Michael Saylor: 'I Expect Bitcoin Will Appreciate 30% a Year for the Next 20 Years'

I expect Bitcoin it will appreciate

about 30% a year for the next 20 years.

And I think that if you look at it as an

asset, the volatility is going to click

down. It's gone from 80 to 70 to 60 to

50. The V is going to go from 50 to 45

to 40 to 35 to 30 to 25. It's going to

grind down towards something which is

50% more volatile than the VIX.

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Hey everyone, you're watching Coindesk

and I'm Jen Sassy. Coindes 2025 most

influential list is officially out and

our next guest defined the year by

turning the Bitcoin treasury from a

niche idea into a global phenomenon.

We're joined now by Micro Strategies

Michael Sailor. Michael, great to have

you on.

>> Yeah, happy to be here.

>> I got to stop saying Micro Strategy. It

is strategy, but congratulations anyways

on making CoinDesk's most influential

list. Let's just start here. I mean,

just a few years ago, people were

calling you crazy for uh building the

largest Bitcoin treasury in the world.

From where we're sitting now, I mean,

just reflect on those last few years for

me.

>> Yeah, I think uh you know, when I

started on this journey, I was looking

for digital gold. I was looking for a

digital capital network and it looked

like Bitcoin was that network. But of

course uh five years ago not everyone in

the world agreed with me and uh and we

saw it as the best idea and so we just

kept investing. I think we acquired

Bitcoin more than 87 times and you know

we rode it up and then down and then up

and then down and then up again. I think

we uh we saw some nice breakthroughs in

2024 with the approval of the ETF in

January and then in the November

election cycle. We got a very pro-

crypto and pro- Bitcoin administration.

And then uh in January of this year, we

got an upgrade to the accounting for all

digital assets. And uh now we're moving

in the in the phase of banking

acceptance and we're starting to get

banks that are willing to extend credit

on the ETFs like IBIT. And now there

many like Schwab and City have announced

they're going to start to custody crypto

assets like Bitcoin. And so I I think

the last five years have been quite the

journey, but and I couldn't have

predicted everything that would have

happened along the way, but I'm pleased

with the outcome so far.

>> You know, Michael, it really does seem

like the space is making a lot of

progress for a lot of the reasons you

just mentioned. But folks maybe who have

gotten into Bitcoin in the last few

years, a lot of them are asking me,

they're wondering, you know, there's

such institutional support, there's such

support at a regulatory level, but yet

Bitcoin is still such a volatile asset.

What would you say to those folks?

>> You know, when I got involved, yeah, I I

started paying attention in March of

2020, and if you remember what happened

in March of 2020, I think Bitcoin traded

from 10,000 down to 4,000 in one day. It

was terrifying, but all the markets were

terrifying. And at that point, I think

looking back, Bitcoin had a history of

more than a 100 V and more than 100%

ARR.

And uh later that year, it was sort of

an 80 v asset with an 80% ARR. And then

every year for the past five years, it's

gone it sort of decelerated. It was a 70

V, 70 AR, and then 60 60. And then uh

and then after about 5 years it looks

like about 50 V 50 ARR

and uh so 50 V is still very volatile.

It's still three times the S&P

volatility but uh believe it or not it

is actually seasoning and it is

institutionalizing

at a reasonable rate if you just click

off the volatilities in in 10%

increments.

You know, a lot of the people who are

starting their Bitcoin treasuries have

told me in interviews like this one that

they talk to you. It's not a competitive

thing that they get advice from you.

When you're talking to CEOs and CFOs

from companies who are considering

Bitcoin Treasury strategies,

what kinds of questions are they asking?

How has the conversation shifted over

the last few years?

>> Well, you know, early on, uh, there was

the question of, you know, accounting,

right? we had indefinite and tangible

accounting. So, so what are the

accounting issues? What are the legal

issues? Uh what are the regulatory

issues? Can I take the company public?

Uh what should I how do I deal with

investors? And so those were those were

challenging issues. But I think in the

last 12 months, we've now had 200 plus

companies uh put some kind of Bitcoin on

their balance sheet and probably were

300 plus with some crypto asset on their

balance sheet. So we've gone from it

being just a handful of companies to

being hundreds of companies and and so

now we're really evolving not not uh

we're not dealing with the question of

can I actually hold a digital asset or

is Bitcoin capital can I hold it but

rather what should I do with the capital

once I get it? What what do I do if I

have a billion dollars worth of Bitcoin?

How do I create value with the billion

dollars of Bitcoin other than just

holding it? And that ushers in the

entire digital credit conversation. I

mean there are a lot of things you can

do with capital to to uh generate

shareholder value. But but we become big

enthusiasts into digital credit. So most

of my conversations discuss how do you

create digital credit uh collateralized

by digital capital.

>> Well talk to me a little bit about

digital credit for our audience that's

watching. What does that mean

practically?

So if you look at Bitcoin, you're like,

okay, this is a 50 V asset and it's got

50% ARR returns annual over five years.

And everybody kind of knows if you're

going to own that, you need to hold it

for more than four years. And I would

say uh the natural duration is 10 years.

So, Bitcoin represents a financial

solution to someone that's going to hold

the product for 10 years and endure a 50

volatility roller coaster in order to

get really good returns. The world's

full of investors that if if I was

selling a product like a car and I said,

"This is a electrolying hover car uh and

you have to buy it now, but you don't

get to use it for 10 years." It wouldn't

be an easy consumer product. I have this

can of Coca-Cola. It's going to taste

really good, but you got to put it in

your refrigerator for four years and

then you can take it out and drink it.

Well, I mean, there's a lot of people

that want instant gratification. It's

like, give me the car that drives now.

Give me give me the fa fast food, right?

So, how do you actually strip the

volatility, strip the duration, and and

compress the performance into something

that a mere mortal can appreciate? And

so the idea of digital credit is most

people they don't want to wait 10 years

uh you know to get an insanely good

return. What they want is say a bank

account that pays 10%. Without the

volatility like I put my money in the

bank they pay me 10% that's better than

2% or 1% or 4%.

So in order to in order to create

something which is which has got the

volatility stripped off of it and got

the risk stripped off of it and it's got

the yield uh distilled and you convert

it into the currency of choice like I

live in Japan. I want 8% I want a bank

account that pays me 8% and yen with a

stable value. that would be a digital

credit instrument in Japan and that's

something like say a MetPanet could

create and what we've created is

products like STRC which is a treasury

credit instrument in US dollars and um

if I have $10 billion of capital Bitcoin

then that's going to be very volatile

you're going to live on that roller

coaster and you got to hold it for four

years or longer and again ideally 10

years but I can take $1 billion dollar

of my capital structure.

I can create some credit instrument

which is 10x over collateralized

and I can sell that in the market and I

can offer say 10% dividend yield and I'm

going to fund the dividend yield with

the first 10% of the return of the

Bitcoin. So I sell the billion dollars

of credit, I buy a billion dollars of

Bitcoin. Bitcoin is going to do this. is

going to be a roller coaster for 10

years. The credit investor doesn't want

that. The retiree doesn't want that, but

the equity investor and the company can

absorb that. We we would like to collect

uh 30% and pay 10. And we're willing to

stomach days where we're down a lot or

we're up a lot and smooth it over a over

a decade. and uh the credit investor is

like a 20some in grad school or they're

retiree or they're a fixed income

investor. So uh what we're doing as a

treasury company is we are swapping uh

stability and yield in dollars or it

could be in euros. We just we just

created a digital credit instrument that

pays uh yield in euros. we're swapping

that in order to get the capital uh to

buy Bitcoin, which is digital capital.

And and so and at the end of the day,

what you do is you create an equity

instrument for equity investors that

want amplified Bitcoin that they want

more volatility and they want more

performance. And then you create credit

for credit investors that want damped

Bitcoin. They want uh you know they want

if I'm 10x over collateralized I've

stripped 90% of the risk away right?

Bitcoin has to fall by 90% and I'm still

collateralized. So I've stripped 90% of

the risk away. I've stripped 90% of the

volatility away. I'm not giving you the

30%. I'm giving you the 10%.

But that's totally fine because if you

walk down the street and you ask a 100

people uh do you want to buy a really

killer complicated digital capital asset

you got to hold for a decade uh to get

you know insane returns or do you want

to buy a bank account that gives you 10%

without that volatility. Most people

want the 10% bank account powered by

digital capital rather than the 30% ARR

on the volatility roller coaster. And so

we're what the digital credit idea is

you serve you serve all constituencies.

But by the way, there's three. If you

don't trust anybody, if you just want to

own the crypto asset, the commodity, you

buy Bitcoin. And then if you're an

equity investor and you want to buy a

company that that's on rocket, it's a

rocket ship or the jet engine on, you

know, or the roller coaster, then you

buy the equity. And if you're the credit

investor and you want a comfortable

retirement and social security,

then you buy the credit and that way

everybody's getting what they want out

of this trade.

Michael, I want to I want to look to

2026 and maybe even beyond with you. I

mean, how does the Bitcoin Treasury

company evolve? And I don't mean just

yours, but you know, we're seeing more

and more corporates look at holding

Bitcoin on their balance sheet. Is this

just going to be something that every

company does to diversify or is there

more of a strategy there? Are we going

to see some kind of consolidation?

What's that future you're building

towards? I I think the most excit There

are a lot of ways you can create value

from capital. For example, banks use

their capital to create consumer credit

and commercial credit. Insurance

companies use capital to create

innovative insurance, you know, life

insurance, health insurance, car

insurance, reinsurance, different and

different types of insurance programs.

But a treasury company like a a Bitcoin

treasury company or a digital uh

treasury company,

the most compelling thing is to create

digital credit. And right now you've got

three companies that have been leading

the way. Our company has created uh five

digital credit instruments and probably

the flagship is stretch uh a variable

rate monthly preferred credit. Think of

it as treasury credit or a high yield

bank account.

Strive uh created a product called SATA

SATA which is uh sort of similar to

stretch. It is also a treasury credit

instrument that pays uh that pays these

dividends. Uh they're rock dividends,

return of capital dividends just like uh

stretch pays these return of capital

dividends. Um and return of capital

dividends are very cool because they're

tax deferred. You get paid the dividend.

there's no there's no capital gains tax

or income tax on it. You just reduce the

basis in the instrument and uh so you're

getting a huge amount of cash flow. And

then there's a third company,

MetaPlanet. And MetaPlanet just uh

created a digital credit instrument

called Mercury, which was convertible

preferred. It's very similar to what

what we did first called Strike STRK.

and Metapanet announced Mars uh

Metaplanet adjustable rate security that

will be a treasury credit instrument in

yen. So you have those three examples of

companies that are creating adjustable

rate digital credit instruments,

treasury credit instruments, all powered

by Bitcoin. They're all going to pay

much higher dividend yields than your

money market or your bank account could.

uh they all work well for the treasury

company because if you're a digital

treasury company, you want to generate

BTC yield for your equity investors. So

what what is the motor to create

shareholder value if you're the treasury

company, right? And the motor is to sell

digital credit. When you, you know, when

you sell $100 million of digital credit

and you buy $100 million worth of

Bitcoin,

you're uh creating a $100 million

Bitcoin gain for the equity investors

upfront without any shareholder

dilution. And then you're creating a

high yield bank account uh for the

credit investor via that swap. And

you're using the digital capital as the

collateral in order to strip the risk

and the volatility off of the credit

which then makes it appealing to the

riskadverse credit investor who would

never ever want to buy the underlying

commodity. They just couldn't handle the

volatility and there's you know there's

no yield in Bitcoin and there's a lot of

V in Bitcoin and the world's full of

investors that don't want the V and they

do want the yield. So, I think um I'm

not going to tell you what every

treasury company or what every digital

asset holder should do because in theory

you could accumulate $10 billion of of

Bitcoin and you could write insurance

policies with it or you could be, you

know, you could also loan out the

Bitcoin, you know, to another

counterparty. So there are there is a

banking model, there's an insurance

model, but I I personally believe the

most compelling business model is the

treasury model. And the treasury model

is I raise capital and then I uh create

credit and I sell the credit. I sell

public credit. I I sell an STRK or an

STRC via an IPO, a NASDAQ. It's publicly

listed. It trades like STRC is trading

hundreds of millions of dollars a day

and it's a global credit instrument that

provides liquidity and yield and lower

volatility and less risk to a different

set of of uh customers. And I think I

think uh not to wax philosophical on

this but if you're asking if you think

what's the perfect product, what you

know is the iPhone the perfect product?

iPhone's pretty good product. that made

Apple a trillion dollar company. But I

think the perfect product is I give you

a treasury credit instrument that pays

you 8% more than the risk-free rate in

the currency that uh that your expenses

or your obligations come in. So if I

give you 8% in yen or 10% in euros or

10% or 12% in dollars, then I'm giving

you this massive high yield bank

account. You know, you don't need to be

able to read. You know, a three-year-old

would get value from it. An 80 year old

would get value from it. If you're in a

coma, you would get value from it,

right? Your unborn children will get

value from it. The trustees, the

foundation, it it pretty much is the

gift that keeps giving, right? It's such

a good product. There's that the

reaction of anybody would be, well,

what's the catch, right? And the catch

is well you need a dynamo to power the

the dividend and that's digital capital

Bitcoin. And then you need to you you

need to trust the creditworthiness of

the issuer. So you want to create a

digital treasury company that's got very

transparent credit that's got a lot of

collateral

that is understandable that acts in a

very uh a very predictable transparent

consistent fashion over time. And that's

what makes you credit worthy. And that

that is I think the the digital credit

revolution.

I want to talk about strategy

specifically now about the operating

company. I know you said on X recently

that it is an operating company with a

$500 million software business. I know

when S&P Global gave strategy its rating

this year, it said that the company had

a relatively small software business. So

I want to give you the chance to respond

to that and ask you if there are plans

to grow the software business as we head

into the new year.

>> You know the software business is

healthy and it's cash cow but it's not a

it's not a fast grower. It's not a

hyperrowth company. The part of the

business that that is actually the hyper

growth operating business is the digital

credit operation. So, we sold uh about

$7 billion

worth of digital credit this year. So,

we invented this product. What is the

product? The product is digital credit.

Uh it went from 0 to7 billion a year in

10 months. And so, how many companies do

you know that created a product that

sells 7 billion a year and without in

less than 12 months? So, so that's the

business, right? We sell credit and and

what's the market for that? Well,

there's $30 trillion of digital of

treasury [snorts] credit demand in the

US alone. And so when we did stretch, we

did five IPOs this year and each IPO was

a new product, a new treasury credit, a

new credit product being launched. And

the and the fourth of them was stretch.

That was the biggest IPO in 2025 of any

public company. was two and a half 2

bill521

million.

And you would think, okay, that's pretty

big, but that is 1/100th

of 1% of the treasury market in the US.

And so when you think about the market

we're targeting, we're targeting the

money market, the the market where

someone's got a bunch of cash and

they're going to get four 400 basis

points of yield and we're offering 10%

and we're offering 10% as a tax deferred

dividend instead of 4% taxable.

If you live in New York, then that's the

that's like a bank account that pays you

22%

instead of four. So, you know, you're a

retail investor and or you're a normal

person or a normal business. You're

living in New York and the bank says

we'll give you 20% instead of 4%. You

would think, well, that's a cool bank.

Maybe I want to put my money in that

bank. And so so our product is digital

credit. The operating business is

generating I think we generated 12

billion of BTC gains last year and I

think 12 billion of gains you know more

than 12 billion this year to date. The

gains come from selling the securities

in order to buy the commodity and doing

it in an advantageous way. When we when

we sell the securities at a premium to

the underlying asset, there's an

immediate gain. And when we pay a 10%

dividend and invest in an asset that's

appreciating 50% a year, which is what

Bitcoin's been doing, then there's a

consistent annual gain. And so the

company gets gets extreme leverage and

creates shareholder value by selling

those credit instruments to buy Bitcoin,

which is digital capital. And you know

you if you were a holding company, okay,

well, so you have $60 billion worth of

Bitcoin, you're an ETF. What are you

doing? Nothing. Okay, that's a holding

company. That's a if you're an ETF,

that's what you are. If you're a

closedin trust,

uh then you have 60 billion, but you

can't redeem it. And there's no way to

even uh you can't even arb the the

security to get to NAB because you don't

have the ability uh to trade. When

you're an operating company, you can

create convertible bonds, senior bonds,

asset back securities, you can create

preferred stocks, you can do IPOs, you

can sell the credit, you can buy the

credit, you can sell the equity, you can

buy the equity, you can sell derivatives

on the equity, you can sell derivatives

on the commodities, right? you can sell

the commodities. So operating companies

have a lot of financial flexibility. And

maybe the most important point to make

is if I want to create an instrument

where I strip 90% of the risk and 90% of

the volatility off of the Bitcoin and

give someone 10% yield in dollars. You

can't do that with a closed interest.

You can't do that with a private fund.

You can't do that with an ETF. You

literally have to have a publicly traded

operating company. In our case, a

well-known seasoned issuer. And that

that means a company that can create a

public security,

file the registration statements with

the SEC and take it public and list it

on the NASDAQ.

And if you look at STRC right now, STRC

is trading more than hund00 million a

day. uh that is a hundred times more

than the average preferred stock. That

is a thousand times more liquidity than

the typical over-the-counter

preferred stock issued by a public

company. And of course, nobody private

credit you've never heard of because

it's private. That's the that's the

whole point. So, so our company is

creating public global digital credit

backed by digital capital. And how big

is that business?

10 billion a year growing 20 30%.

We could issue 10 billion next year, 20

billion in a few years, 40 billion in a

few years, 100 billion later. uh and and

you cannot create you cannot create

digital credit without a public

operating company anymore. You can't

create an insurance policy unless you

have an operating company that has

capital that will underwrite the policy.

And you can't create credit cards or or

mortgages or commercial loans unless

you're a bank with capital and you can

actually create those credit

instruments. So So we are a finance a

structured finance company. We use the

capital uh we take advantage of our

public status and I would say because

it's an invention like really the

business model really just formed in the

past 12 months and because all of these

credit instruments we IPOed this year in

2025 this is all very new and anyone

that learned finance in the last 40

years has never seen this before in

their entire career. Right? So you can't

blame them for not expecting it, not

appreciating it, not necessarily

understanding it. It is literally a

totally new thing that is made possible

by the emergence of Bitcoin as digital

capital.

And if you combine digital capital, the

innovation with an IPO of a preferred

stock, the second innovation, and if you

combine that with uh at the market shelf

registration, a third innovation, and if

you combine that with the digital

treasury company uh that uses uh

security issuance or or return of

capital to pay the dividend, the fourth

innovation, if you put all those things

together, you have this revolutionary

digital credit product which pays two to

four times more fixed income than every

other credit instrument in the world.

But I can honestly say even six months

ago, it wasn't very clear to us that we

would stumble on this business or this

new asset class. So it's serendipitous

discovery.

I think it's revolutionary to the credit

markets, but but you know, when you're

going faster than the speed of sound,

there's going to be shock waves. There's

gonna gonna be a lot of sound and fury,

you know, and a lot of confusion. And

our job is to explain what we're doing,

why we're doing it, why it benefits all

classes of investors, and and how it's

good for the world.

>> I mean, you think about those shock

waves. If you look at 2025, I can't

imagine it's just been smooth sailing.

What was the biggest shock wave while uh

bringing this new product to market?

You know, I I I think when we started

down this path, um the entire asset

class of preferred stocks was Morabund.

The average preferred stock pays 6%

dividend. It's issued by one of 5,000

regional banks. It trades $100,000 a day

over the counter. It has a QIP number.

People can't find it. You know, uh it's

illquid.

The spreads are wide. Um, it used to be

baby bonds had a par value of $25.

Okay. And then institutional inst and

those were like baby preferreds. And

then institutional preferred had a par

value of $1,000.

But no one in the public market ever

thought to create a a security which had

a targeted value of $100, [snorts]

for example. And typically if you think

about credit markets, most companies

issue credit tactically in order to

support some other strategy or some

other product like Apple is selling

credit for a tax reason or I'm selling

credit to invest in a data center or

product or a service or Boeing is

selling credit to build airplanes.

We actually sold credit um in order to

buy capital and the credit became the

product. And so so generally well-run

companies uh don't think of the credit

as the product. They they actually want

the credit that pays the lowest amount

of yield to the investor and they

it by putting in call options.

And so we had this idea that we would

like, have you ever heard of a bond sold

by a bank where they put an at the

market shelf registration on it and they

continuously sold $5 million more of the

bond every day? It's like it's just not

done. In fact, you you almost can't do

it with a bond. I mean, it's it's you

need to do it with a perpetual preferred

type security. So, what we were doing

was introducing

something new into the traditional

finance system.

We wanted our credit to trade publicly.

We wanted a four-letter ticker. We

wanted to put a shelf registration on

it. We wanted we didn't want to optimize

it to maximize the size of the issuance

the week we sold the the issue. We

wanted to optimize it to maximize the

amount of credit that was purchased in

the decade after. like like I might sell

you 500 million this week but I really

want to sell 500 million a quarter or a

month for the next 20 years. So that

means it can't come due in five years.

That means I can't it. So, so

the most challenging thing about this

this uh year is is basically going

against the grain in the credit markets

creating we created strike and it has um

a perpetual call option. No one ever

sells a a call option good for 100 years

like no one ever does that. Uh and it

has a perpetual dividend. We'll pay you

a 8% or a 10% dividend forever. No one

ever does that. People like, "Are you

crazy paying a 10% dividend forever?"

Well, if you're investing in a warehouse

or in an iPhone or something, you if the

CFO of Apple or Microsoft said, "Um, we

have a 10% uh dividend obligation on

this preferred, their board of directors

say, why don't you actually retire that

and replace it with uh corporate debt

that pays 5% on a 5year or seven-year

rolling basis?" And and they would do it

because that's conventional finance. But

what we discovered is we would rather

pay a dividend of 10% forever

than pay 5% for five years. If I

actually issued five five-year bonds

that paid 5% the after tax um uh the

after tax yield to the investor is like

three or three and a half%. But if I pay

10% rock dividend, the after tax cash

yield is 10%. So, we're giving the

investor three times more money,

which is good for them. And for us, we

would rather never pay back the

principal ever because we want to invest

the money forever in the crypto economy.

So, we're going to take the billion and

we're going to give it to the Bitcoin

network forever or the crypto economy

forever. And so, so I think, you know,

all this year we've been bumping up

against conventional wisdom, which is,

well, no one's ever done it that way

before. Like when we went to Europe, we

sold a a preferred stock that pays a 10%

dividend in euros. And the banker said,

"No one does that. They all sell hybrid

bonds in Europe because they want to be

able to deduct the interest and they're

all bonds." And we said, "Well, that

will ruin the tax treatment and also we

don't want it to be a bond. It'll

actually screw up the capital

structure." So, I think we've made uh

we've we've made a lot of headway. We we

introduced the first really compelling

public preferred credit instrument in

Europe. We introduced the first

convertible preferred instrument based

upon uh a digital capital asset in the

US. We created that first you know

perpetual fixed income instrument like

strife. Then we created the first um

treasury credit instrument like stretch.

Uh when we did stretch you know I

designed all these with AI you know I

couldn't have done it myself. I I

literally sat and I used artificial

intelligence and I and I went back and

forth with the AI for a few hours. And

>> so you were just on chat GPT just like

the rest of us figuring out how to

design these different offerings

>> and arguing with it and saying can I do

this, can I do that? And at some point I

said well I want a monthly preferred and

I want it to be stable at 100. It says

well you can do this and this and this.

I said has anybody ever done this? and

it say and it scans for 10 minutes says

no one in the history of the world has

ever done this but it's totally legal

and it's totally reasonable to do it

it's just no one ever had a reason to do

it and so I I think 2025 is very

exciting because you have a new asset

class digital capital and if you put it

together with a new capability digital

intelligence and if you put it together

with some ideas like uh ATMs and public

listings you can create digital credit

and and if you're willing to disagree

with the lawyers and the bankers and the

conventional investors or just say, "I

know you've never done it before, but

it's a good idea, don't you think?"

They're like, "Well, yeah, I guess

there's nothing wrong with it. It's just

no one ever does it this way." It's

like, well, that's because in the 20th

century, you had 27,000 private wealth

advisors and over-the-counter banks, and

you didn't have you didn't have, you

know, publicly traded global NASDAQ

stocks, and you didn't have shelf

registrations, you didn't have digital

credit, you didn't have digital capital.

So, the world formed a certain way 30

years ago based upon the assets, the

regulatory environment, and the

technology.

And now the world is different and now

you can do different things with a clean

sheet of paper and you just have to go

in, you know, you have to go in without

these preconceived notions. And then

when someone says, "I've never seen it.

I don't want to do it." You have to say,

"Well, do you not want to do it for a

good reason or you just don't want to do

it because you've never done it before?"

And and they're like, "Well, I'm worried

about this." Like for example, we were

doing this uh we were doing Strife and

we created the instrument. uh it's a

perpetual dividend. It pays 10% forever.

But that means that if the credit of the

company improves, it could trade up to

150 or 140. It could trade above par.

And the conventional view was, well,

there's going to be a fast pay issue

because, you know, it'll become a fast

pay instrument if you sell it above par

and so we can't do it. And so we went

back and forth forever and and and you

know, an army of lawyers couldn't figure

it out. And I went and I certainly

didn't want to sell an instrument where

we could never sell it above 100. That

that's not very good to yourself

like that because we designed it so when

it trades to 200, we could sell billions

of dollars of it at a cost of capital of

5%. So we had this problem that

everybody had for 40 years. And I went

back and I and I said to the AI, I said,

you know, the lawyers say, well, we

can't do this. And they say it's a fast

pay problem. What do you think? And they

go and and the AI goes, "Yeah, the

right's a a fast pay problem." I said,

"How do we solve it?" They said, "Well,

just make it a floating liquidation

preference. You'll be fine." And it's

like, "We added one line to the entire

100page security." And we went back to

the lawyer said, "You know what? If we

just make the liquidation preference

floating and and the lawyers go, yeah,

that'll work." Okay. And so, by the way,

the difference between not and and doing

it is like $3 billion.

one line, $3 billion, right? and and I I

could be on the phone with a

conventional thinker

for a month and not break through. But

this entire journey has been all about

the art of the possible and how do I

find the right way, the responsible way,

the compliant way, the economically

sound way, but the inspirational way to

create something new and different and

better in a world that you know the the

traditional finance world has been doing

the same thing the same way. You c you

can literally find like bank preferred

stocks, they've issued thousands of them

the same way for 40 years. And there has

not been a single innovation.

And now we're out here with a new asset,

new technology, new aspirations. We want

something. It's like what Elon Musk

would say. You don't or the Google guys.

You don't want it to be 10% better. You

want it to be 10 times better or 100

times better. We want something much

better. And so we have to we have to

find a way uh to break through all the

conventional thinking. And this entire

year is just an exercise in in doing

something and having like here's another

example. We did Strife STRF. It's a

cumulative uh senior preferred stock and

if we miss the dividend it pay there are

penalties and we thought well what if we

just strip away the cumulative right and

we strip away the penalty clause and

sell the exact same thing to the market.

Well you're like well that wouldn't be

as good. Why would someone want to buy

that? And the answer is because it would

trade lower and would pay a higher

dividend. And so we created the product

STRD,

the same exact product as STRF, but the

difference is it trades weaker. And that

means that it pays a 400 basis point

higher dividend. And there are a lot of

investors that want to get paid say 15%

instead of 10%.

And we created this instrument and all

we did was strip three paragraphs off of

the off of the 100page security. And

conventional wisdom is that'll never

sell. No one's ever done that. No one's

going to buy that. Why would anybody

ever buy a non-cumulative preferred

stock? And the answer is well because

they want a high dividend and they like

the company. And so we sold it and it

was actually twice as successful as the

fir as Strife was. It was a billion

dollar deal. very successful and and it

met a new need in the market. And a lot

of times it just comes from being

creative and trying something and not

being and not being too conventional.

And I think that's that's like the

journey that we've been on all 2025.

>> Michael, we got to we got to keep it

moving. And I've been asking all of our

most influential

um they're not nominees anymore. All of

our most influential people these

questions. you get them all the time,

but just humor me. Uh, what do you

anticipate the price of Bitcoin to be by

the end of the year?

>> I think that's really hard call right

now, you know, given the volatility

we're seeing today. So, I don't think I

can give you a shortterm answer. It

could be really anywhere. I can give you

my my view over the long term, which is

I expect Bitcoin it will appreciate

about 30% a year for the next 20 years.

And I think that if you look at it as an

asset, the volatility is going to click

down. It's gone from 80 to 70 to 60 to

50. The V is going to go from 50 to 45

to 40 to 35 to 30 to 25. It's going to

grind down towards something which is

50% more volatile than the VIX. The ARR

is going to track the volatility. And so

when we're 50 ball, we'll be 50 ARR and

then 45 and then 40 and then 35 and then

30 and then 25. And the terminal point

if you look 21 years out is like 20 21%

ARR 21 V. We're working our way there

and we're doing it with surges you know

up 40% and draw downs 30% and that

serpentine climbing pattern you know as

we work our way uh toward you know

global adoption. What's the biggest

challenge you think the industry still

has ahead?

>> I think there's extraordinary

opportunity and you can rethink uh

credit. There's $300 trillion of credit.

You can rethink the credit markets. You

can rethink the equity markets.

You can rethink corporate finance. You

can rethink banking. You can rethink

insurance. You can rethink a lot of

conventional finance ideas. You can

rethink currency and you can rethink

payments. you can rethink capital

markets raises

uh etc. But all of that is new and new

is confusing and new can be scary. So I

think the biggest challenge that the

industry faced is uh to engage in uh

continuous

consistent cheerful constructive

education and advocacy you know

everywhere in the world you know with

all types of policy makers with

investors with politicians with people

running finance companies with the

journalists with uh opinion makers you

know everyone One's got to have an

opinion, but

if you know, it's [clears throat] like

if I invented um an atomic overthruster

that gave you infinite clean energy

forever and you could hold it in the

palm of your hand, there would be so

much fear and loathing and confusion and

debate and controversy about whether

that's good or bad and who wins and who

loses and should we let people have it

and should we give it to six-year-olds

and should we power our cars with it?

And I think that the world is struggling

with that new tech and it's it doesn't

quite know how to process it. And people

have uh limited attention spans and they

have a a a body of knowledge and

prejudices and biases and conventional

wisdoms they've learned over 30 years in

their life and they're carrying a lot of

baggage with them. And we have to go and

and we have to cheerfully,

constructively explain to them how their

life can be better with digital assets,

digital capital, digital technology,

digital finance.

>> Do you think we're going to get market

structure legislation in the US before

the end of this year?

>> No, I don't think we will. I think it's

slipped. I think I think you know, best

case end of Q1, more likely case end of

Q2. I I think if you were to say you

expect it by the end by the first half

of next year, I think that's reasonable.

Uh I think there's a chance that it

might come sooner. I do think there's

bipartisan consensus that it needs to be

a bill. I think it's a very complicated

bill and I think there's a lot of

complicated issues to be worked through

and and you know there's a lot of people

involved and so it will be a heavy lift.

What are the top three most attractive

assets to you as we head into 2026?

>> Well, I'm clearly most enthusiastic

about digital capital. I think Bitcoin

is digital capital

and uh I'm second most enthusiastic

about digital credit. So, the credit

instruments that digital treasury

companies like Strategy, MetaPlanet, and

Strive are creating. I and then I'm

third most interested in digital equity.

That is the equity in a digital treasury

company in the business of creating

digital credit. So it's digital digital

digital depending on whether you're a

credit investor, equity investor or

capital investor.

>> Michael, thank you so much for your

time. Thanks for joining me and I'm sure

we'll see you again soon.

>> Yeah, looking forward to it. Thank you.