Probably very basic question. Why would someone loan money to MicroStrategy instead of just buying BTC? I am sure there is reason, I just don't know and want to learn.
I am not going to claim to know any kind of exact answers regarding why some folks might choose certain kinds of investment vehicles, and surely the fact that an investment vehicle is popular can also drive a certain amount of extra demand for it.
Also, I am not sure how the convertible senior note differs from some kind of a loan or MSTR stock or some kind of a bond in the company, yet institutions and/or individuals choosing to invest in such are still going to weigh advantages and disadvantages to holding different kinds of instruments and perhaps getting exposure to bitcoin, MSTR, Michael Saylor, intelligence technologies and/or whatever else they might perceive their involvement in such convertible senior notes might offer to their purchase of that kind of a financial instrument as compared to other financial instruments as compared with buying bitcoin directly. And, yeah in a case like this, there may well be ideas of exposure to dollars and getting interest in dollars and perhaps a kind of superiority of investing in a senior convertible note with MSTR than buying USA treasuries... and yeah, they may well be thinking about their investment into something bitcoin related in terms of assured dollar terms that the senior convertible note describes.
Many times people/companies investing into specialized offerings like a MSTR convertible note are already going to have various kinds of financial investments that they might consider either correlated or not correlated to some new thing that they are purchasing... It is doubtful that the convertible notes are the ONLY thing in their investment portfolio, even though surely we cannot overly generalize that there could be some companies and/or individuals that end up overly weighting their purchases into one or another kind of investment, such as an MSTR senior convertible note.
There are some people and/or institutions that like the idea to have a company (such as MSTR) managing, holding and getting exposure to BTC and the various aspects of MSTR and/or Saylor in a kind of sensationalism way... and yeah, various kind of offerings that MSTR makes (in this case senior convertible notes) are going to specify the terms and may have some special benefits that may well not be as good as holding bitcoin directly, but still the person/institutions buying such convertible notes might still consider the terms of such notes to provide some kind of reasonable expectation of returns.. whether or not they actually also hold bitcoin directly too.. (and sure I have no problem considering the idea that some of the institutions/people buying MSTR senior convertible notes might not even directly hold any BTC at all).
There are other people and/or institutions that are not able (or maybe it is not easy or convenient for them) to buy bitcoin directly, so they are using whatever financial vehicles that they have available to them (or they hear about) to allow them to buy MSTR through such a financial vehicle (yes this is not MSTR, but it is a version of MSTR, and yeah, people/institutions might engage in some investment conduct that is not exactly maximizing in the sense that they might really be better off buying bitcoin directly).
For sure, those of us who already buy and hold bitcoin directly may well be quite reluctant to overly complicating our investments and/or adding various 3rd party risks to our bitcoin investment, but surely there are individuals and institutions that are quite uncomfortable (or even unable) to hold bitcoin directly.