Airdrop Army

MicroStrategy (MSTR) just found itself in the middle of a financial rollercoaster, and it’s pulling the retail crowd along for the ride. The latest scoop from Bloomberg Intelligence shows leveraged MSTR exchange-traded funds (ETFs) blasting through $400 million in net assets this week, and it doesn’t look like that wave is slowing down anytime soon. Retail investors seem to be fueling this rocket, diving headfirst into these Bitcoin-flavored ETFs that pack serious heat.

But this ain’t your average ETF party. We’re talking ultra-volatile, turbo-boosted Bitcoin bets here. The stakes? High. The potential? Also high—but with more chaos. Let’s break it down.

The “Hot Sauce Arms Race”

Asset manager Defiance ETFs sparked this frenzy back in August with the first leveraged MSTR ETF. But it didn’t take long for the competition to come in swinging. By September, REX Shares and Tuttle Capital Management threw down their even more amped-up versions. Bloomberg ETF analyst Eric Balchunas, taking stock of the madness, called it what it is: the “hot sauce arms race.” And honestly, that’s the vibe. Everyone’s cooking up spicier products, adding layers of leverage, and investors just keep piling in.

MicroStrategy’s trajectory took a sharp crypto turn in 2020 when founder Michael Saylor turned the company into a de-facto Bitcoin hedge fund. These days, MSTR is more about BTC holdings than business intelligence, especially since the firm adopted the wild metric of “Bitcoin Yield” to judge its corporate performance.

New Leverage Products for Bigger Bitcoin Bets

On August 15, Defiance launched the Defiance Daily Target 1.75X Long MSTR ETF (MSTX). If you’re looking for 175% long daily exposure to MSTR, MSTX’s got you. And just one month later, REX Shares and Tuttle Capital rolled out their take—two fresh ETFs pushing leverage even harder. The T-REX 2X Long MSTR Daily Target ETF (MSTU) aims to offer two-times leverage on the upside. Meanwhile, the T-REX 2X Inverse MSTR Daily Target ETF (MSTZ) plays on the downside.

They didn’t just walk in quietly. In their first week, the new ETFs raked in $70 million, proving that the thirst for leverage and speed in the MSTR game is still alive and kicking. According to Balchunas, the rush wasn’t expected so fast. He summed it up in a quick post on X: “What a country.”