Watch CNBC's full interview with Strategy's Michael Saylor from Bitcoin 2025

I'm McKenzie Sealos here with CNBC

business news at Bitcoin 2025 in Las

Vegas joined by strategy chairman

Michael Sailor. Thank you for joining

us. Thank you for having me. A lot of

announcements this week focus on

corporate Bitcoin treasuries. You've got

uh GameStop announcing a half a billion

dollar position. Trump Media looking to

build a $2.5 billion stake. What do you

make of this new trend that we're seeing

and are they doing it right? No force on

earth can stop an idea whose time has

come and maybe the most pleasant

surprise over the past few months has

been the explosion of energy and

enthusiasm around Bitcoin treasury

companies. Uh the Trump media

announcement came out of the blue. I

didn't, you know, know that was coming,

but that was an incredible courageous,

aggressive, and intelligent move on

their part. Um, you know, uh, the

Nakamoto announcement was a pleasant

surprise. I remember speaking with David

saying, you know, you're doing these

conferences and if you believe in

Bitcoin, you ought to raise a lot of

money and buy a lot of Bitcoin. He said,

you know, you're, you know, you got a

point there. And I was just very, very

pleasantly surprised that he went and

did it. Um I think uh also Soft Bank,

Tether and Caner investing into the 21

announcement is great because it brought

it brought a huge amount of capital from

SoftBank into the Bitcoin market. You

know, it's like bringing uh Masan in

into the ecosystem is good. I think it's

great to have Tether supporting a

USlisted company. Um, I see, you know,

MetaPlanet was a $10 million company and

a few months ago it was a billion dollar

company and in the last week or two it's

been flirting with a four or five

billion dollar company. Most successful

stock in the stock market. You know, the

blockchain group in France has exploded

out of the blocks and and they're just

growing incredibly fast. Um, and then

everywhere I go at this conference,

someone says, you know, I'm working on a

Bitcoin treasury company in Hong Kong.

I'm doing this thing in Korea. I've got

this thing I'm working on in Abu Dhabi.

We're going to do this in the Middle

East. You know, we've got this in the

UK. We're ready to launch one in Kenna.

We're launching one in Norway. You know,

we're doing this in Germany, you know,

and I just think it's awesome. It's

great for Bitcoin. Every one of those

companies, Brazil, there's a there's an

explosion of interest right now. Every

one of those companies is bringing

Bitcoin to another global capital

market. They're solving the compliance

issues, the capital markets issues, the

registrations issues, they solve the

political issues. They're all

ambassadors for Bitcoin, planting the

orange

flag everywhere on Earth. And invariably

it starts with this is a venture and

then it becomes wow this is a very

successful venture. I never made this

much money and then it becomes so tell

me about the Bitcoin thing again. How

did I make that money? And then pretty

soon you have an entirely new generation

of capitalists that have discovered

Bitcoin is digital capital and maybe the

most explosive idea of the era. Why do

you think that Wall Street hasn't

responded as positively to the

announcements from Trump Media and

GameStop? GameStop shares are down 17%

since they made the announcement. Trump

Media shares down 22%. Seems to be

pretty much the exact opposite reaction

that strategy investors have had. Well,

you know, when uh GameStop announced

that they were uh going to consider a

Bitcoin strategy, their stock jumped 50%

and their volume 10xed. And then on the

strength of that, they went to the

market and they did a $1.5 billion

convertible preferred stock, sorry, a

convertible bond, which was

extraordinarily successful. So they uh

they had raised $ 1.5 billion. Maybe the

market wanted them to buy more Bitcoin.

Uh and so, you know, maybe that's it. I

think with uh Trump Media, they did a

very big capital raise, but a large

component of that was a convertible

bond. I think it's important to note, be

sophisticated about this. When you're

selling a convertible bond, 70% of the

face value of the bond is sold short as

equity. So the convertible arbitrageers

are always arving the equity against the

bond. And in the, you know, in the short

term, you're going to see if a company

says, I'm doing a billion dollar

secondary stock issue, the stock's going

to trade down. All of these things are

will be short-term dynamics. Over the

long term, uh, Bitcoin on the balance

sheet has proven to be extraordinarily

popular, driving increase in liquidity

of the meta planets of the similars. It,

you know, it's driven the increase in

liquidity of GameStop. It will drive an

increase in a benefit to the rest. It

might take you know three months, six

months, sometimes you know perhaps even

a year but you know uh the strategy is

very sound and all of these companies

will benefit from it and you pioneered

this strategy. I mean your balance sheet

is worth north of $62 billion worth of

Bitcoin. Is there a limit to how many

Bitcoin you can own or do you have a

fixed number in mind? No, we'll keep

buying Bitcoin. Uh we expect the price

of Bitcoin will keep going up. We think

it will get exponentially harder to buy

Bitcoin. Uh but we will work

exponentially more efficiently to buy

Bitcoin. You know, it used to be we

thought raising 200 million was

challenge and then raising two billion

was a challenge and then in the fourth

quarter we announced we were going to

raise 21 billion. And so we're getting

better. Bitcoin is 10 times higher, 10

times more valuable than when we started

on this journey. And the entire

ecosystem is growing.

But I think uh our strategy is very

simple. It's uh issue credit instruments

like preferred stocks uh that that offer

yield in dollars or issue some portion

of Bitcoin upside with some downside

protection that will create leverage for

our common equity. And then people will

buy the equity or the derivatives of the

equity or the options in the equity

because they want higher vol higher

leverage Bitcoin and people will buy the

preferred stocks because they want lower

volatility, lower risk, lower leverage,

guaranteed returns and we will straddle

that you know and and there's no reason

that can't just continue to scale as the

ecosystem scales. Now, the executive

order that created a strategic Bitcoin

reserve uh really put the task of

looking at a budget neutral way to

acquire Bitcoin into the into the future

into the hands of both Treasury and

Commerce. Are you either advising

members of the White House cabinet or do

you have ideas about how they might do

that? I think it's an incredible cabinet

uh a lot of Bitcoin believers in the

cabinet. Uh and there's a lot of good

ideas circulating in the in the

industry. The Bitcoin Policy Institute

created a bunch of them. Even the

cabinet members have mentioned uh quite

a number of them. It's above my pay

grade to decide what the US government

will do and when they will do it. But I

do think there is an extraordinary

opportunity for the United States. If I

was advising the United States, I would

say, you know, all the capital in the

world is going to flow into cyerspace

into the Bitcoin network. It's in the

best interest of the United States to

own as much of it they can as they can

before everybody else in the world

realizes what's happening. I do wonder

whether the underlying thesis of Bitcoin

has fundamentally changed. It used to be

that you don't want it to be tied to any

one government or any one central bank

and now we're seeing the US want

expressing this desire to become the

crypto capital of the United of the

world to have all mining centralized in

the United States. Does that disrupt

what Bitcoin was meant to be? If you

have all these governments now looking

to stockpile the token, I think Bitcoin

is a manifestation of very healthy

competition. So as the US expresses

support in Bitcoin, we have the

Pakistanis announcing a strategic

Bitcoin reserve that inspires the

Emiratis, it inspires the Middle

Easterners to also begin to accumulate

Bitcoin. It accelerates Bitcoin adoption

in Brazil. It accelerates adoption in in

Mexico. It accelerates the moves of

corporations. Eric Adams standing up on

stage and announcing his intent to issue

bit bonds for New York City. That's

going to inspire Miami and inspire LA

and inspire San Francisco. It's, you

know, so it's healthy competition.

There's there's more than enough to go

around. The network is very

anti-fragile and uh there's a balance of

power here that's created because the

more actors that come into the

ecosystem, the more diverse, the more

distributed the the protocol is, the

more incorruptible it becomes, the more

robust it becomes. And so that means the

more trustworthy it becomes to larger

economic actors who otherwise would be

afraid uh to put all of their economic

weight on the network. Now the

president's meme token has attracted a

lot of controversy. Uh many people argue

that it's undermined a lot of progress

on Capitol Hill with respect to some of

those crypto bills that are now being

held up uh with Senate Democrats

specifically citing that meme token.

What do you make of this dynamic? I

think the best future for the crypto

economy, for the crypto industry, and

and what the US should do if they want

to create a hundred trillion dollar

digital assets industry is in law. They

should define four new asset classes.

The digital commodity, that's what

Bitcoin is, an asset without an issuer.

There's only going to be, you know, one

king commodity. There might be half a

dozen over the next decade. the digital

currency that would be a stable coin

bank one for one with US currency

equivalents in a regulated bank like

circle. Then the digital security that

would be a tokenized stock or bond

circulating 24/7 365 at the speed of

light everywhere in the world like

digital Apple stock or tokenized you

know spy. Uh and then the final would be

a digital token. A digital token would

be uh a tokenized fan club, a tokenized

ticket, a tokenized uh membership of

some sort. And there's 40 million small

businesses in this country. And if you

want to issue a token, you should be

able to issue a token in four hours. And

there ought to be an issuer. And you

ought to say what the token does. It

ought to have some digital utility or

real world utility. But it should stop

short of offering security uh financial

utility. It shouldn't give you

liquidation preferences to a going

concern. It shouldn't give you

guaranteed cash flows for 30 years like

a bond. It ought to be Joe Rogan token

or Katy Perry token. And if Katy Perry

wants to offer a token that offers her

VIP fans the ability to book tickets 48

hours in advance through a concert tour,

they buy it. It would have utility. It

wouldn't be a security. and and uh if

she didn't go on concert for the rest of

her life, the token would crash. And if

her concerts were great, the token would

fly. And when you look at Trumpcoin,

it's a memecoin. That means a token that

has no utility. How many people can sell

a token with no utility? Only a handful

of people will do it, but some people

can sell a meme coin. and and if they

talk about it and if the Kardashians

want to talk about it or if someone Joe

Rogan wants to sell something, maybe

people will buy it. I happen to believe

that there's a place for all four of

those assets. I think that the the role

of a token is to give access to the

capital markets to 40 million small

businesses that are locked out of the

capital markets. But I also think that

tokens would allow you to create

innovative new business models. And if

Joe Rogan said, "I'm going to sell Joe

Rogan token and I'm going to give you

content that only you can access if you

buy the token, if it's a good product,

and if he wants to monetize it like

that, as long as he's not lying,

cheating, or stealing his customers,

he'll be fine." And then I think it's

pretty clear that tokens ought to be

subject to consumer protection law. If

you set up an eBay account and then you

sell 47,000 tickets and then don't

deliver any, that's fraud. And likewise,

if if you commit fraud on a token, then

you ought to be subject to consumer

fraud, wire fraud. And I think the

issuer should be liable for the damage

they do civily and criminally. But, you

know, that's no different than driving a

car across the city. You don't need to

wait four years and spend $40 million on

SEC lawyers to drive your car across the

city. Everybody ought to have freedom to

do business. And so right now we're in

this intermediate period where there is

no market structure act there. There is

not in law the definition of a digital

currency, digital token, digital

security, digital commodity.

If we want the world, if we want the

industry to grow by a factor of a

hundred or a thousand. If we want to

export, you want to export the the

currency of the United States to the

world, you need digital currency. If you

want to export the securities of the

capital market, the Apple stock, the

ETFs, the bonds to the world, you need

digital securities. If you want to

export all of the ideas and raise

capital for all of the small midsize

businesses, you need digital tokens. And

if you want to export the values of the

United States, which are sovereignty,

trust, sound money,

freedom, you want to export Bitcoin.

Bitcoin is American value. So, you're

going to export that digital commodity.

I think it's very clear to me there's a

lot of work we need to do on Capitol

Hill to put that into law. If we put it

into law, then these debates and this

anxiety will go away. I think the most

important thing I say, McKenzie, is it's

not enough to write a thousand pages of

law that the lawyers think you can

litigate for 20 years. You have to

define the token so that one billion

people in 5 seconds say, "Oh, that's a

token, Joe Rogan token." I get it. And

you have to define the currency so

people say, "Oh, that's a digital

currency that's backed by dollars." I

get it. If a billion people don't

understand what I just said in 5

seconds, it won't work. And once they

understand it, they'll be like, "Oh,

it's a meme coin. Anybody can sell it.

It's just a token. It's not a security.

It's not a commodity. It's not a

currency. You know, it's a token." And

outside of classification, do you think

it's a good idea to add an amendment

where you would bar senior officials,

including the president, from benefiting

either directly or indirectly from

stable coin related ventures or token

related ventures? Do you think it's good

to introduce that kind of imposed? I

think the important point to to note is

Bitcoin is a commodity, an asset without

an issuer. And that means that everybody

in government, whether you're the

president or a senator or congress, they

can own a bar of gold, they can own a

house, they can have a chicken, they can

have farmland, they can have timber,

soybeans, a barrel of oil, and they can

have some Bitcoin. That's just property

and a commodity. I think that issuers

should have

responsibilities. The issuers that issue

currencies should be regulated by the by

the banking regulators and FDIC because

they're creating currencies. The issuers

of security should be regulated by the

SEC because if you're going to print a

hundred billion dollars of Apple stock,

you should have to have the Apple stock

and you should have that liability.

Issuers of tokens should be responsible

for for any damage they do through

fraud. If you lie about what you've

done, right? If if you're untruthful,

then you should be uh liable under

consumer protection laws and any other

applicable law. And I would say that

should be applied to anybody. Now, since

January, we've seen the SEC, the OC, the

FDIC, the Fed all roll back guidance

that stood in the way of crypto adoption

here in the US. You've been here since

Monday. We've seen the White House

descend on Las Vegas. Everyone from

White House crypto and AISR David Saxs

to the vice president. What kind of

conversations are you having with them

about what you want to see next?

I think um what's really important going

forward is for the government to move in

such a way that they make clear that

Bitcoin is a legitimate asset. It is

digital gold. It is a digital commodity

and they need to educate the world that

this is not a security. It is not a

token. It is not a collectible. It is

not a

currency. It is a digital commodity.

because we got to $2 trillion in market

cap without the support of the banking

system, without the support of the

insurance companies, without the support

of the credit rating agencies, without

the support of mainstream media, with

most of the power structure of the

world, you know, looking a scance at

this. So I think that that for Bitcoin

to go to the next level and provide the

prosperity that it can provide to the US

and to the world in the world needs to

be educated and then all of these

traditional 20th century financial

structures. They need to embrace and and

at least treat this as a neutral asset.

This week, for example, the Department

of Labor rolled back guidance

discouraging people from allowing

uh allowing employees to put Bitcoin in

a in a retirement plan, right? And and

for a while, we were worried we were

going to be investigated by the

Department of Labor if we offered our

own employees the ability to elect to

buy Bitcoin. So, I think there's been a

lot of discrimination on the part of all

of the 20th century traditional finance

complex. And I think the government has

a leadership role uh to bring them into

the 21st century. Beyond that in the

entire digital asset space as I said the

big three items is the government needs

to uh memorialize in law digital

currencies, digital securities and

digital tokens. that will go a long way

toward alleviating the debate, the

anxiety, the

confrontation and um and the con, you

know, and the conflict. It will also

accelerate the investment and the

development of all of these digital

assets by a factor of 10 to 100. And the

US will emerge as the world's digital

banker, the world's digital capital

market, the world's digital innovator,

right? and and that'll be good for

America, for the American people. And

ultimately, the world wants these

things, too. They're frozen. Everybody

else in the world is paralyzed and

they're frozen. They can't innovate

until Washington DC defines tokens,

currencies, and commodities, and

securities. And then every one of our

allies will all lurch forward and you

will see an extraordinary Cambrian

explosion of digital innovation which

will take the United States and the

world in general into the 21st century.

Now Michael, I've been covering this

event for the last five years, last five

consecutive years. You and I have spoken

on the sideline of this event and it's

really evolved from being very Bitcoin

to I mean this week we had quite a few

announcements around stable coins. How

do you gauge this convergence of Bitcoin

with other corners of the crypto

ecosystem? Do you think that we're

moving in the right direction here? I

think that the industry was somewhat

fragmented and the Bitcoin community was

was uh bifurcated from the crypto

community and I think that what's

happened over the past uh 6 months maybe

12 months you could you could date it

from November 5th has been an

extraordinary

uh extraordinary coming together of the

entire crypto industry the the crypto

innovators the stable coin industry

industry, the Bitcoin industry, the

traditional finance seers on Wall

Street, you know, and politicians,

they've all come together and converge

with a a common vision. And uh and I

think what people are realizing now is

that what's best for the world and

what's best for the industry is a

commodity, Bitcoin, and and the use case

is store of value, long-term capital, a

currency, the digital dollar. The use

case is medium of exchange, right, for

everybody on Earth. Then you've got the

security. The use case is to create

capital markets innovation and velocity.

So you know how do you self-custody

Apple stock in India on Sunday afternoon

right and move it to Singapore right and

then finally digital tokens and the use

case is to raise capital and to create

compelling new products. I think two

years ago I thought there was just the

industry consisted of well I'll let

Bitcoin grudgingly live and I hate

everything else. That was the status quo

a year and a half ago. And I think uh we

have moved into a much more enlightened

uh political climate where now people

are starting to have calm, measured,

constructive discussions. Like I can see

like I can see why people in Turkey or

Argentina might want dollars in their

wallet. And if you're a Bitcoin maxi,

you don't have to be angry at them for

wanting dollars. And maybe there's a use

of that. And then if you're a dollar

person, you're like, I can see how

Bitcoin could be a savings account for

people that actually have enough

dollars. And if you're a small midsize

business and there's 400 million of

them, you know, they're starting to see

like, well, maybe there's a path where I

can issue a token and get the money and

use the money to build my business. I

shouldn't have to be ashamed or

embarrassed about the fact that I need

to raise capital to grow my business.

There's nothing nothing to be

embarrassed about there. But two years

ago, the status was, well, if you're not

a commodity, we're putting you in jail

or shutting you down. And so, people in

the crypto industry had to go through

this kabuki dance, this fear of, well,

I'm going to be a commodity because I'm

either a commodity or I'm dead. Well,

the truth of the matter is they didn't

want to be a commodity. They didn't want

to be the next Bitcoin. They wanted to

raise money to grow their business in an

ethically sound, transparent way, but

there was no regulatory path to do it.

Now people are starting to see that,

well, maybe there's an ethical path to

sell a token. I don't have to hate

Bitcoin anymore. And the Bitcoiners

think, well, you know, now we can live

and be part of the ecosystem. Maybe I

don't have to hate the stable coin

people or I hate the crypto token people

or hate the crypto exchanges. And

collectively the entire industry I think

understands they're all better off and

together. We're all stronger together.

If the country is going to overcome its

challenges and if the industry is going

to overcome its challenges, we're going

to do it by creating hundreds of

trillions of dollars of value. And the

big unlock here is not technology. The

big unlock is a regulatory uh

breakthrough which is define a digital

token, a digital security and a digital

currency. The industry will grow by a

factor of a hundred, you know, who knows

what to 100 trillion or more. Bitcoin

will march into the hundreds of

trillions. The nation will benefit. The

industry will benefit. The world will

benefit. That's our path forward.

Michael, thank you. That's Michael

Sailor, strategy chairman, joining us

here at Bitcoin 2025 in Las