Michael Saylor: The Bitcoin Treasury Endgame - An Exclusive At-Home Interview

What's going on with Bitcoin is Bitcoin

is evolving faster than the society can

digest it. After 30, 40, 50 years, you

look back and you say, well, of course,

we should have embraced the fire, the

electricity, the wheel, the crude oil,

the nuclear. I would say 95% of the

decision makers in the finance world

still don't really embrace or understand

the idea of digital energy. I think I

think when the administration says they

want to be a global Bitcoin superpower,

they mean they want the finance

companies in the United States to lead

the way. For every company in the world

in any capital market, they're always

better off to buy Bitcoin as their

capital asset. Yeah. Well, I think the

endgame is we accumulate a trillion

dollars worth of Bitcoin and then we

grow that capital by issuing more

credit.

All right. Well, we are here with

Michael Sailor. Thanks so much for

having us in your home. I'm really

excited for this conversation. You've

said that Bitcoin is hope. You own

hope.com. You've made that a resource

hub for Bitcoin education. Uh can you

cast the vision of of what hope? What is

the hopeful part of Bitcoin? What's the

world you want to live in? Um what kind

of things change for the average person

in a in a Bitcoin standard?

Well, if we look at the history of uh

humanity,

uh what what has improved the human

condition is technology.

And uh the most formative technology

that everybody's familiar with is fire.

And um fire once upon a time was hope.

If you didn't have fire, you're going to

freeze to death or starve to death. And

then over time, other important

technologies evolved. After fire, we

mastered metals. And there was the

bronze age, the iron age, the steel age.

You know, the wheel was a pretty

important technology. Uh no wheel, no no

cars. Um

Rockefeller commercialized chemical

energy in the form of of oil and

standardized oil and called this company

standard oil. And and the real

significance of

oil was a human's got a tenth of a

horsepower.

And now the little dinky engine on the

back of your small troller boat is 70

horsepower, which is 700 human beings.

And a typical tender could have a,000

horsepower. And so think about 10,000

people rowing as hard as they can behind

a 30-foot boat. And that's what we got

when we got oil and when we got internal

combustion engines. And and so the hope

for humanity has always been technology

in a new in a new sphere of influence

whether it's automobiles or airplanes or

electricity or oil or fire.

Bitcoin is hope because Bitcoin

represents digital energy. It represents

energy in cyerspace.

Uh it represents digital property,

digital capital, digital gold.

But in its most profound setting, it

means digital energy.

A way to convey energy through time,

through space

that is life affirming for 8 billion

people, for 400 million corporations,

for millions and millions of

institutions,

for hundreds of countries, for tens of

thousands, if not hundreds of thousands

of municipalities.

And if I were to say fire is hope

and you were shivering and freezing to

death, you would get it. And if I were

to say electricity is hope and you were

in New York City trapped on the 98th

floor of a skyscraper or trying to get

up to the 98th floor of a skyscraper,

you would get it. And now when I say

Bitcoin is hope, I mean Bitcoin is

digital energy. And if you want to send

energy at the speed of light from here

to halfway around the earth to save the

life or solve the problem of another

human being or corporation,

you're going to need digital energy. And

so it represents the next uh paradigm

shift, the next manifestation

in the story of energy and the story of

human beings harnessing energy in order

to improve the quality of their lives.

And so as that transition sort of takes

place and we move to a Bitcoin standard

or some you know some people say hyper

bitcoinization what sort of signs are

are you looking for what signs to watch

that indicate like this actually is

happening?

>> Well I think we're really talking about

the integration of digital energy into

the civilization. So you know what do

you want to see? Well, let let's start

with the the basic application of

digital energy as capital, digital

capital. Um, there's a trend right now

for publicly traded companies to

recapitalize on Bitcoin. Uh, our company

was the first in 2020, then there were

two or three, and then there were 10,

and then there were 20, then there were

40. And um about a year ago there were

60 and then about 3 months ago there

were 120 and right now there's more than

180.

And I would expect that one way you know

that the world is adopting Bitcoin as we

go from 100 to a th00and to 10,000

to a 100,000.

You know as some people have said one

day every company will be a Bitcoin

treasury company. Um so re

recapitalizing companies on Bitcoin is

is one measure of adoption. I think

another measure of adoption is is

building support for Bitcoin into

software applications.

So you know right now you have

applications that run on iPhones or

Android phones like Cash App that have

Bitcoin in them. you have you have um

wallets that support Bitcoin, but I look

forward to the day when Apple builds it

into the iPhone, when Google builds it

into the Android operating system, when

Microsoft builds it into the Microsoft

operating systems, and it's either

integral to the operating system of

every consumer device, or it's integral

to the hardware itself, and people start

to integrate um Bitcoin support into all

the hardware devices that propagate

throughout the world and I think that'll

be another really really big sign.

>> So yeah, you mentioned five years in now

um you know five years ago you kind of

came on the scene no one really knew who

you were in Bitcoin. Now, you know, as

you mentioned, you're you're kind of the

leader of these Bitcoin treasury

companies. U Bitcoin corporations. We we

talk to a lot of these uh executives who

are launching a Bitcoin strategy.

There's now 14 different countries

represented. And a lot of times what I

hear is, you know, this so- and so wants

to be the sailor of, you know, this

country. Um how do you see yourself, I

guess, in the space? Do you consider

yourself a leader of this movement, so

to speak?

I feel like we have a responsibility to

set a good example and to and to support

and nurture uh everybody else in the

marketplace. So, um we've uh we've tried

new things. We've experimented and and I

think we go out of our way to share our

learnings. We've we've sponsored a

Bitcoin for corporations conference ever

since we got into the space. Um and we

published our playbook. We've open

sourced what we're doing. You know, we

we publish securities filings explaining

exactly what we do. Uh what we've

learned. You know, I I think it's uh

incumbent upon us to point out what we

think works, what doesn't work. There

are a lot of ways to approach this. And

I I think the the inspirational part of

this movement is that unlike uh a lot of

other industries where there can be a

winner and everybody else is a loser.

>> You know like you know Walmart wins,

most retailers lose, Amazon wins and

20,000 retailers lose. Apple wins and

20,000 device manufacturers lose.

There's a lot of that. Um, in the

Bitcoin ecosystem, everybody can win

because we're all aligned with the

common value system and the base asset

that we're using is Bitcoin and there's

only going to be 21 million or less. And

the network is the Bitcoin network. And

so so the growth and the success of a

Bitcoin treasury company or even just a

company that is holding Bitcoin in its

treasury, you know, we could just refer

to any normal company that's got some

Bitcoin. Any of those corporate

corporations adopting Bitcoin to any

degree is beneficial to Bitcoin, to the

entire network, and to every other

company in the movement. So I I I think

it's been you know very gratifying to

see the growth of the industry. You know

we do our part. I think there are a lot

of great contributions made by other

companies and every day I I read about

another company trying a different

strategy and I think we're all learning

uh together and when companies try

something and it works well I think

you'll see adoption and when companies

try things and they're suboptimal then

we'll know not to do that thing and so

it's it's definitely a team effort.

>> I want to talk a little bit about some

of the the FUD or the critics. Um

there's there's some skeptics out there.

some might call them haters of strategy

and kind of the work that you do. Um, is

there a critique or a misunderstanding

of your work that kind of stands out?

>> You know, I I think

when uh an air foil moves faster than

the speed of sound, like an airplane

goes faster than the speed of sound, it

creates a shock wave and it and a sonic

boom. And it's very loud, it's very

noisy, it's very turbulent. What's going

on when you're going faster than the

speed of sound is is you're going faster

than the rate at which air can

communicate to the air in front of it.

Right? The molecules in front in front

of your fuselage are not able to

communicate to the molecules 100 meters

in front of you. So you end up with this

uh with this sonic boom and massive

turbulence and massive noise and chaos.

Um, what's going on with Bitcoin is

Bitcoin is is evolving faster than a

society can digest it. And so I think

you could say this is this is all

consistent. Uh, Bitcoin was

misunderstood in the year 2011. It was

misunderstood by me in the year 2013. It

was misunderstood again in 2015, 2017,

2019, 2021.

When we first got into the space in

2020,

there were people that misunderstood it

and and we had a lot of massive amount

of criticism. When our stock was $10 a

share when our stock went to $100 a

share, it was massive amount of

criticism again. When it crashed to $20

a share, there was still massive

criticism. When we had $2 billion of

Bitcoin, people were cackling or one

billion saying, "Oh, you lost a billion

dollars on this." when we made a hundred

billion, everybody disappeared and slunk

into the shadows and then a new set of

trolls, a new a new set of critics came

out when our market cap went above a h

100red billion. Um, it's a it's a

different set of cynics, a different set

of critics, a different set of

misconceptions.

I think you're going to see uh the eb

and flow of that set of misconceptions

and that anxiety. It'll continue when

Bitcoin is a 100,000. It'll continue

when Bitcoin is a million. It'll

continue when Bitcoin is 10 million.

It'll continue when Bitcoin goes to 20

million. And there's always going to be

a new amount of a new narrative of fear,

uncertainty, and doubt. It'll be a

different generation.

>> You know, the people that used to laugh

and say, "Oh, yeah, you lost a billion

dollars trading in Bitcoin." They're

gone. They're they disappeared, right?

Uh there'll be a new generation of

people that say, "Do you think it makes

sense to buy Bitcoin at a million

dollars a coin? It's going to trade down

to 500,000."

Right? And then there'll be a set of

people that will say, "You're buying it

at 10 million a coin. It's going to

trade to four six million. You

You lost so much money." uh you know

this is how societies deal with new

ideas. If you study if you study

paradigm shifts you know how long did it

take to embrace electricity? How long

did it people thought John D.

Rockefeller was crazy for 30 years until

he was the richest man in the world

>> and then that you know and at the point

that he was the richest man in the world

people thought well that that trait is

done and that was just when they

invented the automobile and he got 10

times richer right and so the society

doesn't really deal with paradigm shifts

uh that well and near-term but after 30

40 50 years you look back and you say

well of course we should have embraced

the fire the electricity, the wheel, the

crude oil, the nuclear. Even nuclear

power right now, for example, nuclear

power has only become cool or useful

>> in the last two years. Mhm.

>> Okay. So, for 50, you know, 50 years,

people thought nuclear power was was an

awful thing and all of a sudden they

woke up and they realized that I guess

we need nuclear energy to power the AI

data centers to make us super

intelligent and if we don't turn it on,

we're going to be slow and stupid.

So, you know, if it took them 50 years,

by the way, nuclear power is like

unlimited clean free energy and they had

to fight for 60 years to get people to

embrace the idea of unlimited clean

energy. It doesn't surprise me that

there'll be skeptics about digital

energy, they won't get it. You know, Max

Plank said, um, science advances one

funeral at a time.

And what he meant was was the old guard,

they will never ever accept the new

idea. Whatever it is, they'll die. They

will not accept the new idea. The only

way you get people to accept a new idea

is you wait for a new generation of

decision makers and the old guard

retires and they age out or you need a

war, you know, and people that don't

believe in aircraft, you know, but to

start believing in aircraft when the

aircraft flies over their city and drops

a bomb on their head. And people that

don't believe in atomic energy start

believing in atomic energy if someone

sets off a nuclear warhead in the middle

of a war. And so I think that um

disruptive profound events like a

near-death experience like during CO I

think that introduces new ideas and new

paradigms. That's how we got introduced

into this space. It was the war on

currency and the war on COVID in 2020

that caused us to open our eyes and

embrace the new idea.

um the great I would say 95% of the

the idea of digital energy, digital

capital, digital money.

And I don't think it's a bad thing

because the only way you're going to

make 10 to 100x your money is if you

pick the right thing and everybody

disagrees with you.

>> Yeah. If everybody agrees with you and

you do the right thing, well, everybody

agreed you should buy Amazon in the year

2020 during the lockdowns because it was

quite obvious that you needed Amazon

during the lockdowns. It's the worst

investment of the past 5 years cuz

everybody agreed that it was a good

investment and there's a lesson in that.

>> Yeah. Be interesting to see if there's a

tipping point where everyone starts to

come around kind of like what you're

saying. Sounds like you've seen that too

where skeptics maybe started 5 years

ago. uh now they're kind of proving them

wrong. Um and a lot of the kind of what

you're speaking to is is the old guard,

the banking uh uh industry. What about

skepticism within the Bitcoin community

specifically? Is any of that surprise

you or um stand out in particular?

>> You know, it's a it's a vocal community.

There are a lot of opinions. People say

Bitcoin is money for enemies. Uh there's

been skepticism in in the Bitcoin

community since before Bitcoin, right?

One could argue that Bitcoin was was

born out of skepticism, right?

>> And so it's it's uh deep in the ethos

and the culture uh the the idea to

question everything, slay your heroes,

uh don't trust, verify,

>> right? So the whole idea of Bitcoin is

you know don't trust anybody don't trust

any institution.

And so if you start asking the question

h how do you create an economic protocol

where you don't want to trust any of 8

billion people and any of 400 million

companies and any government? That's an

interesting question. I I would say

uh it you know that skepticism has its

place. that is motivational. But at at

some point it can uh it can become uh

what is the word?

>> Counterproductive maybe.

>> Counterproductive idealism,

right? And and the truth of the matter

is you do need to trust a company to

create the airplane you fly in. You do

need to trust the company that creates

the car you drive in. You do need to

trust the dentist at some point because

you can't and you do need to trust the

doctor because you can't take your own

appendix out or at least it's very rare,

right?

>> And so at some point you do have to

trust something and and I would say

you know the the more evolved way uh to

look at Bitcoin is not that

uh you want to embrace it and never

trust anything. the you know the real uh

inspiration and the promise of Bitcoin

is once you've embraced it you have the

option to extend and withdraw your trust

you know from time to time and if you

choose uh to not trust the government

you can relocate your Bitcoin to a

different country and if you if you

choose to trust a custodian you can

locate your Bitcoin with them and when

you decide to stop trusting them. You

can relocate your Bitcoin to any of a

100,000 other entities or if you don't

if you go through a period of life when

you choose not to trust anyone, you can

self custody and when you decide you

don't trust yourself, you can transfer

your custody to another family member,

right? And and change. So, so the real

power of Bitcoin is optionality.

And the the reason we have the

optionality is because the entire

movement was born out of distrust.

>> And so there is a yin and the yang.

There is a dialectic here. And uh you

you need a healthy degree of skepticism

and distrust and cynicism.

But but once you've created the

technology,

you're not going to reach your full

potential unless you work with other

human beings, right? And so ultimately,

you know, uh when you decide that uh

you're going to work with other human

beings either as a trusted custodian or

a trusted hardware device manufacturer

or a trusted hardware wallet or or you

work with another corporation. And it's

a trusted team of people whether they,

you know, work on your teeth or work on

your heart or manufacture the food or

provide you with the aircraft, you know,

travel you need. At that point, you can

reach your full potential

and and you do it empowered,

you know, with property rights and with

economic rights. And the reason that you

will be able to trust them is because

you have the option to withdraw your

trust. All right. So, so I look at it as

as the great deterrent. If you know if

you think about gold and why gold

failed, one reason gold failed is it's

so incredibly difficult to custody. And

so if you look at in the history of gold

in the 20s you had four great central

bankers and the central banker in

Germany was shocked and the central

banker in the US with Ben Strong and the

world you know was substantially on a

gold standard and the Germans had gold

and the French had gold and the British

had gold, the Americans had gold but for

the most part the gold was either in

London or in New York. you know, the

French gold was with the British or the

Americans or the German gold is with the

Americans. So, there's a famous story

where where shocked traveled to New York

City, met with the head of the Fed, Ben

Strong, and Ben Strong wanted to show

him the German gold, took him down into

the basement of the New York Fed, and

they couldn't find the gold.

>> And and of course, the message of the

story is this.

Gold is so difficult to custody.

Countries couldn't figure out how to

like the entire country of Germany

couldn't figure out how to custody their

own gold, much less the 100,000

companies in Germany or the 60 million

people in Germany. And so the reason

gold failed was it was too slow and too

difficult uh to custody and therefore

your property rights were always going

to be impaired by a central actor. And

um you know imagine the entire world

running on goldbased credit on a gold

standard when all the gold in the world

was sitting in London and New York City

and most of it was in New York City

>> you know and and we can say oh yeah

that's that's a a bearer asset but not

really because 40 million companies

couldn't bear it

>> you know 400 million people couldn't

bear it right and So, Bitcoin uh it

represents the bearer instrument, but it

but it really is practical for an

individual to take custody and it's

practical for a company to take custody.

And of course, I I guess what I counsel

to people that are idealists is is they

don't trust banks and they don't trust

companies. But the point that I would

make is during the entire gold era, gold

was so difficult to handle that no

company could could custody their gold

and no bank could.

If we lived in a world where 40,000

banks were custodians of Bitcoin, you

would have evolved from a world where

there were like eight or six custodians

of Bitcoin in the sorry custodians of

gold in the entire world, right? And uh

and so I think that uh Bitcoin offers a

promise

of in of economic integrity

and um I don't think we should rail

against a bank embracing Bitcoin. No.

Yeah. The truth of the matter is if

every country on earth embraced Bitcoin

and the countries became the custodians

of Bitcoin and the only thing we

accomplished was to have 150 countries

custody Bitcoin. That would be more

decentralized than the gold standard.

>> Yeah.

>> For hundreds of years, right? That would

be a it would be an order of magnitude

more decentralized than we had under the

gold standard. So what we're talking

about is a world where if if only banks

and only governments

custody Bitcoin, you would be 100x to a

thousandx more decentralized. And if

corporations in uh custody of Bitcoin,

you would be 10,000 times more

decentralized. And of course in a world

where millions of individuals or tens or

hundreds of millions of individuals self

custody, you know, you're you're not

like one, two, three, four orders of

magnitude more decentralized. You're

like a, you know, six, seven, eight more

orders of magnitude more decentralized.

So I I tend to focus upon the fact that

that uh the worst case for the Senate is

a million times better than the best

case we had a 100 years ago or even the

best case we had ever,

>> right? in terms of decentralized

monetary integrity.

>> Yeah, like that. I mean, staying on kind

of a similar topic, you know, the the US

recently acquired 10% of Intel. There

was, of course, a strong response from

the community as usual. Uh, do you see

any parallels between sort of this this

equity strategy and the current

administration's stated goal uh of

being, you know, a global Bitcoin

superpower?

>> No,

not

totally unrelated. Okay.

>> I think I think when the administration

says they want to be a global Bitcoin

superpower, they mean they want to

encourage banks to bank Bitcoin, they

want our banking system to embrace it,

to extend loans against it, to offer,

you know, yield or credit against it.

They want to enable transactions. They

want Apple and Google and Meta and

Microsoft to support Bitcoin. They want

public companies to be able to buy

Bitcoin. They want u an an explosion and

expansion of institutional grade Bitcoin

custodians. They want favorable tax laws

for Bitcoin, favorable security laws for

Bitcoin. and they want the finance

companies in the United States, whether

it's Black Rockck or whether it's

Coinbase or whether it's Strategy or

whether it's Block, they want the

finance companies in the United States

to lead the way in digital assets and

digital capital

and Bitcoin adoption.

>> Yeah, makes sense. Uh, one of the

criticisms is, you know, through a

humanitarian lens, if corporations hold

a large share of the Bitcoin, what does

that mean for the average person? Uh,

how do you, you know, avoid crowding out

small users?

>> Well, um, you know, when we got

involved, Bitcoin was trading $9,000 a

coin

and today Bitcoin's $115,000

a coin.

And it got that way because our company

bought 3%.

And Black Rockck enabled institutions to

buy like 4%.

And that means that 93%

of the gain and that's 93% of nearly $2

trillion.

So $1.8 8 trillion dollar

went to the individuals that owned the

Bitcoin before the corporations got

involved. So the individuals not been

crowded out. The individual just if you

if you posit that individuals, you know,

were the ones that owned the Bitcoin in

the year 2020, then those individuals

made $1.8 trillion

since the corporations got involved. So

the corporations aren't crowding out the

individuals. The corporations are making

the individuals that believed in Bitcoin

insanely wealthy. And now the

individuals can decide what do they want

to do with that economic power, right?

And and they'll do whatever. You know,

as a practical matter, it seems to me

that for our company, if we were to ever

get to 5% of the network, the network's

going to be at least a million dollars a

coin.

If we were to go beyond it, it's going

to 10 million a coin. So when we get to

7% of the network, if we do and Bitcoin

is $10 million a coin and a block rack

keeps up with us, that means 85%

of the network, right? And you're going

to be talking about $200 trillion.

So you're going to have $170

trillion

that will flow to the individuals. So

they're not exactly getting crowded out,

right? If if anything, what you've got

is the corporations

are all engines turning the flywheel of

the Bitcoin economy. Every single

company, every Bitcoin treasury company

that capitalizes on Bitcoin is like

attaching a motor

to the network. And every time that

company buys $50 million worth of

Bitcoin, they spin that drive shaft one

turn. That's one day's natural supply,

right? And and so the more companies

that come on, whether it's Black Rockck

or whether it's Strategy or whether it's

MetaPlanet or whether it's 21 or whether

it's BSTR,

you know, or whether it's similar, you

know, whoever it might be, each one of

them is firing up a motor. All of the

motors are are powering up the network.

If you're an individual and you believe

in Bitcoin, you buy the Bitcoin, you

cold storage the Bitcoin, and you let

all the companies power up the network.

If the companies didn't show up and and

the network was all individuals, Bitcoin

would be trading $5,000 a coin.

>> No.

>> And and here's the problem. It wouldn't

just trade at $5,000 a coin,

but the corporations, if they were to

choose a different network to power up,

you know, if if all the companies went

to Bitcoin Cash or Litecoin or Ethereum

or something else, Bitcoin would max out

at 5,000 a coin and it would dwindle

down to nothing because because the

companies would latch on to the next

network and then they would go to every

government and in China and Russia and

Europe and South America and Africa and

the US and all the laws would be

modified to benefit the other network

and eventually squeeze the Bitcoin

network out. So this is um

this is a protocol

and you could even say there's a

protocol war

and it's a war to determine the future

of money

and the future of the war for the future

of money is going to be fought

and won with money.

So in this particular case it's uh the

people that have the money are the

institutional investors and the people

that can can uh organize the money are

the corporations and if you want to win

the monetary war you need the

institutions that control all the

capital and you need the corporations to

get involved because you need the

support of the government. the

government can with a stroke of a pen,

right, block 99% of all the capital from

flowing into a network

or they can enable it. And so I think

the corporations are very important

actors in this, right? They're the ones

that are going to hire the lobbyists.

They're the ones going to do the

marketing. They're the ones that are

going to defend uh the network and the

individual, right, from having their

Bitcoin seized,

>> from having their Bitcoin shut down or

from having a 95% tax on the Bitcoin,

right? The reason that'll happen is

because the corporations are a line of

defense. When I think about Bitcoin, I

think the miners, you know, are the

first line of technical defense. They're

defending the network with energy and

power.

And uh the the Bitcoin treasury

companies are the first line of economic

defense. They're depend defending the

network with capital, right? And and and

even the Bitcoin exchanges, right, are

the first line of of defense

technically. They're the ones that are

going to implement the iPhone apps, the

Android apps, right, the websites. And

you really want uh very healthy

exchanges, healthy treasuries, healthy

miners. You want them to get big. You

want them to be well capitalized. You

want them everywhere in the world,

right? The the Bitcoin treasury company

in Shanghai

will lobby for the interest of Bitcoin

with the Chinese government,

>> right? You have to speak Chinese. You're

going to have to be in Beijing if you're

going to fight for Bitcoin. And it won't

be the individual. It'll be it'll be the

corporation and the better capitalized

the more effective they'll be. So I I

don't think there's um I don't think

there's any conflict of interest. It's

not a zero someum game. If the world is

going to embrace Bitcoin fully, that

means corporations, banks, exchanges,

operating companies, cities, states,

federal governments, you want them all

to embrace Bitcoin. You don't want to

leave anybody out,

>> right? And it's the last observation

I'll make is, you know, Bitcoin is like

speaking English,

you know, and if you spoke English and

you're an individual and you found out

that the most powerful person in the

world also spoke English, would you be

offended? You know, and if you found out

that the people that run the bank that

have all the money in the world in it

also spoke English and offered websites

in English and if Apple and Google and

and Meta also offered software that ran

in English, you know, would you think,

"Wow, they took my language. I want them

to give it back. I don't you know, if

your dentist speaks English and the

doctor speaks English and the cab driver

speaks English and the pilot speaks

English, is that bad for you?" I don't I

don't think so. I think I think

ultimately you want all of the rich,

powerful, influential people, even the

ones you disagree with.

>> You want them all to speak your

language. You want them to adopt your

protocol,

>> but if they're if they're doing

something that's bad for you, you want

to see it coming and understand that

they did it,

>> right? And so and so Bitcoin is a

protocol. Ultimately, you want everybody

to use the protocol. the world's going

to be a better place and you're going to

be better for their embrace of the

protocol.

>> Yeah, I think that's really well said

and helpful. Uh, thanks for indulging

the questions about FUD. Um, let's pivot

a little bit to talk about the Bitcoin

Treasury companies that this wave of

them adopting Bitcoin. You know, we

talked a little bit about competition

and how it's not a zero- sum game. Um,

still we're seeing there there tends to

be some um, uh, regional kind of

disputes and wanting to kind of be the

first mover. the the competition for

capital. What would you say to companies

who are kind of in in that space where

um what would be your encouragement in

terms of competition? Let's start with

the basis the fundamental premise of the

industry.

Um

Bitcoin is the monetary base of the

crypto economy. It is the monetary

crypto network. It is digital gold.

If you go back 3,000 years, go go back

and read the Persian expedition by

Xenopon. It's about five 600 BCish.

Uh, and uh, Xenopon's writing about uh,

a bunch of Athenians and Spartans that

are mercenaries and they go into Asia

Minor and then they charge all the way

through Babylon to Persia and they're

fighting for, you know, Cyrus against

his brother and Cyrus gets killed, you

know, and um, they have to make their

way back to Greece. They travel have to

cross 800 miles of hostile territory and

they fight their way back through a

hundred tribes. All the tribes speak a

different language. They all have a

different culture. They all want to kill

each other. The Athenians don't trust

the Spartans. The Spartans don't trust

the Athenians. No one trusts the

Persians. Right? It's it's nonstop

bloodshed and war. And this is before

the Lydian coins. This is before we have

coinage. Now, here's the thing that's

interesting about the story. The one

thing they agree on is they all want to

kill each other for gold. They right

they all want gold. Now why do they want

gold? Somehow 600 BC everybody agreed

that gold was valuable and gold was

money even though they could not agree

on their gods, their cultures. They

couldn't agree on anything else. But

what's fascinating is is the book takes

it for granted that gold is money. Gold

has been uh has been valued by thousands

and thousands of different cultures all

killing each other, speaking different

languages, worshiping different gods,

but they're all fighting over gold. Uh

and so gold emerged as the as the

primary monetary metal, not silver, not

bronze, gold.

For the for 300 years, if you look at

the 17th century, the 18th century, the

19th century, even into most the 20th

century, the world revolved around

goldbacked

credit. Okay, we issued bonds backed by

gold. The British bonds, the you know,

sovereign debt in Britain in 1770

was a goldbacked bond. You know, in the

Rothschild's times, they had gold back

bonds, right? The French bonds were

goldbacked, the German bonds, the

Austrian bonds, the Spanish bonds

goldbacked. The, you know, all of the

credit instruments were to a certain

degree backed by gold and they would go

off the gold standard and back on the

gold standard. But this idea of

goldbacked credit goes from the 1700s to

the 1800s to the 1900s all the way

through 1971.

And so we have hundreds and hundreds of

years of goldbacked credit instruments.

Then we have to wait and and Satoshi

invents Bitcoin and we fight over what

is it and you know no one can decide.

And now in the year 2025

we have consensus that Bitcoin is

digital gold. So on C the CNBC talking

heads agree on it. Everyone in the

crypto economy agrees Bitcoin is the

monetary foundation. It's digital gold.

You know, what are the other cryptos?

Maybe they're digital silver. Maybe

they're digital copper. Maybe they're

digital palladium or digital platinum or

digital silicon,

you know, but the history of Western

civilization isn't based on copper

bonds, right? And and there was

experiment with silver, but silver bonds

didn't really fly. It was it primarily

uh we we settled upon one metallic

monetary network and now we're settling

on one crypto monetary network. So

what's what is a Bitcoin treasury

company? Well, there are two profound

paradigm shifts. One, Bitcoin, digital

capital, right? Digital gold never

existed before. You could argue that

it's only been nine months since the

entire world agreed that Bitcoin was

digital gold. Okay, that means you can

now issue digital backed digital gold

back credit or digital credit. If

Bitcoin is digital gold is digital

capital and that means that any credit

instrument backed by Bitcoin becomes

digital credit. what we're talking

about, you know, is, you know, if you

look at it myopically, you're just

thinking, well, how are these companies

helping Bitcoin? If you look at it more

granally, the real point is how are

these companies transforming the equity

market and the credit market.

If if I create a company that buys

Bitcoin and I accumulate a billion

dollars of Bitcoin, I have a billion

dollars of digital capital. What can I

do with it? I can issue digital credit.

Now, I want you to think about this for

a bit. If I had a billion dollars of

gold, I'm a gold bank, a goldsmith. I

have a billion dollars of gold. I issue

a $100 million of gold back credit, gold

notes.

>> And then they thought, well, why not 500

million? And then they thought, why not

a billion dollars of gold notes? And you

know where the story goes next? They're

like, well, why not $2 billion of gold

notes? Why not 10 billion? Pretty soon

you had $5 of gold back credit for $1 of

gold. Okay? And the entire modern

banking system grew out of that issuance

of credit. And the credit started from

gold. And the what was the strongest

credit? One for one backed,

right? One for one backed would be the

strongest credit. Okay. So that means a

a billion dollars of Bitcoin

could in theory be used to issue a

billion dollars of Bitcoin back credit

that would be one for one backed.

>> Okay. Now what's that displacing? It's

displacing mortgage credit. Credit based

upon retail houses, residential houses,

commercial credit. That's credit based

on commercial real estate. A building

that's half empty,

>> right? or it's displacing uh corporate

credit, credit based upon the cash flows

of a company or it's displacing,

you know, fiat credit, credit that's

based on the promise of a government to

print more credit, right? That is the

status quo. And how big is that?

Hundreds of trillions of dollars of

those 20th century credit instruments.

And when you understand Bitcoin treasury

company, if you know the very compelling

business model is I accumulate a bunch

of Bitcoin capital through equity, then

I begin to issue credit instruments

against it. And those could be bondlike

instruments, they could be convertible

bond instruments, they could be

preferred instruments, they could be

convertible preferred instruments, they

could be variable floating preferred. So

there are all sorts of types of credit

that can be issued against the

underlying digital gold.

When you issue that credit, you create

leverage on the capital. And when you

create leverage on the capital, the

equity of the company issuing the credit

becomes digital equity. And that equity

can outperform the Bitcoin. So if I want

to create a company that's going to

perform 2x Bitcoin, I take the Bitcoin,

I issue Bitcoin back credit against the

Bitcoin. I issue digital credit backed

by digital capital. I create digital

equity and the digital equity

outperforms the underlying capital

asset.

Now that's a profound idea. Who are

those companies competing against? Not

really each other. What they're

competing against is the existing credit

instruments in the capital market where

they're going to issue credit or the

existing equity instruments in the

capital market where they're issuing

equity. They're all just using Bitcoin

as that leverage or as that base, that

monetary base in order to create better

equity and better credit. So that being

the case,

you're going to you're going to see an

explosion of these companies. And if

they understand

what I just said, if they if they

understand it, then you know it stands

to reason, let's take uh Brazil. I

create a company, you know, OBTC or

Orange Bitcoin in Brazil. They're

creating the first pure digital equity

in the Brazilian market and their their

base is Bitcoin and asset going up 55% a

year in dollars and they'll be competing

against other equities in Brazil that

aren't going up 55% a year in dollars,

right? Think about a company with a 55%

growth rate being launched in Brazil. Is

the equity valuable? Sure it is. Who are

they competing against? every company in

Brazil, right? And then when they issue

credit instruments, they'll be competing

against every credit instrument in

Brazil. When you go to Japan, MetaPlanet

is issuing digital equity in Japan. Who

they compete against? Every Japanese

company. Bitcoin's growing 55% a year.

What's the growth rate of the average

Japanese equity? You know, 1/5 that,

120th that. Then when they start issuing

credit, you know, meta yield, they'll be

issuing credit, you know, against

Japanese credit instruments. The

Japanese risk-free rate or the corporate

bond rate for yield in Japan is like 50

basis points. If you offer 500 basis

points, you are 10 times better than the

thing they're issuing. So, there's place

for monsters, you know, for mega

companies, right? uh MetaPlanet,

you know, won't just be the most

valuable hotel company in the world.

They may be the most valuable company in

all of Japan, right? They can create uh

and by the way, they're they're small

compared to us, but the point is they're

not competing against us.

>> They're competing against Japanese

equity and Japanese credit in the JPY

currency, and that's a distinct capital

market. That's why it makes sense to

launch a Bitcoin company in Sweden, in

Norway, in the Netherlands, in France,

in the UK, in Brazil, in Japan, in

Canada, and the US. Now, having said all

that, right, all those capital markets,

they're waiting for a a mega champion

that and and the mega ones, the ones

that that are pure digital credit

issuers, they could be a 100x.

They could be, you know, they're ones

you can take a 10 million or a $1

million company to a billion to 10

billion to a hundred billion. And if

it's a big capital market like the UK or

Germany or Japan, you can go to a

trillion, right?

That doesn't mean there can't be 10

other companies in Japan that also

follow Metaplanet and they they all 10x

>> because let's take the US. We've issued

uh digital credit instruments in the US.

We've issued, you know,

101 12 billion dollars of convertible

bonds. We have about 8 billion

outstanding now. We've issued $6 billion

or so of preferred credit. You know what

is that compared to the US credit

market? The US US dollar credit market

is you know 100 trillion.

Oh,

>> so one trillion is 1% 100 billion is

1%.

So what is 10 billion?

>> Yeah,