt Cole put it on X: 57.7% of the capital raised came from the preferred, with $21.2 million of it from warrant exercises. So the coins came mostly from the instrument that has to be paid.

That is the same shape as two weeks ago, and it is the trade Strive is making on purpose. CEBE carries those 11,184,160 SATA shares at $1.12 billion of claim standing in front of the common stock. Senior claims are 36.8% of the bitcoin. Each share is left with 17,166 satoshis.

For that, the market pays about two dollars on the dollar. Strive is the most expensive bitcoin on the board and the only one on the board buying aggressively with new paper.

Nakamoto's last bitcoin count is 30 June: 4,467 coins.

Between April and June it sold about 600 of them, along with some derivative positions, for about $48 million net. The money went to pay down a loan. The loan is denominated in tether. It repaid 45 million USDT and pushed roughly 105 million USDT of principal out to 30 June 2027.

The company is called Nakamoto. It sold bitcoin to pay back tether.

The rest of the balance sheet explains why it had to. Debt is $164.7 million against $19.1 million of cash. And 3,805 of the 4,467 bitcoin are pledged to the lender as collateral. That is 85% of the stack spoken for.

The quarter itself was a $133.0 million loss, $105.2 million of which was writing down the value of businesses it bought with its own stock. The share count is small because of a one-for-forty reverse split on 22 May.

At today's price the claims eat 37.8% of the bitcoin, leaving 14,638 satoshis a share. The market pays 80 cents for it.

Our X desk watches the company's own account. In the last week it posted twice, once about a television launch and once about a podcast appearance, and not once about its bitcoin. There has been no bitcoin filing since 14 August, and the count inside it is 30 June. That is a long quiet stretch from a company whose lender holds most of its coins.

Twenty One Capital holds 43,514 bitcoin as of 30 June, against a $486.5 million convertible note and $106.1 million of cash. Claims take 10.1% of the coins. Each Class A share carries 11,279 satoshis. CEBE counts Class A only, because the Class B shares carry no economic rights.

That is the cleanest balance sheet of the four. No preferred. No dividend to fund. And the market pays 68 cents on the dollar for it.

The discount is not about the coins. It is about the last three months.

On 20 July, chief executive Jack Mallers resigned. The filing says the departure was not over any disagreement with the company. The board appointed Raphael Zagury the same day. Zagury is the founder and chief executive of Elektron Enterprises, which, in the company's own words, "provides management and operational services to Elektron Energy, a Bitcoin mining and energy infrastructure business."

In the same filing, Twenty One says it is considering buying Elektron Energy. It also says the dollar value involved is "not yet determinable." And it says it is no longer pursuing its earlier plan to buy Strike.

So the buyer's chief executive runs the company that manages the seller. Twenty One knows someone at Elektron. Its chief executive.

Everything in that paragraph is disclosed. That is the point. A company trading at 68 cents on its own bitcoin does not have a disclosure problem. It has a trust problem, and the market prices those the same way it prices everything else.

Nothing directly, and that is the point.

Four companies own the same asset. One of them is worth two dollars for every dollar of it, and one is worth sixty-eight cents. Bitcoin did not do that. The wrapper did.

Read the four filings next to each other and the spread makes sense. Strategy is paying cash to hold up the price of its own preferred stock while it buys almost no coins. Strive is issuing preferred stock faster than it is buying coins and getting paid a premium for it. Nakamoto sold coins to service a loan in tether and pledged most of what is left. Twenty One has the cleanest stack of the four and a boardroom question it has not answered.

The premium is a bet on who is selling. The discount is a bet on who is running it.

Peter Schiff spent the weekend arguing the other side of this.

Four companies here own the asset he says is backed by nothing. Two of them trade below what it is worth. The wrapper is what the market marked down, not the coins.

Your coins do not have a chief executive, a preferred series, a lender, or a pledge agreement.

Capitalist.