ICR Conference 2025 - CEO Reception with Michael Saylor & Morgan Brennan

I'm uh I'm Tom Ryan I'm uh one of the

co-founders and CEO of icr hold your

applause until the end no I'm kidding uh

thanks for being here it's 20 20 uh 27

years of doing this conference uh it's

become uh such a big and cool event and

kind of a must-attend uh thing every

year we appreciate everybody's support

particularly all our

sponsors uh we're very lucky that

Michael saor agreed to uh to come here

and speak to us today I know a lot of

you were in meetings and may have missed

his keynote at noon today super

fascinating it'll be up on YouTube

probably with within uh 48 hours in case

you missed it there were I don't know a

100 slides really making a incredible

argument uh for the Bitcoin standard uh

today we also have another friend of icr

Morgan Brennan of CNBC I don't have her

bio to read but she's been a great

friend uh moderated the panel with uh or

a fireside chat with Jared Jared

isaacman last year the shift for uh

payment founder and uh oh by the way the

commander of the SpaceX Fleet so that

was cool but uh would' love to bring

Morgan and uh Michael up here and uh

we'll hand it over to them at this point

thank you so much

[Applause]

you I think I am maybe on this side

looking at my

mic so it's an honor and priv privilege

to be here tonight and it's great to be

in this room and and Michael it's great

to be here on stage with you Michael

sailor the founder and chairman of micro

strategy and one of the most I would say

extraordinary and Fascinating People

in Tech and finance today given the

strategy you have laid out and what that

has meant in terms of returns for micro

strategy and the message you are now

carrying to the rest of corporate

America so maybe we'll start there

because you did give a presentation

earlier today and it was standing room

only uh and it was a message for CEOs

and companies given what you have been

doing in terms of adopting Bitcoin at

micro

strategy yeah I think um I won't rehash

uh the presentation at lunch uh but what

I'll say if I was called into a

boardroom and I go into a lot of

boardrooms and I talk to a lot of CEOs

and they wonder you know H how can we

create shareholder value my my message

is and this is the Mega big

idea 60,000 publicly traded companies

are capitalized on the US dollar or or a

a dollar uh currency a dollar Peg

currency like the Euro or the JPY and

their Capital asset is a sovereign Bond

it's like a treasury bill short dated

and that has been the status quo for

about a hundred years certainly since

1940 uh if you want a capital asset for

a company it needs to be a liquid

fungible uh

commodity I mean that's long-term store

value money if you will and so that's

treasury bills and the SEC 40 Act

it basically said it regulated the

amount of Securities that a public

company can hold uh no more than 40% of

your liquid assets and when that

happened that meant that everybody in

the public market was stampeded into

holding

treasuries and treasuries generally

yield 3 to 5% returns 3% after tax the

cost of capital that we've all been

taught is the S&P 500 Index and if your

company if your stock is appreciating

faster than the S&P index you can

declare yourself to be Victorious and if

you have an equity and you're

underperforming the S&P index you know

you're normally thought to be wanting

and and I I've been public company CEO

for 30 years or no since 1998 I was and

my investors would say it very simply to

me they'd sayl if you can't beat the S&P

give us the money back

because a brainless investor can take

the money and buy the S&P index and they

can do that that is the hurdle rate and

it doesn't take a rocket scientist to

figure out that if you're buying t-

bills and you're getting 3% after tax

and if the hurdle rate is 12% you're

underperforming by 9% that means holding

a billion dollars of capital you burn 90

million a year holding a 100 billion in

capital You' earn n billion a year in

shareholder value

and so the big idea here is that the in

the year

2024 the SEC approved the first digital

commodity in the history of the world

Bitcoin and fair value accounting became

optional and in January of

2025 this month fair value accounting

for that digital commodity became

mandatory and we

expect uh in the first week of the Trump

Administration for Sab 121 to be

repealed and that means that every major

Bank in the world will be allowed to

handle to bank Bitcoin so what you have

is a status quo for 80 years where a

corporation could have all of their

Assets in real estate in gold in

soybeans and oil or in treasuries but of

course the only thing that looks liquid

and fungible is treasuries and it

doesn't beat the cost of capital capital

and now Satoshi invents this new digital

commodity it takes 15 years for people

to decide that it isn't tulip bulbs it

takes many years for the government to

embrace it and in the year 2025 is

probably the first year where you could

reasonably say the banks will probably

handle it the government's not going to

ban it and it really is a commodity and

so now if you run a publicly traded

company you have a choice between

Bitcoin or

bonds and the bonds are minus 10% real

yield and the Bitcoin is plus 45% real

yield for the past eight

years and you know you might not be sure

that you're going to keep getting plus

45% real yield but I would submit to you

that even if bitcoin's returns collapse

to the S&P index and if you said it's

just as good as the

SNP having a commodity that perform

forms like the SNP is 10% better than

using a bond and so the real revolution

in corporate finance for a CEO uh is you

have the opportunity to recapitalize a

company on a BTC standard instead of a

USD

standard and what that means physically

is you go

from uh from being negatively polarized

to Capital to being positively polarized

to Capital instead of being repulsive to

Capital you're attractive wouldn't you

like to walk into our meetings and be

attractive instead of being repulsive

when you walk in the meeting and and

what that means to micro strategy is we

just stumbled on this we we discovered

this we weren't trying to discover it we

were in the middle of the lockdowns and

we were kind of irritated frustrated

desperate and so we had 500 million of

capital with zero return and we thought

we got to invest in something should we

buy gold should we buy art should we buy

real estate should we buy diamonds or

should we buy crypto gold and we thought

well we'll buy some crypto gold called

Bitcoin and we

inadvertently recapitalized to the BTC

standard and then of course if the thing

if your capital is returning more than

the S&P 500 you're creating shareholder

value how much Capital can you gather

like if I if you I'm a hedge fund and I

say I return consistently twice the S&P

500 how much do you want to invest in me

the answer is how much money do you want

and if I go to you and I say I'm a hedge

fund and I consistently underp the S&P

by 50% how much Capital you want to

invest in me none you're either

magnetically attracting the capital or

you're rejecting it so micro strategy

stumbled on a new idea recapitalize on

an asset which is a creative not deluded

and when we did that

we started attracting more Capital we

went from having 500 million of cash

non-performing like a liability to

having 45 billion worth of bitcoin going

up 60% a year and we went from a $600

million Enterprise Value to a hundred

billion doll Enterprise Value and we

went from not being able to borrow any

money to borrowing 7 billion dollars for

almost

nothing and we went from not being able

to sell we couldn't have sold the entire

company for $10 a share we couldn't have

sold it for a billion dollars or

whatever to being able to sell $18

billion of

equity at you know 30X the price and and

what's happening it's we simply change

the polarity of the balance sheet and I

think that's the exciting opportunity

for a public company or any any

financeable company any company that can

raise equity or debt financing has a use

of

proceeds which is

transparent high-speed accretive and

scalable and you didn't have it four

years ago you didn't have it 10 years

ago you never had it for a hundred years

all Corporate Finance textbooks every

course at Harvard they're all built on a

on a a US dollar treasury standard in

the absence of a crypto capital Network

and I think now you have to rethink

Corporate Finance you have to rethink

everything you just said so much that I

want to that I want to like dig into I'm

going you know what I was really

enjoying the fact that I would never

ever get to say that on CNBC I would

have been cut off oh yeah 30 minutes

ago that was the most you ever listened

to anybody say anything isn't it

probably I mean on TV but no this is

what I always love about these types of

formats is you can understand you can

really you know dig in and have and and

have a a nuanced contextualized

conversation there's a lot you just said

I'm going to I'm going to take it back

to something and at the risk of being

basic here but I can't tell you at least

once a week and I find with some of the

people who are considered some of the

smartest people in the room I find

myself in conversations with seite with

you know with Finance people with others

and they say well why is it not tulips

2. know and and I don't get Bitcoin and

how a digital commodity can be a store

of value so I just want to I just want

to take a step back and and get a sense

from you of why of why it's not tulips

2.0 and how you came to that conclusion

back in

2020 um you know I I think if you could

build it you could build it from first

principles you said okay I got 100 Rich

families they live in uh 47 countries

and um they all have this thought that

they don't really trust their Banks and

they don't really trust their

governments and they don't trust the

currency and they're they're okay in

their country for now but they might

need to leave their country sometime in

the next 30 Years and so they come

together and they think uh where should

we put our money okay like the big idea

is we want to keep our money okay and so

you know as I said if God came down and

said I'll run the bank for you and I'm

going to issue you God coin there's

going to be 21 million of them and then

you can telepathically move them between

each other and I will custody God coin

for the next million years for free for

you then all these rich people would put

their money in God's bank and they would

use the god coin and it would it would

uh serve as a store of value for them

because it's better than gold it's

better than diamonds it's better than

buying Picasso artworks it's better than

buying the local Bond you know in

whatever local African country you live

in ETC but God hasn't chosen to do that

so the next best thing is maybe they

decide to hire a computer programmer and

they get some Cipher Punk or some some

engineer and they say can you actually

program a digital bank that uh does the

same thing so it's not going to be God

coin it's going to be Bitcoin and we

want you to set it up so that we can buy

you know so you've got 21 million of

these uh

units and uh we're going to put our

money in the Bitcoin bank and uh and

that way we don't trust any other bank

and any other government and it's just a

it's a network that we all join a secure

monetary Network and then at some point

one of them says well I don't think I

trust you and so none of the hundred

families trust each other and maybe even

if they did they don't trust their idiot

grandsons that will come along in 60

years so the question is how do you

actually create the Bitcoin Network or

the Bitcoin Bank such that that uh it is

stable it'll go on for hundreds of years

when no one trusts anybody what's the

solution and the answer is we create a

version of the software and we give it

to everybody and all everybody on the

network gets to run the software and the

software checks everybody else's

software and anybody that ends up lying

gets kicked off the network so every

every single family runs a version of

the bank and maybe every person in in

the family runs a version of the bank

and that's how we get to a decentralized

network pretty soon everybody with money

on the network is running the software

now how do you secure it well we we need

somehow to give it some some anchor in

the real world so the software we run

turns electricity into hashes and the

hashes are used to are used to randomize

the trans transactions on the network

and if you end up with billions and

trillions and hundreds of quadrillions

of hashes pretty soon nobody knows who's

going to build the next uh the next

transaction block but what you do know

is that it's impossible for you to hack

the thing with any slight of hand and so

so why is it not tulips it's not tulips

because all of the smart money in the

world wanted to solve this problem why

why wouldn't you right like for a

thousand years people have wanted to

keep their money it's like the theme of

human history people want to keep their

money so they want to solve the problem

this is a this is a crypto solution to

the problem I create a bank in

cyberspace to keep my money and then it

gets copied 100,000 times and the first

50 times it fails and then eventually

someone has a good one and we called the

good one the the one that won was the

one that won right I mean why did you

win and why did everybody else lose

someone had to win there had to be one

Google there had to be one Microsoft why

are we speaking English why aren't we

speaking French we had there had to be a

winning language and why do we use the

US dollar because there was a winner

right so at the end of the day the idea

is simple it's a decentralized network

protocol to keep your money without

depending upon a government or a

corporation or without relying on

anybody right it's a protocol for

economic Integrity it's obviously a good

idea you can duplicate a million times

just like you can copy Wikipedia a

million times but there's there's got to

be one winning Network and the winning

network is the one where all the smart

people with the money join it's just

like you know if everybody puts their

money in JP Morgan and you have yo-yo

bank which is cheaper but all the rich

people have their money in JP Morgan

it's probably safer to put your money in

the bank with all the rich people why I

copied New York City in Kansas why don't

people move there well they can they

they can either go to New York or they

can go to Kansas York and they just went

to New York there's a lot of reasons why

and so Bitcoin is the most powerful

crypto Network in the world it's got all

the computer power it's got all the

economic power it's got all the

political power it's got all the

electrical power is it not tulip bulbs

it's 20 nuclear reactors where of

electricity right that's how it's not

tulip bulbs and um and and another way

to say it though it it it is basically

it is a monetary

Union if you join a union and a million

other workers join the union and all of

you get together and collectively

negotiate your salary and your salaries

go up by 50% and some guy writes an

article saying isn't that tulips what is

no it's there's a million people we all

join together to protect our own

interests how about a million person

Army I got an Army in front of you we

have guns you disagree with me you could

say it's not an army but there's the

Army right so Bitcoin is in essence it's

a it's a monetary Network and it Formed

organically through a competitive

process and every weaker idea or

inferior idea failed in the marketplace

of ideas and the ultimate you know the

ultimate endorsement of a monetary

network is somebody with a billion

dollars willing to put their money into

the monetary Network and if they are

then is someone else with more money

willing to support another Network and

the answer is all the money chose this

one and that's why it's not tulips it

it's just the

network so what does we're a week out

from inauguration what does a trump

Administration mean for this how much

hinges on the Fiat piece of this and the

fact that you have a dollar that is

devaluing you have a$ 37 trillion debt

load here in the US and I know I've had

these conversations with Bankers for

example that you know Bitcoin is from

that standpoint or a geopolitical

standpoint it it's about hedging your

bets in that

world you know I I mean there's a lot of

narrative some people some people would

say the reason you want Bitcoin is

because the currency is being debased

and and that's definitely true if you

live in Lebanon or you live in Venezuela

or you live in Africa it's when the

currency collapses in five years or 10

years years then obviously you want the

Bitcoin but there's another reason the

Bitcoin price goes up and the other

reason the price goes up is because it's

digital and that just means that at the

end of the day uh if I can move a

billion dollars from New York to Tokyo

and back

again every hour every

second every millisecond there there's

utility in that there you know digital

books digital education is is a million

times faster cheaper lighter than the

real thing and so so the digital form of

capital is valuable even if you ran the

country perfectly and there was no

inflation but you could still program

the money to move at the speed of light

247 365 and put a AI That's a billion

times smarter than me or you in charge

there would still be utility for that

and then the the third reason it's going

up is Bitcoin represents digital capital

or capital in cyberspace I give you a

billion dollars and I tell you buy stuff

in in Russia and so you buy a bunch of

stuff in Russia you know and then what

the the Russian government perfectly

operates in every way and then you stop

the passage of time and nothing ever

decays or grows old and then I guess

it's almost as good but not digital but

the point is the passage of time

continues you know governments don't run

efficiently the mayor may not do what

you expected stuff rust there's a

hurricane there's a fire all of those

things are entropy and Chaos in the real

world so it's my long- winded way of

saying Bitcoin is valuable because you

escape the entropy and Chaos of the real

world Bitcoin is valuable because it's a

million times faster smarter cheaper

because it's digital and Bitcoin is

valuable because nobody can debase it

and you only have to believe one of

those three things to think it's going

up forever but of course I think all of

those things it's it's just a better

idea and it's going to continue to

appreciate in price at with the passage

of time with the Improvement of

technology and uh and with the

debasement of the currency all three of

which we can

expect um it goes up it's been going up

dramatically for the last couple of

years but not without dramatic fall and

retracements along the way we're seeing

one of those right now after it

crossed uh 100K a couple of weeks ago

Vol it's volatile it's a volatile asset

so in terms of strapping your seat Bel

in and going along for the ride what

does that look like especially and I'll

ask you because you're buying a heck of

a lot of Bitcoin and micro strategy

moves with the price of Bitcoin well so

first I would

say volatility can be viewed as a

feature or above

if I give you um a billion dollars on

your balance sheet and you have it in

bonds the volatility is the Vol is five

it's like putting a billion dollar

weight in your backyard is not going

anywhere it's sculpture but if I fashion

that sculpture into a flywheel and I

spin it at 60 RPM or 60 Vol it's now a

turbine and you could imagine if you're

spinning uh you know a very heavy a 10

ton weight at 60 UH 60 RPM you can plug

a machine into it you can actually power

you know a factory or power a company or

power a city with it and so volatility

is

energy and uh with micro strategy we

actually run the company to create the

volatility so we have $5 billion dollars

of Bitcoin and we're spending at 90 Vol

you know then we get a hundred billion

doll options Market that forms and the

result is it creates so much suction so

much energy there are people that own my

stock that don't know what we do that

don't know what Bitcoin is that don't

care all they care about is I can sell

the volatility I bought the micro

strategy thing I'm getting 150% interest

on it whatever it is if it doesn't go to

zero in the next three months I'm

getting rich like that that's the power

but you know that's not unlike I spin a

fan 60 RPM and I blow you off the deck

you know of the ship right there's

energy in these things it's a turbine so

I I think volatility can be harnessed I

would say if you're an

investor the right way if you look at it

is it's for long-term capital

preservation so if you have portfolio of

capital you don't need for four years or

more like ideally for 10 years then the

portion of your Capital that you would

hold for 10 years and invest you put

some of that into Bitcoin you'll be fine

if I don't think you should put Capital

you need for four days four weeks and

four months you shouldn't use it's not a

working capital thing it'll give you a

coronary and a heart attack that doesn't

make sense but what my last you know I

got two other points one is it's

volatile because it's the most useful

thing in the world it's because if you

need 10 billion doll of credit on

Saturday night to short the market you

can get it from the Bitcoin Network you

can't get it from any of your other

assets if you needed to sell something

for a billion dollars in five minutes

you can get it from Bitcoin you cannot

sell anything else on a Sunday morning

in 5 minutes if on the other hand you

wanted to take a long position on Sunday

morning after someone else took a short

position Saturday night you can do that

with Bitcoin you cannot do that with

nearly any other asset so it is useful

financially and that makes it volatile

because anybody can express uh an

economic opinion as hard as they want

anywhere in the world and everything is

linked to everything and uh my last

point it's going up 60% a year for the

past eight years if it was going up 60%

a year in a perfect exponential with the

beautiful curve that you drew with your

artist Hand if that's the way it happen

then people stupider than you richer

than you would have all the money

right the the if you know if I'm telling

you it's going up 60% and if you do the

work and you can understand why

thermodynamically it is like why is the

water flowing downhill why does the

waterfall look that way because there's

gravity and the gravity is pulling it

down here why are people running from

insecure assets to secure assets you

know why do why does Capital flow from

one place to another place why why would

you sell your venage in currency and buy

dollars was that random or is there a

reason right if you understand the

fundamental thermodynamic physical

reason why the capital is Flowing from

20th century assets to 21st century

assets from physical to digital from

Financial to digital if you understand

that then the best thing that could

happen to you is for it to appreciate in

a volatile fashion because everybody

else will be scared away from it the 60%

a year is still 60% whether it's vol

volatile or not the difference is

because it's volatile micro strategy is

able to go from a billion dollar market

cap to $100 billion market cap because

people are afraid to do what we're doing

if it wasn't volatile Bill Gates and

Warren Buffett and Charlie Munger would

have bought it all and I wouldn't be

sitting on stage today right now you

would be you would be listening to

Masters of the Universe that were famous

long before I came along telling you how

they bought the Bitcoin and how smart

they are and you would be like well of

course we all bought the Bitcoin because

it's because if it's not if it just goes

up perfectly forever then like where's

the opportunity in it for the committed

right for the convicted for the people

that want to do the work so I kind of

feel like there there's a certain

natural selection to this if you like

money if you need the money if you're

willing to take risk and and you're

willing to bleed to get the money then

Bitcoin will give you the money right

right but those are the people that

deserve it if you're just rich and

arrogant and you only take risk-free

Investments and you just expect to stay

Rich then you know you really want to

help them do do they need help right I

mean is that I don't think so so so I

think the volatility is a feature that's

a benefit to an investor it's a benefit

to a corporation it's a natural

characteristic of a life

form it's alive it's V vital it's

volatile I don't I think that there are

two big ideas in corporate finance that

are traditional Morgan one volatility is

a bug and I think it know volatility is

a feature and two and I'm going to say

this in a hyperbolic way but to make the

point I think conventional Corporate

Finance treats Capital as its

toxic like it's it's it's capital is

toxic to the corporation and I think

capital is

virtuous right what Rich family would

give away all their

money right but but every rich company

does right Apple does Microsoft does

Nvidia does meta does they all brag

about the doing of it they all brag

about their BuyBacks they all brag about

their dividends it's like they're

literally getting rid of their Capital

as fast as they can and you know why

would a all these people that you're

invested in you think are so smart if

they're so smart why are they desperate

to get rid of the

money and the answer is the capital

asset they use is toxic to them if if I

give you a billion dollars and you

invested in bonds that have a negative

real yield of minus 10% then you're

destroying a 100 million a year so if

they're smart and they know that they

know they have to get rid of the the

capital they have to flush it out of the

system as fast as possible and I think

that there's a new there's a new idea

the new idea is Adopt a different

Capital asset called Bitcoin and you get

to keep the money and now capital is not

toxic now capital is life affirming now

instead of blowing away a hundred

billion dollars of capital now you could

keep the 100 billion of capital and it

grows 30 40% a year and pretty soon

you've got 500 billion of capital and

your shareholders get rich that's the

big

idea it's a big idea you actually made

this it it is and I and I I say this

knowing micro strategy is outperformed

these other companies the mag 7

companies other asset classes since you

adopted a Bitcoin strategy pretty

dramatically um you made this pitch to

Microsoft speaking of a couple of months

ago Microsoft turned around and said to

shareholders uh vote this down

shareholders did vote this down so what

does it what does it take to get some of

these other big companies with big

balance sheets and a lot of cash sitting

there that are doing this C you know

that are handing their Capital away to

get on board with what with what you're

pitching bigcoin is on a need to know

basis if you don't need to

know then you won't ever figure it out

so Microsoft is arguably right Microsoft

is one of the seven greatest companies

in the world maybe it's the greatest

company in the world but you know some

people might think it's the one the

first or the second or the third so if

you run the greatest company in the

world and you're a shareholder in the

greatest company in the world arguably

you don't need to know anything you

don't need to take any risk the

companies that are going to embrace

Bitcoin are the ones

that the ones that uh aren't Microsoft

when you get to the point where you

realize you can't compete against

Microsoft when you're not the digital

Monopoly when you're one of the 27,000

retailers that got crushed underfoot by

Amazon right when you're one of the

47,000 media companies is getting beat

to death by Google or by meta you know

when when you look at your stock and

it's been stuck in a rut for a decade

right if you're the CEO or the CFO of

that company and you and you ask

yourself honestly am I going to be able

to outperform Nvidia or outperform

Google or outperform Apple do I have a

monopoly on a billion people do I or not

if you don't have a if you have a

monopoly you're getting regulated if you

have a digital Monopoly that's

unregulated you can actually outperform

until you get

regulated the companies that are

embracing Bitcoin are the ones that that

they're the zombie companies where

there's like I'm public but I'm stuck in

a rut the likelihood that I'm going to

start to grow organically 20% every year

for the next decade is like less than

1% right once you get to the point where

you know you your odds of actually you

know growing organically 20% a year for

the next 10 years or less than 1% then

you're uh then at least at that point

you need to invite uh or consider a new

idea and I think normally what what

happens is when a company hits that

wall they decide to sell thems right

that's one exit I just sell the company

I had 100 competitors Morgan every one

of them sold themself over the course of

20 years everyone so you sell yourself

if you can't sell yourself your next

idea is lbo I'm going to take myself

private I'm going to basically here's

the big idea I have a low Growth Company

growing 5% but if I can borrow money

cheap capital and lever up then I can

actually make my low Growth Company look

like a high growth Equity who does that

Apple's been doing that for five years

right borrow money buy the stock back

lever up the equity so sometimes they go

and do an lbo

third uh they work themselves to death

until they have a heart attack you know

in frustration I mean like how I think I

tried 25 different things to to break

out of a rut before I discovered Bitcoin

I bought the stock back I spent money on

marketing I vented 20 products and it's

just like hitting your head against the

wall so sometimes they do that and they

just give up and they retire and

dejection and now and now you've got

this uh fourth idea uh adopt digital

Capital right re you know recapitalize

your company invert your balance sheet

right that's the that's the new

opportunity I think in the history you

know bitcoin's a paradigm shift and if

you study Paradigm shifts you know

Thomas cun he says he says people only

Embrace new paradigms when there's a

war right or when they die right like

science advances one funeral at a time

right one of the famous

quotes it's like so in this particular

case who gets crypto who gets Bitcoin

the 20s

somethings 20-some person you know a

20-some business person they have no

money they have no hope they're not

going to get ahead the way their father

or their or their grandparents did right

and so you're you're a teenager a

20-some or 30-some you're like streaming

YouTube crypto something they have

everything in the gain nothing to lose

and then and then you have people that

are caught up in a war whether it's the

co war or the lockdown or you know guess

what my my bank just stole all my money

in Lebanon or a

meltdown uh those are the companies that

will flip

first the vote by the way at Microsoft

was uh

99.5% you know against 50 basis points

in favor of

the The Proposal was investigate

Bitcoin that was the research Bitcoin

and management recommended they wouldn't

and it was 50 basis points voted in

favor and I think it's just

demonstrative of the point that you know

if You' got a great company and happy

shareholders people don't

change but that's okay right because

because Rich successful people that

don't need need money don't have any

need to reconsider the monetary

proposition right Bitcoin is money for

people that need it it's not money for

people that have too much of it already

or already have a way to get it so so

there's a natural selection here and

there's a certain Elegance to the entire

process by which this idea spreads I

could keep going with you but it's about

6:45 and what I want I do want to do is

open this up to the room and see if we

have any questions or comments from the

floor yeah people bring up Quantum

Computing every two years they were

thinking about it in 2010 2014 2012 2018

2020 uh the latest is is Google

announced a Quantum proof of concept and

that put it back in people's Minds again

uh Google's quantum computer doesn't

have a practical application all of the

engineers that I know of in the space

think we're 10 to 20 years out before

we've got a computer that we've got to

consider that might be able to crack

modern

encryption when we do have a computer

that can crack modern encryption then

it's got to be addressed by Microsoft

Apple Google the government every Bank

you know and it and Bitcoin will be the

last thing to crack because it has the

strong EST cryptographic security but

the way you should think about it is

right now it's fud in a decade to two

decades it might be real if it if there

ever is enough computer power to

threaten modern encryption protocols

everybody's going to upgrade their

encryption

protocols the most important thing

they're saying about Bitcoin is Bitcoin

is not a system it's a protocol it's

it's not like a single app it's a

protocol it's like it's like the English

Lang anguage it's like what happens when

someone invents a new word that's not in

the English language well we're going to

add it to the English language what if

you know it's an evolving protocol uh

the way to think of it is Bitcoin is all

the smart people in the civilization

that want to keep their

money and what's going to happen all the

smart people in the civilization that

want to keep their money through

cryptography they're the ones that are

going to upgrade the system so as to

keep their money right and and so it is

a dynamic thing Bitcoin does evolve over

time but uh but if you see it as a

protocol like you use base 10 math you

speak the English language you think in

Bitcoin it's a protocol right uh the

more people that adopt the protocol the

more powerful the protocol gets there's

no reason why the protocol shouldn't

last another 500 or thousand years and

yes it will evolve right there'll be new

techniques and the and the software that

we're using to run the Bitcoin protocol

it will go through versions and it will

up upgrade and update from time to time

but I don't think uh you have to be

concerned about quantum computers for

now I think there'll be a lot of

discussions about that in 2025 and

there's no support supp of Congress and

supportive white house but I don't know

H what final shape that'll take that'll

be a very political decision but I I

will say it's a big shifting of the

Overton window because four or five

years ago the discussion was Will the

government ban Bitcoin and now the

discussion is Will the government back

the dollar with Bitcoin and that's a

pretty profound shift in 48

months do we have other questions okay

yes

sir um if you if your company generates

pick a number a billion dollars a year

in cash

flow if you divided it back to the

shareholders you know you're hitting

them with a dividend tax and then they

have to go find something to invest it

in

because you're basically saying that you

don't know what to invest it in so

presumably they're investing it in the

S&P index and and you're giving it to

them because you don't know of anything

better than the S&P index to invest it

in and so if you had something you could

invest in which delivered four times the

S&P index then

presumably instead of giving it to them

and having them capture whatever the

after tax dividend you could actually

reinvest pre-tax and generate 5x the

returns so the reason so that's one

reason uh because you just make the

shareholders a lot of money the other

reason is if you're Microsoft and you

dividend out all your Capital then

Microsoft ends up being valued uh five

5% of the Enterprise value of Microsoft

is tangible assets 95% is forward

expectations so in essence the entire

stock trades on forward expectations and

if they were to Simply go on a

conference call and lower forward

Expectations by 20 or 30% the stock

crashes if they miss a quarter the stock

crashes so uh when you're dividing out

or when you're dispersing Capital via

buyback or a dividend you're DEC

capitalizing the company so it's it's

the analogy I give is Jeff Bezos and

Bernard AR know and and Elon Musk

they're not the richest men in the world

because of forward expectations of their

wages they're the richest men in the

world because of what they own they own

stuff so if Elon Musk said I've decided

to give away all my money am I still the

richest man in the world well no you're

not you just gave everything away you

gave away your assets and the same is

true with any any wealthy family the

same true with any institution if you

just gave away all your assets you

wouldn't have anything so we've

normalized this idea that somehow it's a

good practice for a company to not have

assets and that's because we made the we

made the capital asset toxic and

dilutive but in

fact if a company gives away all of its

capital and has one bad quarter

technically it's bankrupt and you saw

this during covid lockdown I mean every

every lbo company every company that

leverages up in order to compete with

Amazon and this happened for 20 years

people are trying to grow their cash

flow per share or their earnings per

share by 15% but organically they're

only growing 5% so how do they make up

the difference they borrow money and

they buy the shares back and so when

they lever up they end up with no

capital and so they have one bad quarter

your airline shuts down your hotel shuts

down your retailer shuts down you can't

make payroll you're

bankrupt and then 20,000 people get laid

off okay and the towns you know the

towns end up with 27 you know thousand

you know shuttered retailers and why are

they shuttered because they

decapitalized right and how is that good

for anybody the shareholders lost

everything the employees lost everything

the towns lost everything and it's like

if you walked into your dad's office and

said dad I have a big idea let's have

the family just give away all of our

money and then you just work

harder your dad would say well son

that's interesting but we think will

keep the money because I might break a

leg and not be able to work and this way

your sister won't starve to death that

the re there's a reason we have Capital

right that's why we keep it just because

we might not be able to work forever

harder and uh I think I think uh the

tragedy of the modern era is when you

run a money printer and you inflate the

currency by 7 to 10% the hurdle rate the

organic growth in EPS has to be 10 to

15% and if you can't hit that hurdle

rate you have to basically go into debt

and what you do is you replace Equity

Capital with debt capital and all of

these good companies end up bankrupt

when they have one or two or three bad

quarters so that's a longwinded answer

the short answer is if you had a billion

dollars going up 30% a year you make 300

million a year doing nothing why

wouldn't you want to like why why

wouldn't you want to invest something

which makes you 30 40% a year be-

because I mean it's money right it's

like you can make the

money do we have any other

questions Mike

Quick color on ETF

mention I like your New York real estate

analogy because there's only so much

land and it looks like big asset

managers are stepping in and buying up a

lot of that land through the ETFs can

you talk about that and impact on on

bitcoin Supply um we're one year I think

today or this week yeah this is they're

one year old now it's the most

successful ETF launch in the history of

the world black rocks ibit is the most

successful ETF ever um and and what's

going on is permanent capital is flowing

in via the ETFs and that that's the

long-term store of value holders that

just want to hold the asset as opposed

to trade it um it's a very positive

Dynamic for the space

and uh the ETF solve a bunch of problems

they solve the compliance problem like

in Hong Kong you can buy the ETF if it's

if it's a Hong Kong ATF and the Bitcoin

is custody in a Hong Kong bank just like

you know Australia or Brazil would like

for the Bitcoin to be in their country

so they solve Capital control issues

they solve compliance issue they solve

tax issues they solve convenience issues

you can pick up the phone call your

broker and say buy a million dollars of

this in 15 seconds put the phone down

and it's like done and it's no frills

easy so so they've been helpful they're

part of the

ecosystem um you know and uh lots of

other part companies and and actors are

ecosystem I mean the bottom line is

everybody's competing for 450 Bitcoin a

day at 90 95,000 a Bitcoin you're

talking about 40 $45 million a day when

you've got $45 million a day of organic

demand then that's all the natural

Bitcoin available for sale the prices

got to go up right and so right now the

dynamic the fundamentals are very

positive because all of the slack is

taken out of the

system Bitcoin is like this it's like

you

know a hundred people move into a

neighborhood and then one rich idiot

dude buys the hund house at twice the

price the last person paid for it and

everybody's property value is double

like you're hoping for the rich idiot

dude to buy the last house and then it

only takes one marginal buyer to lift

the property values of the entire

network and I think that's a dynamic

that will continue

forever you know with volatility it'll

go up and down but generally the dynamic

is is capital is Flowing from everywhere

in the world on this network via all

these

I just think you can't you can't really

focus your Bitcoin thesis on its

short-term trading Dynamic I think you

just have to say this is cyber Manhattan

and 300 years my grandchildren's

grandchildren's grandchildren will be

insanely Rich if I buy it now and if I

don't buy it now they won't be right

it's like it's it's property you want to