Michael Saylor: Bitcoin at Beginning of Next Bull Run, Clarity Act "Bill of Restrictions"

Sam Bartus (0:09)

Welcome to Market Overtime, I'm Sam Bartus. Michael Saylor is back for his third appearance in the past year as Bitcoin attempts to recover from a volatile stretch and strategy continues to reshape its approach to digital assets and capital markets. We will revisit some of his previous predictions, the latest developments at strategy, and what could drive the next phase of Bitcoin adoption. Michael, welcome back, thanks so much.

Michael Saylor (0:31)

Yeah, thanks for having me.

Sam Bartus (0:32)

Bitcoin had a good summer. Is the crypto winter over?

Michael Saylor (0:36)

You know, it bounced off the 200-week moving average, and so normally that's the baseline, and when it dips slightly below it, you know, that's sort of the end of the bear market.

We've rallied about $20,000 beyond that. So yeah, we think we're at the beginning of the next bull run now.

Sam Bartus (0:54)

And it's been great for you, obviously, now with Bitcoin gaining about what 40% over Q3. I mean, you're back to $20 billion of a gain during that time. What does that bring your Bitcoin holdings to in the value? And how sustainable is that?

Michael Saylor (1:08)

We've got about 845,000 Bitcoin or so. And they're worth about, you know, on any given day, $70 to $72 billion.

And then we've also got about $5 billion of cash. The company is running with total reserve assets of $75 billion or more, generally. Okay.

Sam Bartus (1:30)

And just as far as how sustainable that is, I mean, you know, while we have got this recovery in motion, I mean, we're still, what, 30% below the record high. I mean, do you see a mismatch right now between the regulatory and kind of institutional tailwinds you and I have discussed and the performance still right now?

Michael Saylor (1:53)

Bitcoin.

Sam Bartus (1:53)

Yeah.

Michael Saylor (1:54)

I think that Bitcoin's had a couple of headwinds, restrictive foreign policy, restrictive monetary policy, restrictive trade policy. And there was the AI bubble that slurped a trillion dollars of capital. So that's what Bitcoin's been working against, but a lot of those things are normalized. So they're starting to be priced into the market. And so now we're looking at some fundamental tailwinds that are kicking in. Digital credit is coming to life. Companies like Strive that are the number two digital credit issuer, they've raised more than a billion dollars of capital in the past few weeks. And bank credit is another tailwind that's kicking in right now. A lot of banks are custodying Bitcoin and beginning to create credit on top of it.

And then we're getting very positive guidance from the regulators out of Treasury, the CFTC and the SEC.

That's very good for the digital asset space. And the tokenized economy is starting to kick in. And our securities are the most tokenized securities in the world right now. So everybody wants to move securities 24-7-365 at the speed of light. And their favorite thing to move 24-7 is anything crypto related, because if there's news on Saturday morning, Bitcoin's moving and everything linked to Bitcoin is also moving and is tradable.

Sam Bartus (3:12)

Okay, which is obviously why you're proposing some of these daily dividends as well.

You've got a potential vote coming up at the end of the month. What would that mean then for products like Stretch, for instance?

Michael Saylor (3:26)

You know, we have a lot of preferred stocks that paid quarterly, and we found that they would draw down the day after the dividend was paid. They paid $2.50, so they might fall $2.50. So that meant that they didn't trade a lot for 80% of the time, and they trade the wrong way. And our STRC was trading twice, was paying twice a month dividends. What we've realized is that you can smooth the volatility and increase the liquidity if you pay daily. So we're really excited about this. We've got a shareholder vote coming up, and if that vote goes as we expect, then all of our credit instruments will go to dividends every calendar day.

Those will be the first securities in the world that pay dividends every calendar day. It's never been done before, but we're doing it for two reasons. One, we think it's the right thing for the TradFi markets. I mean, even in traditional finance, you can see that if you have 365 dividend events a year, then you're not likely to see the same volatility around each one.

And we know, practically speaking, people like the idea of being paid every day.

And then we're also doing it for the digital markets, the DeFi markets, because what's your incentive to buy something on a Saturday morning and sell it on a Sunday afternoon if there is no record period taking place on the weekend or on a holiday? So our securities are already the most tokenized securities in the US markets. STRC is a screaming home run. Everybody's tokenizing it. But we want to be ready for the 24-7-365 tokenized digital future. And that means if we pay dividends every day, it'll strip the vol, it'll increase the liquidity. It creates all sorts of high-frequency trading opportunities and arbitrage opportunities because you might buy the thing to capture a dividend in the US market, and then you might sell it and buy something in the UAE or Singapore or Hong Kong or Europe and capture something there, and then trade back into this. And those are not ideas that people thought about 20, 30 years ago, but I think every market is increasingly starting to come to grips with the fact that securities are global, asset trading is global, it's not going to stop on a holiday that's only recognized in the US., it's not going to stop on a weekend, and some places like the UAE, Sunday's a working day.