MICHAEL SAYLOR: 21 Truths of Bitcoin (Digital Asset Summit 2025)
THE Bitcoin Podcast with Walker · 2025-03-20 · 34m · View on YouTube →
works for hosting me and uh and thank
you to everybody in the audience today
for being here I appreciate it uh I
followed the program for the past few
days it's been extraordinary and I'm
happy to have the opportunity to present
in front of you today
um I have uh could we go back one
slide I have prepared a new
presentation uh a few years ago I
created one called uh the 21 rules of
Bitcoin this one's the 21 truths of
Bitcoin and uh preparing for this I
asked myself what is true today in the
year
2025 and perhaps what are the truths
that the mainstream world the mainstream
media traditional investors
politicians uh people that are just
getting familiar with uh Bitcoin with
digital assets what is it they don't
know that seems very very clear to me
that I want to share and so I've
gathered my my favorite 21 truths of
Bitcoin today and I'm going to start
with the first bitcoin's an
ideology uh Freedom versus slavery
Innovation versus
stagnation sovereignty versus
dependency um property versus
poverty uh it's a very powerful ideology
it spread spring the entire world and
there would be no Bitcoin without the
ideology it's capitalism versus
socialism it's the individual versus the
collective it it it pops up throughout
human history we see these themes for
the last thousands and thousands of
years you see these themes in the
writings of the Austrian Economist you
see these themes in the writings of of
voler and and uh the intellectuals of
the 19th the 18th the 17th century you
you even see these themes in the uh in
the Constitution of the United States uh
the founding fathers had this
ideology and uh and you'll see it
echoing throughout
Bitcoin the second truth of
Bitcoin is Bitcoin is protocol Satoshi
created a protocol based on that
ideology the 21 million
coins the the block sizes
the the 10 minute centers the shaw 256
hashing it was a it was an a integrated
protocol it's not the only way you could
have done it you know um you could have
base 10 math but you could have base two
math you could have uh English as a
protocol but there's also French as a
protocol bitcoin's a protocol for
prosperity it's a protocol uh for
economic uh economic success economic
empowerment and
um that protocol lives on in the
software oftentimes people
say well what about this what about this
Quantum thing or what about that
technology thing and the point that I
make to them is that English language is
a protocol if you have to upgrade the
software you'll probably upgrade the
software keep the language base 10 math
is a protocol if you have to upgrade the
soft W rebuild the computer you'll
probably keep the base 10 math Bitcoin
is a protocol you may change the
hardware you may change the software you
may change the nodes the protocol is
simple a bunch of intelligent people
everywhere in the world would like to
keep their money
forever once a trillion dollars worth of
of money flows into that Network they'll
be looking to figure out how to keep it
and then when it's 10 trillion or 100
trillion or 500 trillion you'll have a
bunch of people speaking a language of
Economics a monetary language that is
the Bitcoin
protocol truth number three bitcoin's an
asset one of those 21 million coins pops
out um a lot of people just focus on the
asset they forget the ideology they
don't really notice the protocol they
think do I have a Bitcoin or not what
kind of asset it's the Apex asset it's
better than cheese it's better than
Palladium it's better than than gold
it's better than silver or copper or
land or goats or cattle or Lumber or
pieces of paper that we call
currency Bitcoin is the asset right it
is it is the asset based upon the
ideology and the protocol that results
in uh the greatest monetary premium in
the
world truth number four it's not just an
asset
bitcoin's a network bit Bitcoin is not
just a network it's the network it's the
most powerful computer network in the
world it's a Global Network it's without
the network you can't have the asset the
asset is stored in the network the
network is is a manifestation of the
protocol the network creates
decentralization that's true but it also
creates fault tolerance Mission
criticality redundancy and all of the
other technical
economic and uh and ethical qualities of
the asset and of the
movement an ideology that spawned a
protocol resulting in an asset that
circulates on a network that would be a
a simple articulation of what Bitcoin is
it's a truth I would Hazard to Guess
that the great majority of people
watching the price of Bitcoin don't
think about all four of those
things and they don't think about this
as much as they should Bitcoin is
immaculate truth number five it was
spawn by the Immaculate Conception uh a
nameless faceless programmer gave it as
a gift to the world how do you create an
Immaculate thing it's a god-given thing
it's a natural thing we've had it since
the beginning of time no one took
beneficial claim to it uh no one asserts
control over it no one no one expects to
cash in on it the Immaculate Conception
is is an extraordinarily important thing
to the network that combined with truth
number six Bitcoin is ethical what makes
something ethical what makes it ethical
is you can take title to it you own it
no one can debase it no one can take it
from you no one can corrupt corrupt it
no one can control it it's a thing of
natural beauty no country will ever
trust anything that another country can
debase or control no company will ever
trust anything another company owns or
controls no person will ever trust
anything controlled by another person in
order to in order to reach this great
plateau of ethical it has to be beyond
the corrupting influence of any human
any man-made
institution any organization of people
in the
world uh the Immaculate Conception was a
necessary condition but uh the
engineering Brilliance of Bitcoin was
another condition right bitcoin's a it's
a a perfect machine made of imperfect
components that's the Brilliance of the
engineering can you make something that
can't can a can a human being make
something that other humans can't
corrupt bitcoin's
ethical truth number
seven that makes Bitcoin a
commodity what is commodity an asset
without an issuer Gold's a commodity
corn is a commodity Lumber is a
commodity why is this
important because because in law uh
Commodities have a special status um a
company in the United States can be
capitalized on Commodities it cannot be
capitalized on Securities uh it's
there's actually a special carve out in
corporate law uh for publicly traded
companies but maybe more importantly I
can stand here and I can tell you that I
think the price of Bitcoin will go to 13
million over 20
years I couldn't say that about a
security right you have you have uh you
have uh legal immunity to actually
express your opinion about a
commodity that makes Commodities uh
politically Superior legally Superior
ethically superior financially Superior
to a non-commodity to a security and
it's not just a little bit better it's a
hundred times better right and so
Bitcoin is a
commodity Bitcoin is actually the
commodity I studied commodities in in my
early professional
years every other commodity can be
created with technology with capital
with knowhow if you were going to take
your family's life savings and buy a
commodity to hold for a hundred years
and you thought about it would you buy
soybeans or corn or oil or natural gas
or
Lumber coal
silver well no they're all awful and you
know why they're awful because it's
pretty obvious to you that 100 years ago
it was harder to make those things than
it is today and if the price of oil goes
to $1,000 a barrel we're going to Frack
it triple fracket hyper fracket and
we'll drive the price of oil
down same with gold there's been
hyperinflation in Gold multiple times
you know the California 49ers found gold
we created so much gold that we crashed
the economy of Europe every other
commodity is is is going to actually
explode in Supply with technology and
with price that makes them all garbage
Investments for a long-term investor
they're in fact the worst possible
Investments as a long-term store of
value the king of them gold still
underperforms the S&P index by a factor
of of two or more so there's only one
commodity in the history of the human
race that wasn't a garbage
investment the one commodity is Bitcoin
right a digital commodity and let's talk
a bit more about that why is it not
garbage why is
Bitcoin great Bitcoin is a digital
commodity every other commodity I can
name is a physical commodity physical
Commodities are god-given and anyone in
the in the world can create them digital
Commodities were created by the
Brilliance of human beings in a in a
fluke you needed to have a brilliant
engineer Satoshi give away this gift to
the world the world needed to embrace
the gift the protocol needed not to be
defective and after many many years of
not knowing whether it was something or
nothing it spontaneously monetized and
came to life it really is a miracle of
the 21st
century why is a digital commodity
important well you can vibrate a digital
commodity 60 times a second on a
computer you can move a digital
commodity at the speed of light the AI
can decompose and recompose a a digital
commodity millions of times an hour
simultaneously uh moving it and
distributing it all around the world AC
at the speed of a computer can't do that
with Palladium can't do that with gold
there's no way Apple computer's ever
going to ship an upgrade that has
multiactor
authentication on a physical commodity
it needs to be a digital commodity and
that's what makes Bitcoin
special not only is it a digital
commodity it is the digital
commodity the most profound thing that
happened is is two weeks ago the
president signed into into law via the
executive order strategic Bitcoin
Reserve David Sach said Bitcoin is an
asset without an issuer spawn via an
Immaculate Conception it is
decentralized we recognize it as a store
of value it is our digital gold you have
the most powerful person in the world
and members of the cabinet that are
saying that it's the policy of the
United States
government that Bitcoin is the one
digital commodity in the world that's
going to
Ripple and you know I can create a
digital commodity theoretically and
asset we an issue and I can give it a
protocol that inflates it 5% every year
I could create any any kind of
inflationary monetary protocol for
example corn and oil are Commodities no
one doubts the fact they're Commodities
but they're not scarcity they're not
capped Bitcoin wasn't just a brilliant
creation of a digital commodity Bitcoin
was brilliant because Satoshi capped the
supply at 21
million if I give you an inflation rate
of 2% and the supply of gold the
economic halflife of your wealth is 36
years when I give you an inflation rate
of 0% in your digital gold the half-life
of your economic wealth is infinite it
is forever the difference between 2%
inflation and 0% inflation is you're
dead in 36 years with 2% inflation and
you live forever with 0% inflation next
time someone tells you that it's just a
little bit of inflation and the 2%
doesn't matter I just want you to think
about that the halflife of 36 years
versus the halflife of a billion
years and of course with that
observation it stands it stands the
reason the next truth is Bitcoin truly
is digital
gold gold what does it represent gold
represents money and wealth in the human
race
for 10,000 years it represents
Prosperity it represents the king
commodity it represents the most ethical
virtuous technically sound
money and the vast majority of the
people in the world they're not invested
in digital assets they're not invested
in Bitcoin they don't even know what
we're doing here you're probably you
know if you lined up a 100 people on the
street you know to say that you're the
top one% is probably an understatement
you're at
least ahead of
99% so for the mainstream when you say
digital gold what that tells them is
that instead of giving away a gold medal
at the Olympics maybe it's for a Bitcoin
medal at the Olympics uh what it means
is that the golden
age will give way to the Bitcoin age
what it means is city with streets paid
than gold maybe should be paid than
Bitcoin what it means is that if
something is goldplated and that's how
you monetize anything a goldplated
lighter a goldplated
pen maybe it should be Bitcoin plated
right this is a very profound thing
right the truth Bitcoin is digital gold
we dismiss it as being kind of a boomer
idea but the Boomer idea means bitcoin's
worth more than 20 trillion because
that's what the gold is worth but the
truth is everything digital in our
modern era is worth 10x the analog
version if Bitcoin is nothing more than
digital gold Bitcoin is worth $200
trillion do if it's nothing more than
digital gold but of course it is more
than digital
gold because truth number 11 Bitcoin is
digital money
JP Morgan said gold is money everything
else is credit money a bearer instrument
I give it to you I don't have it you
have it you have the money well Bitcoin
is money what is everything else
circulating in the internet credit what
does that mean it means that I send you
something I send you a fee over credit
card Network 45 days from now maybe it
will be transferred to your account
after the credit card company takes
2% right and a world of Digital Credit
that means that it takes four years for
the money to move 40 times and at the
end of the four years all the money's
gone and a world of digital money it
means you can move the money once a
second maybe you can move the money 60
times a second you move the money 60
times a second for a 20th of a penny you
still have the money the computers are
not going to think one click one
settlement every 30 days they're not
going to agree to pay 200 basis points
per vibration of the money right digital
money is profound it's so profound that
everybody in the business of managing
money doesn't even understand what this
means when they understand what this
means then the industry is going to 100x
bitcoin is go going to go to the
Moon well Bitcoin if Bitcoin is digital
money what else is it well truth number
12 Bitcoin is perfect money
okay
um what is perfect money uh if you read
the writings of the Austrian Economist
Von misus and Hayak they write about
money but they couldn't conceive a
perfect money voler Aristotle Plato they
couldn't conceive a perfect money why
they didn't have the technology it's
kind of like asking Aristotle uh tell me
about clean water how you know how do
you understand clean water if you don't
have a microscope and you don't
understand that there are pathogens in
the water nobody understood perfect
money until Satoshi gave it to us and
that's because it was impossible to
create perfect money before modern
semiconductors modern internet modern
cryptography so they were struggling and
you can see Hayak and Von misus they
struggle with this notion in the
Constitution the founding fathers who
were pretty intelligent said the only
legal money in this country is going to
be Co gold and silver coin they kind of
knew this idea a commodity in your hand
a self- custody commodity Bearer
instrument felt like good
money what they designated as perfect
money in the Constitution and we have
drifted you know a little bit away from
that they designated what they saw were
the hardest
Commodities and the most liquid fungible
Commodities that could be used as a
monetary token and they were never
perfect because you can't practically do
every transaction by swapping gold and
silver coins and because gold and silver
coins aren't hard capped they have
inflation so they had defective money
that was slowly decaying that was that
was not quite useful but it was just be
you know they used to say it's the worst
possible way to do it except for every
other way right and so the signific of
this
truth this basically marks the point
where Eon economics goes from being a
Superstition and an art form to being a
scientifically based engineering
discipline you can't engineer an
economic system or a monetary system
before you have perfect money it's just
like trying to do good math but 2 plus 2
equals 5 on Tuesday and it equals four
on Wednesday and if you don't have
stable numbers can't do math and if you
don't have stable money you can't do
economics you know if you can't drink
water that's not going to kill you life
is pretty
ugly right this is profound truth again
misunderstood no one expect no Economist
trained in the past hundred years they
they never took a course on perfect
money they never imagined it but you
can't really blame them it's like if you
went back to Vol and you said okay
that's the smartest guy guy in the 18th
century in France and you know he wrote
shelves of
books but like you know poke him and say
describe you know radioactivity to me
and how are we going to build mobile
phones and satellite
Communications um and and he would have
thought what are you talking about right
it's like the most brilliant person
without the instrument the technology
can't conceive of the rational
thing and that takes us to truth
13 Bitcoin is
legitimate a short phrase a powerful
phrase it wasn't
legitimate four months ago a year ago if
you try to remember where you were and
what you were thinking in March of 2020
when the entire crypto industry was
under massive Onslaught everybody's
getting sued right and and the and the
most likely future was everything gets
ground into the dirt
uh we have completely come 180 degrees
this is the most powerful person in the
world sitting in the most the most
sacred place the Oval Office flanked by
two cabinet members telling you Bitcoin
is digital gold a store of value a
commodity not just a commodity you know
if the US seized 10,000 Securities all
your artwork all your houses your planes
your trains your Auto automobiles every
currency you know everything of value
your diamonds your gold broaches your
silver they'd sell
it right the only thing the United
States does not sell is its national
parks it's nuclear stock piles and it's
Bitcoin now that's a shock wave that
will be held around heard around the
world that just happened you know
literally days ago
it's going to take a while for that to
Ripple through the entire federal
government then it will Ripple through
the state governments then it will
Ripple through the banking system the
insurance system the credit rating
agencies then it will Ripple to all the
banks in
Mexico and El Salvador and Argentina and
then Europe it's Rippling through the
banks in Hong Kong and China and Japan
and Abu Dhabi
and Europe how long will it take well
you know how long how long does it take
for a profound good idea to move its way
through layers and layers of
bureaucracy it'll take a while but the
inators will actually grab this and and
those that those that need the money
that want the money will reach for and
embrace the money and they will be
enriched by it and there will be others
that will resist it but that entire
shock wave right that explosion in
legitimacy that happened just a few
weeks ago happened on a Thursday night
in the White House and that's Prof
that's profound we are legitimate and as
I've said before if bitcoin's not going
to zero it's going to a million right
it's either it's either nothing or it's
something and if it's something then
it's going
up and Truth 14
Bitcoin is Corporate you know I talked a
little about about uh corporate law I'm
very sensitive to it because I ran a
public company for many years we became
public in
98 every public company in the world is
capitalized on one or two things you're
either going to capitalize on short
dated treasuries or sovereign debt in
essence
currency or you're going to capitalize
on a
commodity well it turns out that every
commodity other than Bitcoin
underperforms the S&P index it doesn't
beat the cost of capital so capitalizing
upon silver or gold or Palladium or oil
makes no sense there is one commodity
that you can put 100% of a corporate
balance sheet in and that one commodity
is a digital commodity and that digital
commodity is called Bitcoin and so what
does it mean it means that for the first
time in a hundred years companies can
recapitalize and they are recapitalizing
and what does that me mean that means a
company a a company starts by sweeping a
little bit of excess cash and then cash
flows and then it sell some equity and
then it issues some debt and then
another company follows and another
company follows right now there's about
80 companies that are starting to buy
Bitcoin and there's probably 80
ETFs we're going to see another one
every week and another one every week
and pretty soon there'll be hundreds and
those hundreds become the gateways for
hundreds of trill millions of dollars of
equity capital and and fixed income
Capital to migrate into the entire
digital assets
economy and you can see it right in
front of your face you see company like
metap Planet goes from one hotel being
worth a few million dollars to being
worth a billion dollars in 12
months where do it stop it's not gonna
stop right if you're legitimate
you're corporate right you're going to
see a transformation of mainstream
organizations the 15th truth Bitcoin is
global everywhere in the world I go I
meet someone and they say well you know
thanks you know thanks because I bought
a Bitcoin for my daughter you know or I
bought a Bitcoin for the family we
appreciate what you're doing and you
know what I say I say thank you because
I appreciate what you're doing Bitcoin
is is global you know you're your Apple
stock isn't your land isn't right the
the artwork that you hold isn't Global
right Bitcoin is a global asset it means
somebody in Nigeria buys it and they're
getting the benefit of entrepreneurs in
Manhattan and it means someone in
Arkansas buys it and they're actually in
an economic relationship with somebody
in Singapore right this this is not a
lowest common denominator thing you know
you own Arkansas real estate no one's
going to fish you out of that investment
you own Bitcoin you bury it in your
backyard in Arkansas and you'll wake up
in 30 years and find out that someone in
Tokyo or London made you rich right this
is this is the global asset there isn't
another asset that trades in Wall Street
that is global in the way the Bitcoin
is you know and it's not just Global
it's
Immortal we're stretching in time and
space show me an asset that stretches to
every every part of space that truly is
global Bitcoin now show me one that I
can see into the next hundred years or
Thousand Years there's nothing else that
you own that's going to last a hundred
years right your Warehouse will have to
be redone your artwork will probably
have to be
restored right what company would you
think is going to be around 200 years
from now right the the real beauty of
Bitcoin is the Elegance of the protocol
is all you're doing is buying one 121
millionth of all the money in the world
forever okay when is that going to
obsolesce like when when are you not
going to want to own 121 millionth of
all the money in the world forever right
it's not like iPhone 99 it's not like
you know getting the next upgrade on the
whatever Gadget right Bitcoin is
Immortal because the idea is so Timeless
and so elegant and the network is just
virally going to
spread you know it's it's a life form
and if it's Immortal it means you can
actually think 200 years in
advance no company expects to live more
than 10 20 30 years everybody's short
term it takes me to truth number 17 is
digital energy a calorie is organic
energy a Satoshi is digital energy if
you want the AI if you want to put life
in cyers space if you want to bring an
AI to life you have to imbue it with
digital energy then it comes to life
then it thinks then it lives then it
procreates maybe it lives forever you
can't anything that is funded with
digital credit is just a shadow it's you
know it's a shade it's a ghost if you
want something to be a true life form
you have to put real energy into it I've
said many times before Bitcoin is is a
conservative asset I give it to you I
don't have it it implements conservation
of energy in cyberspace but but the more
important point is it's going to bring
life to
cyberspace truth 18 if it's digital
energy then bitcoin's a digital energy
Network how do you move energy from
point A to point B how do you vibrate
energy right how do how do you do it in
a rapid at the speed of a computer rate
how do you bring the entire world into
that
relationship you can't do it with a
credit IOU and certainly you're not
shipping gold from New York to Tokyo in
a
second which takes us to truth number
19 if it's an energy Network Bitcoin is
a digital economic
system how do you post $10 million for
five minutes you know with a company
across the country and fetch it back how
do you know vibration how do I give it
to someone take it back in 18 seconds
how do I swap a capital asset for a
currency asset we see this in defi right
I'm swapping Bitcoin for stable coin for
Bitcoin but but think more broadly right
think about a world of a billion robots
talking to a billion AIS that are talk
that are thinking at the speed of the
computer that want to actually transact
millions and millions of times an hour
in time and space they're going to do it
with a digital energy
Network and that takes us to truth 20 if
it's an energy Network I can reverse it
Bitcoin becomes a digital defense system
Bitcoin is the most powerful Network
work what's the unit of power the ex
ahash if I actually place my
cryptographic keys my identity my
authentication behind that hash wall
behind that wall of digital energy then
I can secure a system authenticate a
system defend a
system potentially even attack a system
you know you can't be a superpower if
you lose control of your airspace you
can't be a superpower if you lose
control of outer space you can't be a
superpower if you lose control of cyers
space you know control of the digital
power Network the mining Network the
hash network is control of the ability
to move energy and capital from point A
to point B control the network control
your destiny lose control of the network
you lose the ability to engage in
digital Commerce maybe you lose the
ability to secure your cyber systems
it's a defense system
and with that I'll end with my final
truth truth
21 Bitcoin is an emerging solar system
it's it's everybody says it's a network
and then they go yeah I read something
about mef's law and mef's law is like
knowing enough to hurt yourself it's not
a meffan
network it's a Newtonian Network Bitcoin
is an evolving Network think think a
star system forming there is matter
there is energy it's the brightest thing
in the financial Universe it's got a
magnetic field it is surur slurping
energy Capital into the magnetic field
there are objects in orbit they're
falling into orbit around it all of you
are in orbit around it to a certain
extent every company every country every
actor it is getting more powerful it
will continue to get more powerful it
will continue to get brighter right a
mafan idea is like a little asteroid
went past on the left and a white dwarf
went past on the right and they're both
equal well they're not equal the white
dwarf is going to suck the atmosphere
off my planet and the little asteroid is
irrelevant it's like a cute little
shooting star it made a little spark for
me right this is not a little metcafe
and network this is a network where when
someone brings a billion dollars to the
network it matters when they bring 10
billion it matters more when they bring
a 100 billion it matters more the more
Capital the more energy the flows in the
network the more powerful the greater
the gravitational
field eventually uh anyone in the orbit
right has to adjust their trajectory in
order to accommodate that gravitational
field you see this thing coming to life
in front of you it's going to have
Newtonian Dynamics and and uh it is an
energy system
emerging and these are the 21 truths
thank you for your time and please go
tell someone the truth about