Time now for our crypto report and the market still looking risk averse with Bitcoin sticking
in a tight range, providing more fodder for critics who don't think it's a hedge against
inflation.
Micro strategy co-founder and CEO Michael Sailor might push back on that idea, as I would
expect him to.
Let's bring him in now.
Michael, good to have you back with us.
You've been saying for a long time now you think Bitcoin is the hedge against the dangers
of inflation.
But what do you make of the fact that it's staying in such a tight range and not really
moving on from that $40,000 mark?
Well, it's all time frame.
If you go back two years when Micro strategy bought in, it's up by 400% and it's dramatically
outperform the NASDAQ or gold or any other asset you could have bought.
If you're looking at it in a matter of days or weeks or months, the traders control it.
And right now, there's three types of investors in Bitcoin.
There's the traders, there's the technocrats and there's the maximalist.
The maximalist are all in myself, Jack Dorsey.
We think that Bitcoin is an instrument of economic empowerment.
So we're just busy educating and we sweep free cash flows into it.
But we're kind of out of the market day to day.
The market price is set by a tug-of-war between the technocrats, people that are pro-technology
and they think it's like the next big tech network like Google or Amazon for money.
And the traders who are just looking at an uncorrelated asset or correlated asset.
So right now, both the traders and the technocrats are kind of, you know, scared of risk and so
they've both been in a bad mood and been selling.
What you'll see over time is the technocrats will turn into a good mood and I'll realize
that this is the next great big tech network.
The maximalist will keep sweeping cash flows.
So when does that happen?
When does Bitcoin break this correlation with risk assets if ever?
Well, I would think that over a four-year time frame, you're better off to be a maximalist
or a tech investor.
But as long as there's a massively choppy market, right, uncertainty about Fed policy and fear
in the near term, I think the traders will probably dominate the price.
So you're saying we're going to have to wait four years for this to happen?
No, I think sometime on a day that is very unexpected, the correlation will go from
70% correlated to risk assets to 0%.
And when that happens, then the traders will reverse the polarity of their trades.
The technologists will start to double down the maximalists will just enjoy the ride.
You seem really optimistic about Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen's understanding of Bitcoin.
And I'm curious, even though we might be looking at a longer time frame for, you know,
the divorce of Bitcoin and risk assets, do you think we're at an inflection point when
it comes to regulation and mainstream adoption?
Yeah, absolutely.
I think April 7th at American University was a really critical speech.
I think it's probably one of the most important speeches of the century because you had a set
of deniers, people that said that Bitcoin is a mirage or a Ponzi scheme.
And then you had a set of skeptics that said, well, it isn't that, but it's too good to be true.
And so some government's going to take it away from you.
And when you have the structure of the Treasury giving a speech, explaining what decentralized
networks are and what digital property is and what Satoshi Nakamoto means to the world,
I think it clicks in a lot of people's mind that Bitcoin is actually technology that's
revolutionary.
And it also clicks that no, it's not getting banned.
And once you decide it's real technology to improve the world and it's not being banned,
you're no longer a denier and you can't be a skeptic.
So you have to move into the trader camp or the technocrat camp and eventually everybody
ends up as a maximalist if you understand it well enough.