Glossary
The operator-grade vocabulary Mempolitics uses repeatedly. Definitions, context, and why each term matters.
Every term here is an application of the thesis: is this the thing, or is this a claim on the thing? Updated as new terms enter the coverage.
The three layers
Digital capital Thesis
The bottom layer of a financial system: the capital that sits underneath the credit and the money. Bitcoin is digital capital. Twenty-one million units, enforced by every machine running the software, controlled by nobody.
The thesis in one line: Bitcoin is digital capital, and everything else being built on top of it is paper. Read it.
Digital credit Thesis
Paper claims on a company with bitcoin somewhere underneath. Strategy and Strive sell preferred shares for cash, or issue common stock, and buy bitcoin with the proceeds. The coins are not pledged, but a stack of claims now sits above the common.
Digital credit is here. We cover it closely and we do not endorse it. Our side: it is fragility, not a flywheel.
Digital money Thesis
The top layer: the money people actually pass around. Stablecoins and tokenized assets are moving onto the same rails, and the volume is real. Every one of them is a claim on something.
Digital money is next. We cover it as the paper layer being built, not as an unrelated crypto story: what is it a claim on, how much, and who has the authority to suspend it.
The treasury-company numbers
BPS · Bitcoin Per Share Capitalist
Bitcoin held per common share before senior claims (debt, preferred stock). The headline growth number for the common-equity holder, and what every share sale plus bitcoin purchase moves up or down.
The clean number for whether each share is getting more or less bitcoin over time, without adjusting for the claims stacked above the common. Live numbers per company at cebetracker.io.
CEBE BPS · Common Equity Bitcoin Exposure per Share Capitalist
Bitcoin per common share after senior claims. The unencumbered bitcoin backing each share carries if the company had to pay off every preferred and convertible holder first. For a company with no debt and no preferreds, BPS and CEBE BPS are the same number; as claims grow, the two diverge, and CEBE BPS is the floor.
CEBE (Common Equity Bitcoin Exposure) is Bobby Tierney’s framework. Live numbers at cebetracker.io.
mNAV multiple Market
The ratio of a treasury company’s market value to the value of the bitcoin it holds. 1.0 means the market is paying exactly what the coins are worth. Above 1.0 is a premium; below 1.0 is a discount.
Above 1.0, selling stock adds bitcoin per share, because each new dollar buys more coin than the dilution costs. Below 1.0 the machine runs backwards. A measurement, not a target.
Preferred shares Capitalist
Stock that stands ahead of the common in line to be paid. It carries a fixed dividend and gets its money before common shareholders see any. Strategy’s STRC, STRF, STRK and STRD are preferred shares: the cash they raise buys bitcoin, and the claim they create is what CEBE BPS subtracts.
The reserve set aside to pay preferred dividends without selling a coin is the number we watch: what is owed on the paper against what is held to pay it.
STRC · Variable Rate Series A Perpetual Stretch Preferred Stock Capitalist
Strategy’s variable-rate perpetual preferred stock, $100 stated value, built to trade at par. The dividend rate is reviewed monthly and paid in cash, and Strategy’s stated objective is a trading price of $99 to $100, with a policy of not issuing new shares below par. Holders have a claim on Strategy, not on its bitcoin: every preferred is unsecured and every dividend is subject to board declaration.
The front of the credit stack and the paper Strategy defends first. The filings report it in three numbers: USD Reserve (cash set aside for dividends), USD Duration (how many years that cash covers) and STRC BTC Credit (the spread the market charges, in basis points). When Strategy retires STRC instead of buying coin, that is the wrapper defending itself.
The macro framework
Financial repression Macro
Holding the return on savings below the rate at which money loses value, so that government debt shrinks against the economy while savers pay for it. It is measured, not alleged: an IMF working paper by Acalin and Ball found that of the 83-point fall in US debt-to-GDP from 1946 to 1974, real growth explained 12 points and interest-rate distortions 28.
The quiet mechanism between the prints. The cheerful story that America grew out of its war debt is not what happened. Savers paid it down and were never asked.
Real rate Macro
The interest rate after inflation. If savings pay 4% and money loses 5% of its value in a year, the real rate is minus one, and the saver is paying. Negative real rates held for years are how the debt gets paid down without anyone voting on it.
One of the thesis’s kill criteria: real rates go positive and stay there for years. If savers get paid more than the money loses, the argument gets much harder to make, and we will be the ones to say so.
Cantillon effect Macro
The unequal distribution of newly created money. Those closest to the source (banks, governments, asset holders) benefit first; those farthest from it (wage earners, savers) lose purchasing power. Named after Richard Cantillon, the 18th-century economist who first described it.
The Fundamentalist case for Bitcoin in one term. Fiat creates Cantillon winners and losers; Bitcoin’s fixed issuance schedule doesn’t.
Time preference Macro
Preferring current consumption over saving for future consumption, or the reverse. Low time preference: saver, builder, multi-generational thinker. High time preference: spender, present-focused, short cycle.
Bitcoin lowers time preference because it is a savings technology that holds purchasing power across decades. The Fundamentalist core argument.
Operator-grade terms
Operator-grade Mempolitics
The Mempolitics editorial register. Restrained. Source-attributed. Plain words, operator-grade substance. Confident when the data supports it; hedged when it doesn’t. No hype, no exclamation points, no “BREAKING.” Print only what reproduces.
The opposite of crypto-bro register. Read the floor of a Bloomberg terminal, not the comments section of a YouTube short.
Self-custody Maximalist
Holding your own Bitcoin keys instead of a claim on someone else’s. If it is on an exchange it is a claim, not the coin. An exchange balance is a note; the keys are the thing.
The first of the two things the thesis asks. Self-custody is the default, not the expert option.
Node Technologist
A computer running the Bitcoin software. It checks every transaction and every block against the rules, including the twenty-one million, and rejects anything that breaks them. Running one means you are checking the number yourself, not taking anyone’s word for it.
The second of the two things the thesis asks. Don’t trust. Verify.
200WMA · 200-Week Moving Average Market
Bitcoin’s average price over the past 200 weeks, a slow-moving line that operators watch as a long-term value anchor. Breaks below it have historically marked bear-market bottoms.
A measurement, not a forecast. We print it as something a reader can check, never as a date or a target. Cycle charts as prophecy are entertainment, and the thesis says why.
DCA · Dollar-Cost Average Market
Buying a fixed dollar amount of bitcoin on a fixed cadence, typically weekly, regardless of price. The default operator behaviour for accumulating without trying to time entries.
If you cannot time the print, the holding period is not a forecast; it is a response to not being able to forecast. DCA is the operational expression of low time preference.
Wrench attack Maximalist
Taking someone’s bitcoin by force or the threat of it, instead of by breaking the cryptography. The attacker does not need a supercomputer; the attacker needs the person who knows the keys. The threat scales with how many people know you hold bitcoin and how much, and it is now a line item in a federal filing: MARA disclosed $4,300,629 of personal security for its chief executive in 2025, up from $201,390 the year before, because “the magnitude of our bitcoin holdings, requires heightened attention to the security of our executives.”
The coin has no bills; the known, named holder does. Multisig across vendors, keys in more than one place, an inheritance path, and silence about holdings are the defense. Physical attacks on crypto holders rose 33% in the first half of 2026.
BIP 110 Technologist
A 2026 soft-fork proposal to keep non-payment data out of blocks, activated by miner signaling with a mandatory window. Before block 961,632 signaling was voluntary; from 961,632 the BIP 110 software rejected every block that did not signal. Voluntary support peaked at 2.53%. At block 961,632 on 8 August 2026 the BIP 110 nodes rejected a non-signaling block and split off on their own chain. Bitcoin continued normally.
The rejection is the network working as designed. Nodes vote on the rules they will enforce, miners vote with hashrate on which chain to extend, and a rule change without both never arrives. The minority chain later switched to a different proof of work (BLAKE2b) with a 300 KB block limit, sharing nothing with Bitcoin but a copied history. Saylor’s line covers it: “Consensus is earned, not declared.”
The Mempolitics framework
The Four Characters Mempolitics
The editorial lens framework. The Capitalist reads the balance sheet. The Maximalist asks who holds the keys. The Technologist asks what is checkable and what is merely trusted. The Fundamentalist asks whether the promise is a promise.
Four ways of asking one question: is this the thing, or is this a claim on the thing? None of them wrong on their own terms. The synthesis is the value. Meet the four.
If you see a term on the board you don’t recognize, send it to hello@mempolitics.com and we add it here.