Strategy Founder Michael Saylor Talks US Regulation Helping Bitcoin

SPEAKER_1 (0:02)

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Carol Massar (0:07)

Corporate Bitcoin buying is also picking up again. Strategy leading the charge. Michael Saylor's company just added another $21 million of Bitcoin, extending a renewed buying streak as prices recover, and more companies move crypto back onto their balance sheets. Strategy, check this out, now holds roughly $70 billion in Bitcoin. And Tim, that's about 4% of total supply.

Tim Stenovec (0:29)

Well, let's get some more on Strategy. Joining us from DC Fintech Week at the World Bank for an exclusive interview is Michael Saylor, founder and executive chairman of Strategy. It's the world's largest publicly traded Bitcoin accumulator. Michael, always good to see you. Thanks so much for joining us. Bitcoin had a great summer. Still, though, about 30% below last year's all-time highs. What is your view on where Bitcoin goes from here?

Michael Saylor (0:55)

Well, we think we're at the beginning of a bull market.

We normally look at where Bitcoin is versus 200-week moving average. And we bounced slightly below it. Now we're moving up 25% premium. So the headwinds were restrictive trade policy, restrictive foreign policy, restrictive currency or monetary policy. And now we're rotating into some tailwinds. We've got a very favorable regulatory environment. We've got banking adoption accelerating. We've got tokenized securities and the digital asset space accelerating. We've got the formation of and the strengthening of digital credit networks and, of course, banking credit coming online. And all these things are very auspicious for the asset.

Carol Massar (1:43)

Having said that, I feel like, Michael, everyone is competing for capital against AI.

So much money flowing into it. We see it just kind of squeezing out investments elsewhere. How long do you think that continues? And what kind of an impact are you guys feeling in the crypto space as a result?

Michael Saylor (2:03)

Well, you can see that AI is going to demonetize a lot of equities that are based upon labor and talent. And so there's a lot of risk in the AI trade, especially across equities, either equities that are attempting to create the next magic product and they might miss or equities that are based upon tens of thousands of humans, and they're getting demonetized and degraded. On the other hand, there's going to be a rotation into scarce desirable capital, whether that's Palm Beach real estate or gold or digital gold in the form of Bitcoin or some trophy asset.

Capital investors are going to look for things that the robots can't make more of. And certainly the king of commodities right now is Bitcoin because it's digital capital.

Tim Stenovec (2:48)

So, why haven't we seen that yet? Because the narrative that you're explaining right now, we've seen it hit, let's say, you know, with the SaaSpocalypse, and we've seen concerns about software companies, Michael, when it comes to the AI trade. If the thesis that you espouse comes true and that people will look for stuff with scarcity, why hasn't it materialized with Bitcoin yet?

Michael Saylor (3:12)

Well, if we look at the Bitcoin standard era, which started when we bought our first Bitcoin in August of 2020 Bitcoin is up approximately 38% a year every year.

MSTR, the digital equity that our company represents, is up 52% or 53% every year. The only stock you know of that's outperforming that is NVIDIA. Every other MAG-7 stock and all the other major S&P stocks are underperforming that.

Bitcoin is outperforming gold. Gold is outperforming the S&P index.

And ultimately, if you look at the entire complex, digital capital is the strongest performing capital and digital credit, like STRC, is paying double to triple other conventional credit instruments. And the digital equities like MSTR or Strive, ASST, they're outperforming most, you know, 98% of the other publicly traded stocks.

Carol Massar (4:08)

So, I am curious though, Michael, you know the debate that's been out there, that crypto overall, Bitcoin, it's a safe haven or it's a growth asset. So, how should investors be clarifying it or considering it?

Michael Saylor (4:24)

Bitcoin is a block of digital capital. And so, it's about a 40 vol, 40 ARR asset. You can carve that block of capital and step it down into digital credit. So, you can create something with a volatility less than 10, that pays a 10% dividend as a return of capital. Or you can amplify it and step it up. And you can create an equity like MSTR, which is an 80 vol asset. And when you feed the high vol equities in the derivatives market, you get extremely valuable options. So, think of Bitcoin as just raw financial energy.

Look, there's more volatility in gold. Gold was showing a vol of 25, whereas the S&P is 10 to 15