When Strategy (MSTR), the largest publicly traded company holding bitcoin, first floated the idea of selling its bitcoin stash to fund its dividend obligations during its recent earnings call, it raised concerns among investors and the crypto community. However, executive chairman Michael Saylor sat down with CoinDesk senior analyst James Van Straten at Consensus in Miami to explain, in his view, why the announcement was "inconsequential." As the firm expands from a bitcoin treasury company into a full-spectrum capital markets operation, in a wide-ranging conversation with CoinDesk, Saylor discussed the company's potential sale of bitcoin to fund dividends, the mechanics of its preferred stock (called Stretch or STRC), and what critics get wrong about its trading strategy. This interview has been edited for brevity and clarity. This is the first part of a series of stories from CoinDesk's interview with Michael Saylor CoinDesk: Your earnings call revealed that Strategy could sell bitcoin to fund its dividends. That spooked some investors. How significant is it actually? Michael Saylor: It's a big nothing burger from an economic point of view. If we were to fund all of our dividends exclusively by selling bitcoin over the next year, we would buy 20 bitcoin for every one we sold. So it's no different than buying 20 bitcoin and selling no bitcoin. And then from a market point of view, bitcoin has somewhere between $20 and $50 billion of liquidity today. If we were to fund all of our dividends with bitcoin, you would be talking about maybe $3 million; it's immeasurable. It's really inconsequential. CoinDesk: So, how do you actually decide between buying bitcoin, retiring debt, or buying back your own stock? Saylor: We use two metrics. The first is BTC yield. What's the benefit to the common equity shareholder? If there's no yield, it's equity neutral. If there's a negative yield, it's dilutive. If there's a positive yield, it's accretive. The second metric is cre