Michael Saylor: Global ‘Chaos’, Monetary Collapse To Send Bitcoin To $10 Million @BonnieBlockchain

Bitcoin is going to grind up 30 to 60% a

year for the next 20 years. Bitcoin is

powered by chaos

because chaos will never go away. It's

always going to

devalue all of the traditional physical

and financial capital assets. And it's

going to be the driver that causes all

the smart money in the world to run to

sell their physical and financial assets

and to buy a digital asset.

[Music]

Very pleased to be joined today at the

DAS in New York by Michael Sailor,

executive chairman of strategy. I'm

David Lynn, Bonnie J. We actually met at

your party not too long ago. So, we're

collaborating because we met through

you. The 100K party brings a lot of

people together. Well, good things come

out of your party and good things come

out of Bitcoin. We'll be talking about

Bitcoin and your macro views today. Take

it away, Bonnie. Um, you went to the

crypto summit and you made an orange tie

joke.

I'm wearing my orange tie.

Any other takeaways? Um, well, I thought

the fact that we were at the White House

was the first takeaway because a year

previous the White House and the entire

administration was somewhere between at

war with the industry and um and

unsupportive. Um, so the fact that the

president of the United States would

host everybody in the entire industry at

the White House was an extraordinary

milestone. It hasn't happened. You know,

when's the last time a new industry was

faded by the White House in the last 50

years. The second is the president

signed the strategic Bitcoin reserve the

day before and that was also unexpected.

The um the third thing that was

unexpected is

um the evening after that summit uh the

secretary of the treasury arranged for

the OC to give guidance reversing the

anti- bitcoin anti-crypto

uh guidelines that had been hampering

the banking industry. We didn't you know

we'd been hoping for that but the fact

that it came so quickly was very

auspicious. And then that night, David

Saxs, the cryptogar, went on to a

podcast and

uh volunteered that the United States

government views Bitcoin as immaculately

conceived, the only truly decentralized

crypto network or the only the only

commodity as asset without an

issuer. They saw it as a sound store of

value. They view it as digital gold.

they don't intend to sell any and

they're going to look for ways to

acquire more. And I thought that was

relevant because for four years um the

previous administration had no

utterances on this except through the

legal filings of the of Gary Gendler.

And Gendler in a very subtle backhanded

way suggested that he would grudgingly

allow Bitcoin to exist and nothing else.

And so he kind of said, well, it's a

commodity, but he had so lots of

reservations and he and he slowed down

the institutional adoption of Bitcoin as

as much as one could reasonably slow it

down.

Whereas what you saw on Friday night of

that crypto summit was the

administration embracing the industry

and and suggesting that they were going

to aggressively put pro crypto pro

bitcoin regs in place embracing this

thing as not only is it a digital

commodity but it's maybe a better

digital commodity than gold right that

the white house didn't declare that

they're going to accelerate their gold

acquisition missions one way or the

other. So I thought it was a major

inflection point for the industry in

terms of the

legitimization about the industry but uh

Bitcoin was legitimized on that day or

in that in that 24-hour period from the

point that the president signed the

strategic Bitcoin reserve to the point

that David Sax said this is the digital

commodity recognized by the United

States government. That was a pretty

important day in the life of the entire

industry.

Um I think last year you were talking

about banks being allowed to hold

Bitcoin. That would be a huge step

forward now after the OC announcement.

What do you think is going to happen

this year? Well, I did have a chance to

speak with the Secretary of Treasury at

the White House and he shared with all

of us that he wanted um wanted to make

sure that the banking system was able to

embrace digital assets and handle

digital assets. and they have a program

of uh progressively thoughtfully rolling

back anti- bitcoin rules. And of course

that requires guidance from many

different uh federal agencies, the OC,

the FDIC, Treasury,

uh also the Federal Reserve has some uh

some influence on this. uh they were

pretty definitive that they were going

to find every anti- uh anti- crypto

rule, all the anti- bitcoin uh guidance

and rules and they were going to reverse

them explicitly as soon as they could in

a programmatic fashion almost like week

by week stepping through that. So I

thought that was profound. The other

insight um Bonnie that comes from that

summit is that the Secretary of Treasury

shows up and was so

invaged and you also saw the Secretary

of Commerce very engaged and you also

saw Kelly Laughofner the Secretary of

Small Business Administration very

engaged. So you had three cabinet

members extremely engaged in addition to

David Sachs the cryptos are and uh maybe

the most powerful financial

regulator in the

world certainly in the US government but

maybe in the world is the secretary of

treasury of the United States. So Scott

Bessant and Scott Bessant had been

viewed to be progressive and innovative

uh when he was nominated for the role,

but he hadn't said very much on the

topic of digital assets leading up to

that summit. And so Bessant showed

himself to be very

well-versed, very

progressive, very thoughtful,

uh, and deliberate and, uh, and

supportive, you know, and I think that

that exceeds everybody's expectations.

We we knew David Saxs would be

supportive and we knew the president was

supportive, but you could imagine an

administration where you have one or two

members of the cabinet that are

supportive, but other members of the

cabinet that are simply moderate and uh

they want to move forward in a

deliberate, thoughtful, careful fashion

and they would slow things down. But

what I saw at the White House was I saw

that that everybody is supportive,

everybody is deliberate. This

administration is moving faster with

innovative programs and decisive,

courageous

uh pro business, pro technology, pro-

innovation programs. It's moving faster

than any administration in my lifetime.

You have to go all the way back to

Thatcher and Reagan in the 80s to see uh

such pro- innovation uh pro- uh business

uh pro freedom type actors but even they

I don't think moved nearly as quickly

and decisively and they didn't have so

many intricate

topics. So I really think this is like a

once in 50 years could be once in a

hundred year type event and um and

Bessant's actions and his words both

before and uh and if you look at the

interviews that he's given after this

summit uh they're very clear. He he went

on the Laura Trump show

uh last Saturday night. It was a show

that I was on. he was on. Uh David Sax

was on, but he stood he stood there on

camera in front of the White House and

he said, "We're going to make the United

States, you know, the digital asset

leader in the world. Digital assets are

here to stay." And that's the Secretary

of the Treasury. And if you think about

every utterance from previous

secretaries of the Treasury on this

topic, right, that's 100 times more

powerful than than anyone in a like

position has ever contemplated or

uttered in the history of this industry.

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come back to uh policies on digital

assets in just a bit. But just speaking

of Bessent in the current

administration, Trump just earlier today

made a comment that he said the Fed

should cut rates to ease the economy's

transition to tariffs. The president is

pushing for rates to be lower. On the

one hand, tariffs do not go well with

equities and risk assets. On the other

hand, if the Fed listens to the

president either directly or indirectly,

we could get more liquidity. How do

these competing forces impact Bitcoin?

Bitcoin is every macro trader's favorite

asset because they can trade it 24/7

365. They can trade it anywhere in the

world. They can trade it with any amount

of leverage and they can cross

collateralize it with any other

asset and they can talk about it with

legal impunity because it's a commodity.

It's not a security. And so that that

makes it uh the most attractive of all

assets to trade on a

trend. If you think there's a missile

attack coming, you want to sell it. If

you think the missile attack didn't, you

know, was overblown and there's not

going to be a war, you want to buy it.

Um I think when people are panicking,

they tend to want to do a leverage short

on Bitcoin. when interest rates and when

the perception is we're going to a a

riskon environment or a looser money

environment, they'll turn the other way.

So, I do think that I I do think that

um interest rates coming in or the

expectation of of uh interest rates

coming in is very bullish for the asset.

Uh you know, and there'll be certain

points where you'll probably see it rip

up because of that. I think that this is

a pro

business deregulation, low regulation,

pro business, low tax, pro- innovation

administration, you know, in general and

everything they're doing. All of those

things will be good for Bitcoin over

time. I think deregulation is very good

and I think low interest rates are very

good. Just a quick followup to that,

there was a counterargument I've heard

from other crypto investors that a pro

business administration is actually

bearish for Bitcoin short-term because

the central bank does not need to ease

as much. Perhaps the recession could be

stalled by pro business policies and

liquidity flows would not have a

positive impact on Bitcoin because of

that. How do you respond to that?

I think there's a lot of double reverse

logic that takes place in the macro

trading environment. Like for example,

if you knew there was lots of inflation

over the long term, the number one thing

to hold is Bitcoin. But when people

print a big inflation number, Bitcoin

will trade down in the short term. But

people but but but the double reverse

logic is inflation is high therefore the

interest rates are going up therefore

money is getting slurped out therefore I

should find something to sell so I'll

sell Bitcoin and I and that's why I

would

say there there are basically two ways

to to think about Bitcoin actually

there's three views there's the trader

there's the investor and there's the

maximalist okay the traders says, "It's

an asset. I can get a handle on it. I

can 50x lever it long and short."

They're obsessing over whether or not

good news is coming cuz good news is bad

news and bad news is good news, right?

And then they want to make sure they're

the first one to get the bad news so

they can treat it as good news so they

can get out of the trade before the bad

news manifest or something like that.

And if you're one of those traders, you

know who you are and more power to you.

I'm not that guy. Then the investor view

is this is the dominant digital monetary

network in the world. It's going to go

up by a factor of 10 to 100 and I'm just

going to hold it like Apple, like

Facebook, like Google, like Microsoft.

I'm going to hold it like my big tech

monopoly for the next decade and it's

going to jerk around a bit and and I'm

going to buy it on dips.

Uh the maximalist view is this is uh

property rights for 8 billion people.

This is the greatest opportunity of the

21st century. This is economic

empowerment for every business, every

country, every family, every individual.

Right? I'm going to support it at all

times, every way I can forever. Okay?

And so you're talking to a maximalist

here. I'm beyond I'm beyond the

investor.

uh my you know my it's not my skin is in

the game. I'm beyond that. My soul is in

the game. But I think that um Thomas Lee

he's he's done some good work and he

says that Bitcoin generates all of its

gains in like 10 days a year. Funstrap

Thomas Lee. Funst strat Thomas Lee. And

uh that just means that you know

somewhere like 98 97% of the time

nothing is happening and you're waiting

for something to happen. And uh I I

would

say every macro theory about if the bad

thing happens that's good and if the

good thing happens that's bad. And if if

enough bad things happen, that's really

good because then a bad thing will

happen which will be good for us in the

midterm. I get it. It's all true, but I

just don't choose to play the game. My

view of this is that's a game for

professionals.

And you know it's you know Howard Marks

he says the problem with all these day

traders is the stock goes from 10 to 11

you know and the guy bought it at 10 and

sold at 11 and then it goes from

22 to 23 and he bought it at 22 and sold

it at 23 and then it goes from 33 to 32

and he shorted it at 33 and he brags

that he made $3. But the problem with

the whole thing is if he just bought it

at 10, he would have made like 10x that

much money with no stress, no anxiety,

and no risk. And so I I tend to

think, look, Bitcoin's going to grind up

30 to 60% a year for the next 20 years,

and my long-term risk cost of capital is

like 29% for 20 years. That being the

case, rather than try to time the

market, it seems to me like a better

idea would be go mortgage your house for

30 years at 3% interest or 6% interest

and then make an investment for 30 years

that where you have 6% cost of capital

and get 30% return on the capital and

you're getting 24% boost. So, I I I

think it's much better to figure out how

you raise capital and lever the trade or

how you build a business that actually

uh cashes in on that volatility instead

of being the day trader trying to guess

the volatility because it it just seems

like, you know, it's a fool's errand for

the average person. I understand.

Um, in one of your interviews you said

when you learned about Bitcoin, you

couldn't sleep because you were just

afraid somebody else would learn it and

they would buy it. You couldn't buy it

anymore. But now you are the main force.

I I would argue that the reason why

everybody's buying Bitcoin cuz you are

preaching for Bitcoin and everybody

believes you. Does that not make it

harder for you to accumulate more

Bitcoin?

Well, I think the uh what

the

the equity and the beauty of the network

is it gets exponentially harder to

acquire Bitcoin over time. And that's

what makes the network secure and

stable. And that's a good thing for all

of us.

Um Bitcoin has matured over four years

and that's a good thing. We we used to

have uh you know uh extremely highly

levered poorly capitalized companies

driving the market like the offshore

exchange like FTX and three arrows and

Teral Luna and the like and um the the

market has matured such that now you

have large pools of uh more permanent

capital like uh Black Rocks Capital,

IBID or Fidelity or Wall Street And uh

that will create uh less volatility,

lower draw downs, but it will drive the

price up. And um on the other hand, it's

kind of like saying, you know, your

family came to Manhattan in 1700 and you

bought up a bunch of land and then you

went back to Europe and you told

everybody that Manhattan's going to be

the greatest seapport in North America.

And here we are in 1800, Michael, and

your family owns like 47 blocks of

Manhattan, but the prices of Manhattan

real estate have gone up by a factor of

20. Isn't it getting it harder for you

to do business in Manhattan? And the

answer is, well, the price is going up,

but there's a lot of other people that

are in Manhattan that do things that we

can't do. And I'd much rather have other

businesses and other other pools of

capital. Like on the day that Apple and

Microsoft and Google enter the Bitcoin

ecosystem, the price will go up, but the

risk will go down. And and one of the

interesting things about volatility is

like if you look at the risk in the

space, if you're if you have something

which is 10x over collateralized by

Bitcoin and the volatility is 60

um well there's a risk and one way to

drive down the risk is to increase the

collateral but the other way to drive

down the risk is decrease the

volatility. So it turns out you're

better off being like three times over

collateralized with an asset with a 30

volt than 10 times over collateralized

with an asset that's a 70 volt. And so I

think that's what's happening now that

the industry is growing up. It's

becoming more secure. It will be

accepted by banks. it will I I'll leave

it at this thought which

is when your bank tells you they'll buy

Bitcoin for you and they'll make it

really

easy and you can do it on the phone.

It'll cost you a million dollars

Bitcoin. And when your bank calls you on

the phone and says, "You know, you

really ought to buy Bitcoin. It's a

digital monetary

alternative." And when they recommend

it, it'll cost you $10 million of

Bitcoin. And right now, no bank's going

to recommend it, and they're not going

to help you buy it, and you're going to

have to jump through hoops, and you're

going to feel really nervous about it,

but you'll get to buy it around 100,000

or a little bit less than 100,000 of

Bitcoin. And I think they're all three

the same riskreward proposition. And I I

bought it at 10,000. I'm buying it in

billions billions of dollars of quantity

at a 100,000. I'll be buying it at a

million. I'll be buying it at 10

million. And if you're if you're back

here interviewing me when it's 10

million a coin and you're going to say,

"Michael, it all worked out, but you

know, Bitcoin's a thousand times more

expensive. And don't you feel bad that

you convinced all these people to buy

Bitcoin at 10 million a coin?" I'm going

to say, well, Bonnie, you know, the

entire ecosystem is much less risky now,

and it's still the best investment

option. I think it's still better than

buying the S&P index. It's still better

than buying a warehouse in Siberia. I'm

going to keep buying it. It's just like

buying Manhattan real estate in the year

2025 when your family started buying

Manhattan real estate in the year 1700.

Um, can you comment on BMAX?

Yeah. So, BMAX is an ETF that launched u

about a week ago and there's a whole one

of the great use cases of of Bitcoin is

uh to put it in the middle of a capital

structure of a publicly traded company

and if you have a publicly traded

company, it causes your equity to be

very

volatile. So, like my company's uh my

company's the most volatile equity out

of the S&P 500 universe. sometimes a

volatility of 90 to 100. Well, when the

volatility of a public company gets

above

45, you can sell convertible bonds

because convertible arbitrageers

uh actually are able to sell that

volatility or extract it and that pays

the cost of the interest. So,

convertible bonds make sense for

companies that have

volatility. But but if your use of

proceeds of that convertible bond is to

build a building or to invest in uh a

long duration project, it might take 3

to 5 years before you know that the

money that the investment was

profitable. So most companies that issue

convertible bonds only do one and done.

They issue a bond and then it's 5 years

before they issue another one. And

that's because their investment cycle is

so slow. and it's very

heterogeneous and uh the source of their

volatility is normally uncertainty about

whether the company will be successful.

Most well-run companies they aspire to

get rid of volatility. For example, if

you're a CFO, you would brag, "We have

no volatility on the balance sheet. We

can never lose any money." And then if

you have a P&L, you want to sign your

customers to 3 to 10year contracts with

escalators every year. Look at

Microsoft. No volatility on the balance

sheet. Three-year enterprise agreements

that roll over and the CFO is

renegotiating 112th of those agreements

every quarter. And so you never have

more than 8% of your revenue ever in

play and you can forecast out. So that's

best practice of a conventional company.

If a company capitalizes on

Bitcoin, you could sell a a billion

dollar convertible bond. You could put

the money to work in one week. You could

announce that it was profitable the next

week. So the investment cycle isn't 3

years. The investment cycle might be 3

days. Okay? Then you could go back to

the market. You could issue another

convertible bond. You would make the

same exact investment.

uh the benchmark of profitability is

whether you create Bitcoin per

share. You could say, well, what if the

market doesn't really care about Bitcoin

per share? Well, the equity investors in

a Bitcoin company care about Bitcoin per

share. They've self- selected. So, when

you're on the Bitcoin standard as a

public company, you can issue

convertible bonds because you're going

to have the volatility. You're going to

have a very fast investment cycle. it's

homogeneous and you can actually create

a set of metrics to describe whether it

was uh whether it was accretive or

diluted. So my company pioneered that.

We actually became the biggest

convertible bond issuer in 2024. We're

the biggest convertible bond issuer this

year. We're so big that we're actually

getting to the point where we're

outgrowing the convertible bond market.

And so the shorts and the cynics say,

"Well, you can't keep doing that because

you've, you know, you've outgrown the

market." Well, and BMAX is the answer to

the question, how do you grow the

convertible bond market? The reason that

the convertible bond market is um is uh

is uh a stable set of capital is because

most of the people in it are convertible

arbitrageers and you have to be a

specialist. And so those bonds are sold

144A over-the-counter to specialists who

engage in convertible arbitrage. But in

fact, those bonds would be very useful

to someone that wanted to be a Bitcoin

investor because those bonds

historically up until now have

outperformed Bitcoin. So, if you wanted

to actually buy an in a bond that

performed like Bitcoin, maybe you want

Bitcoin upside, but you want limited

downside or a different downside

exposure, you would buy a Bitcoin

convertible bond, but you can't because

the bonds are only traded to qualified

institutional buyers. So, uh, BMAX is is

an ETF that is actually, um, plugging an

over-the-counter institutional market

into the general public market. So, you

could boil it down as to say, well, now

there's a way for a retail investor to

buy convertible bond

exposure and uh, in Bitcoin back

converts. But you could also say it

makes it much much easier for even an

institutional investor because they

don't have to trade over-the-counter.

They're over-the-counter markets are are

dark. They're wide bidass spreads.

They're very inefficient. They're very

illquid. And so BMAX is creating

liquidity,

uh, availability,

transparency, and a certain degree of

continuity.

And I think that as instruments like

that come out, right, I I would say the

most valuable ETFs, by the way, they're

ones that let a retail investor or a

diversified investor very quickly put 2%

of their portfolio into something like I

want 2% in gold in like 1 minute. I want

to own 2% of the real estate in New York

City. You know, you you need a REIT to

do that. I want 2% of Bitcoin, right? or

I want 2% of Bitcoin back bonds. If you

have an instrument like that, it's

differentiated. It It really is doing

more than stock picking. I I'm not just

buying three stocks in the ETF that you

could have bought. I'm literally

crossing the 144A barrier and I'm buying

an institution in in an institutional

over-the-counter market to make

available to you on Robin Hood.

And uh so I'm excited about things like

that. I think it's going to grow the

convertible bond market. It's going to

bring new types of investors to the

market. Uh I would say my company has

expanded the market because we have

found in my opinion one of the great use

of proceeds for convertible bonds. What

are we doing? We're building a digital

building in one week. How many we going

to build? We're just going to keep

building them, right? I what if you

could do a hundred bond issues and build

a hundred digital buildings and just

keep coming back over and over again.

That's good for the investor. It's good

for the market. It's good for the

issuer, right? And and uh BMAX is is

just part of bringing that idea to the

general public. Are you able to talk

about the reasoning behind adding Mara

and Riot? Because Micros well strategy

strategy has a um cash flow as a

software business, but for Mara and Riot

to have cash flow, I assume they will

have to sell Bitcoin.

Yeah. Well, I I'm not the issuer. Um uh

and so that would be a good interview

for you to have with uh Greg King,

right? uh who does issue BMAX. Uh and I

would be speculating, but I but in

general, I think uh that's it's probably

from a regulatory point of view a little

bit easier uh to issue an ETF that's a

that's a diversified portfolio or

distributed portfolio of bonds from

multiple issuers instead of all bonds

from a single issuer. And I think that

would give comfort uh to a lot of

mainstream investors that this is it's

not a single issuer strategy but rather

it's an industry strategy. And I think

right now you'll see many companies on

the Bitcoin standard issue uh

convertible bonds. They are and then I

think you'll see many companies on the

Bitcoin standard, you know, buy Bitcoin

for their treasury. So, so BMAX is an

example of a company offering access to

that trend. But ONB

Own NB is another interesting ATF that

was uh put out by Bitwise, which is

basically owning companies on the

Bitcoin

standard, right? And and those those uh

operators, they'll d they will balance

their portfolio for all sorts of reasons

over time.

Well, one of your rules of Bitcoin. You

have 21 rules of Bitcoin, Michael, is

well, they're all really interesting,

but one that stuck out to me is Bitcoin

is powered by chaos. You made a

reference to the Swiss bank during World

War II, for example. What is this

current chaotic environment? What is the

chaos currently that will drive Bitcoin

to new highs? Well, there's um like a

100x more capital invested in the

securities, the equities and the fixed

income securities of

corporations. And so, if we look at the

chaos over the past few months, if

you're invested in a Mexican company

that ships products to the US when the

tariffs change, that's an

anxietyinducing event. If you're

invested in a company that sells

products into Canada and Canada changes

their tariffs, that's an anxietyinducing

event. This morning on CNBC, the story

with the breaking news was the EU is

considering uh placing material fines on

I think it was Apple and Google

targeting US-based big tech companies.

And you know, Apple's response is

regulations from the EU will prevent us

from serving our

customers. And the commentator

speculates that the fine could be 10% of

revenues. And if you're an equity

investor, that's got to give you

anxiety. So I I think the real key here

is wars create anxiety. They, you know,

wars are bad for business. Fires in LA

are bad for property. Hurricanes are bad

for business. Tariffs, by the way, the

end of wars are bad for business.

There's a whole set of investors that

are having anxiety because if the war

ends, their stock crashes. The war on CO

created a lot of stock, a lot of equity

crashes and crashes of all sorts of

assets, explosions of other assets. But

when the war on CO ended, it was really

bad for the pharmaceutical stocks. And

so the creation of wars, the sessation

of wars, the possible the possibility of

tariffs, the possibility of no tariffs,

all of these things create anxiety. They

devalue assets. And you know, chaos is

just a manifestation of entropy. And the

whole, you know, when I was at MIT, you

know, we had this tongue-in-cheek uh

joke about thermodynamics. We said,

"Here are the three laws of

thermodynamics. You can't

win, you can't break

even, and you can't get out of the

game." That's the three laws of

thermodynamics that describes entropy.

It's like bad stuff's happening. Your

warehouse is rusting. you know, the the

highways got blockage there. You know,

the train the the plane crashed, a storm

hit. I have the perfect business and

then there's a hurricane and I have to

cancel the conference. Okay, so when

will that end? That will never

end. But what if I could actually get

out of the game, right? What if I

actually could create a business

where here here's a business where there

are no fires, there are no wars, there

are no tariffs, there are no there's no

product obsolescence, there are no

competitors, right? There's no property

tax. There's no rent control. There's no

expropriation. What if I could what if I

had a business that was not facing all

those risks? And and that's what pure

digital capital is. That's what Bitcoin

is. But now what if I posit this? What

if I

said all the money in the world is

facing all that risk and here's an

escape from all that risk and the only

reason they haven't bought it is they

didn't know about it or they didn't have

a channel to swap the risky thing for

the riskless thing.

So, Bitcoin is powered by chaos

because chaos will never go away. It's

always going to

devalue all of the traditional physical

and financial capital assets. And it's

going to be the driver that causes all

the smart money in the world to run to

sell their physical and financial assets

and to buy a digital asset. And so

really as as the world gets educated and

as regulators create

on-ramps, right, when your bank handles

Bitcoin, when when a big tech company

can wire a billion dollars to the bank

every week and buy Bitcoin, they'll just

be wiring a billion dollars and swapping

it out because it's easy and it's

rational. So that's really what you're

looking at. And that and that's why I'm

I think it's just a very elegant uh and

beautiful asset. Well, the name strategy

is also beautiful. Can I note the

rationale behind the name change from

micro strategy to strategy? You know, if

you look at uh lots of companies and

lots of great companies as you grow uh

less is more. You

know, Sting used to be known known as

Gordon Sumar, you know, and Apple used

to be Apple

computer, right? And uh and Amazon was

Amazon

books, right? And

uh Shakespeare probably had

a longer name. Oh, William. William

Shakespeare,

right? It

and Madonna had a last name

and Prince, right? So, a as as um you

grow then the question is are you are

you dragging baggage with you? And uh

Micro Strategy made sense 30 years ago

in the era of Microsoft. We were a

strategic consulting firm that used

computers and we wanted to send the

message that we were a computer savvy

strategic consulting firm but then

eventually everybody used computers and

then using computers isn't really that

special

anymore and micro really seems

dimminimous given our ambition. Uh and

and over time I heard I would say 35% of

the people would say so tell me what's

going on with micro strategies.

So how are things of micro strategies?

And uh if you think about it whenever

you come up with a compound word that is

not really in the English language

you're working against the core genetic

protocol of all human beings.

How many people have learned English?

Billions, right? How many how many hours

of your life do you sit in classroom

learning to speak proper English? How to

spell English words? How to pronounce

English words? A lot. So, what's the

perfect brand? The perfect brand name

would be an English word that a billion

people were taught to spell at age six

or nine that was defined for them. If

you're going to be successful in life,

you need a good strategy. You need a

business strategy, a financial strategy,

a family

strategy, you know, a career strategy, a

media

strategy, right? And when you fail, it's

because you had a bad

strategy. And and so what we've done is

we've taken a a word that billions of

people know, that they can spell, that

they understand,

And uh and as they say, you know, the

design is not complete until there is

nothing left to take

away, right? And and you see that Steve

Jobs epitomized that with the iPhone and

Apple and uh Elon Musk is famous for

saying the biggest mistake that

engineers make is they optimize a

process that shouldn't

exist. And uh we thought about it. He

said, "Why make people pronounce five

syllables and write so many extra

letters and misspell the thing?" And

well, if you meet 10,000 people, how do

you feel about correcting 4,000 people

because they made a mistake?

Or maybe you make it, how about this?

Make it make it impossible to make a

mistake, right? And and what we did is

we kind of made it impossible to make

the mistake and now and now we've just

made it easy. and uh and elegant. And so

that's that's really the thinking behind

our strategy. Beautiful. You had an

interesting fireside chat session. You

talked about superpowers and Bitcoin and

the need for Bitcoin to be adopted if a

country were to remain or become a

superpower. Now, let's expand on that.

So, going into the future, Michael, will

there be an arms race between

superpowers to adopt Bitcoin? in which

countries are next. Yeah. So I think

that Bitcoin is critical because as I

said it's digital energy and that makes

it a digital economic system and if it's

a digital economic system it means that

a billion AIs a billion computers can

swap energy and swap capital uh things

of value with each other at the speed

which they can think frictionfree. And

when you think about what's going to

power the robots, what's going to power

the driving cars, if I want to release

an AI into cyerspace and have it live,

if I want my AI that represents my

interest to actually negotiate with

10,000 other uh AIs every second, it's

going to be on a digital energy network.

It can't be on a physical or a financial

network.

So with that as the as the fundamental

right I the company the countries that

will embrace this first will be the most

pro- innovation pro technology countries

the obvious one in the pole position is

the United States for two reasons

because the US is the most powerful

country in the

world and because uh the US has uh the

most enlightened leadership in the world

right Now, um, over the past four years,

I've met with regulators everywhere else

in the world. I've I've talked to

politicians. If you talk to people in

Mexico, in South America, in the Middle

East, in Europe, in Asia, they're all

looking at whether or not they have

permission from the United States to do

this. And everyone everyone is afraid to

get out from underneath that permission

because they feel like they would be cut

off from the banking network of the

world. So no innovation generally takes

place outside of the US except by

extraordinarily brave gray market

actors. And you can do it but you can't

you can act in the gray market but

you'll never get more than 1/100th of

the capital. Right? So if you want the

entire industry to grow by a factor of

100, you have to do it with a legitimate

path. The actor with the legitimacy

right now is the United States. Um after

November 5th, what you got was a pro-

innovation, pro- digital assets

president. And and by the way, that's

that's important, but history is

littered with examples of candidates

that make promises on the campaign trail

and then after they get elected, they

slow roll it and they say, "Yeah, well,

we'll get to that, but in 2 years, in 3

years, and they appoint people or or

they promise you to get elected and then

they appoint cabinet members that

disagree with you and the c and they're

like, "Well, I would do it, but the

secretary of whatever doesn't want to do

it and or whatever it's more difficult.

So what's really profound here over the

past 4 months is you have a president

that that uh joined forces with the

crypto community and the Bitcoin

community. They supported him to be

elected. He supports them. He

appointed pro- innovation, pro- digital

assets executives at Treasury, at the

SEC, at the

CFTC. But even beyond that, you know,

Tulsi Gabbard, RFK, and Howard Lutnik,

and Kelly Lawer are all noninancial

uh cabinet members that are also

supportive. And then he created a quasi

cabinet position, and the cryptos are.

And so now you've got 1 2 3 4 five 6 7

eight eight cabinet members that I can

name off the top of my head that are

moving forward. And then he proceeded

with with executive order number one,

executive order number two, Bitcoin

strategic reserve, and then uh to set

the tempo and he created the air cover

for all the cabinet members to act

decisively. And so if I had to put my

money on a country that's going to be

going to be the leader in digital

assets, you got to say the United

States. And the US has such incredible

uh gravitational pull that I wouldn't be

surprised if it draws lots of capital

from outside the US both human capital

and financial capital outside of the US

into the US and it has catalyzed the

game theory dynamic here because the US

is moving fast. If you're an ally of the

US or an enemy or a friendmy of the US,

it doesn't matter. you've got to look at

this and they're all going to be drawn

into the ecosystem. They really can't

afford to ignore it at this point. And

so I think that uh what you have is a

catalytic effect that's created a

Cambrian explosion in

innovation and digital

transformation, right? the digital

transformation of capital, securities,

commodities, tokens, ideas, and

currencies. All of those things are

about to go at a rate of 10x or 100x

faster than they were on November 4th. A

very short comment for people that are

watching and adore and love

you. A lot of people love you on the

internet. What would you say to them? to

the kids that look at you and be like, I

want to grow up being just like him.

Uh what I would say is is you know in

the middle of 2020 under the co

lockdowns I found myself you know

frustrated,

dejected and uh

and I was trying to figure out what is

my meaning on this earth. Dejected by

what exactly? by by all of the turmoil

in the economy by the you know I'd

worked in my company for 30 years and

we're competing with Microsoft and we

couldn't grow and I thought after 30

years of hard work doing 100,000 things

right every year you know is this how it

all ends you know and I and you know I

think in my lowest moment I looked

around and I found the Bitcoin community

and I found Bitcoin the ideology which

led me to the protocol which led me to

the asset which led me to the

network and I think it saved my company

and it gave me a mission, right? It it

made me excited to get out of bed every

day. It it it gave me a reason to get up

in the morning. And I felt like instead

of

retiring, right, and just disappearing

from history forever, you know, Bitcoin

kind of uh gave me a reason to be and it

really motivated me and uh the result

was great for my investors, great for my

employees, it was great for my mental

and physical health. And now everywhere

I go in the world, I meet people and

they're very motivated. And you know

they say well thank you for you know

sharing your thoughts because it helped

me to get more comfortable. And what I

say to them is well thank you because

because really it's being on the team

that motivates you to work so hard. I I

really couldn't do it if I didn't have

the support of the community. And I you

know I think that Bitcoin is the

greatest team in the world. It's like

being on a a member of a global sports

team. Like you're you're all in a fan

club. Imagine hundreds of millions of

people and they're all rooting for the

same team. But there's a twist.

There's hundreds of millions of people

that are fans, but we're all players.

Every single person in the on this team

is on the field playing every day. I'm

playing my position, but you know, the

the crew mechanic in Italy on the flight

line is also playing, you know, and the

guy on the beach in Brazil is also

playing, and people here at this

conference are playing. So, this is this

is a team where everybody's a fan, but

everybody's a player. Everybody's got

skin in the game. When we're losing,

we're all getting bruised. You know,

we're all getting beat up together. And

and it's like all of us are feeling the

pain. And when we're winning,

everybody's winning together. And I

think that that is such a beautiful

thing for the world that you get to join

a

team, play a game together where the

rules are all rigged in your favor. And

as I said before, it's the only game in

the casino we can all win.

So, I feel great attracting people to

join the team. I like being on the team.

I like playing the game. And uh and

thank you for your support. We love

having you on the Michael. It was