Michael Saylor: The Bitcoin Treasury Endgame
Duration
89:41
Captions
1
Language
EN
Published
Premiered Sep 30, 2025
Description
An interview with Michael Saylor like never before. On the future of global credit markets with bitcoin at their core. Michael lays out a vision of how bitcoin will disrupt capital, redefine corporate balance sheets, and become the foundation of 21st-century economics. From the rise of bitcoin treasury companies to the creation of bitcoin-backed credit instruments, this discussion maps the future of money, banking, and economic sovereignty. In conversation with Bitcoin for Corporations Managing Director George Mekhail ♟️Subscribe to Bitcoin Magazine Print for exclusive content and images in "The Finance Issue": https://store.bitcoinmagazine.com/collections/magazines/products/bitcoin-magazine-annual-subscription 🟧 Learn more about Bitcoin for Corporations, the executive network for Bitcoin strategy: https://bitcoinforcorporations.com/ ⭐ Read more in Bitcoin Magazine: https://bitcoinmagazine.com/business/why-michael-saylor-is-building-toward-a-trillion-dollar-bitcoin-balance-sheet #MichaelSaylor #BitcoinTreasury #Endgame #BtcoinMagazine #BitcoinForCorporations #Strategy #MSTR #Bitcoin DISCLAIMER: The views and opinions expressed in this show are those of the participants and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of BTC Inc., Bitcoin Magazine, Bitcoin for Corporations, or any affiliated entities. This content is provided for informational and educational purposes only and should not be construed as investment, legal, tax, or accounting advice. Nothing contained in this show constitutes a solicitation, recommendation, endorsement, or offer to buy or sell any securities or financial instruments. Viewers should consult their own advisors before making financial or business decisions.
Captions (1)
What's going on with Bitcoin is Bitcoin
is evolving faster than society can
digest it. After 30, 40, 50 years, you
look back and you say, well, of course,
we should have embraced the fire, the
electricity, the wheel, the crude oil,
the nuclear. I would say 95% of the
decision makers in the finance world
still don't really embrace or understand
the idea of digital energy. I think I
think when the administration says they
want to be a global Bitcoin superpower,
they mean they want the finance
companies in the United States to lead
the way. For every company in the world
in any capital market, they're always
better off to buy Bitcoin as their
capital asset. Yeah. Well, I think the
endgame is we accumulate a trillion
dollars worth of Bitcoin and then we
grow that capital by issuing more
credit.
All right. Well, we are here with
Michael Sailor. Thanks so much for
having us in your home. Uh, I'm really
excited for this conversation. You've
said that Bitcoin is hope. You own
hope.com. You've made that a resource
hub for Bitcoin education. Uh, can you
cast the vision of of what hope? What is
the hopeful part of Bitcoin? What's the
world you want to live in? Um, what kind
of things change for the average person
in a in a Bitcoin standard?
Well, if we look at the history of uh
humanity,
uh what what has improved the human
condition is technology.
And uh the most formative technology
that everybody's familiar with is fire.
And um fire once upon a time was hope.
If you didn't have fire, you're going to
freeze to death or starve to death. And
then over time, other important
technologies evolved. After fire, we
mastered metals. And there was the
bronze age. the Iron Age, the steel age,
you know, the wheel was a pretty
important technology,
uh, no wheel, no no cars. Um,
Rockefeller commercialized chemical
energy in the form of of oil and
standardized oil and called this company
standard oil. And and the real
significance of
oil was the humans got a tenth of a
horsepower.
And now the little dinky engine on the
back of your small troller boat is 70
horsepower, which is 700 human beings.
And a typical tender could have a,000
horsepower. And so think about 10,000
people rowing as harder as they can
behind a 30-foot boat. And that's what
we got when we got oil and when we got
internal combustion engines. And and so
the hope for humanity has always been
technology in a new in a new sphere of
influence whether it's automobiles or
airplanes or electricity or oil or fire.
Bitcoin is hope because Bitcoin
represents digital energy. It represents
energy in cyerspace.
Uh it represents digital property,
digital capital, digital gold.
But in its most profound setting, it
means digital energy.
A way to convey energy through time,
through space
that is life affirming for 8 billion
people, for 400 million corporations,
for millions and millions of
institutions,
for hundreds of countries, for tens of
thousands, if not hundreds of thousands
of municipalities.
And if I were to say fire is hope
and you were shivering and freezing to
death, you would get it. And if I were
to say electricity is hope and you were
in New York City trapped on the 98th
floor of a skyscraper or trying to get
up to the 98th floor of a skyscraper,
you would get it. And now when I say
Bitcoin is hope, I mean Bitcoin is
digital energy. And if you want to send
energy at the speed of light from here
to halfway around the earth to save the
life or solve the problem of another
human being or corporation,
you're going to need digital energy. And
so it represents the next uh paradigm
shift, the next manifestation
in the story of energy and the story of
human beings harnessing energy in order
to improve the quality of their lives.
And so as that transition sort of takes
place and we move to a Bitcoin standard
or you know some people say hyper
Bitcoinization what sort of signs are
are you looking for? What signs to watch
that indicate like this actually is
happening?
>> Well I think we're really talking about
the integration of digital energy into
the civilization. So you know what do
you want to see? Well, let let's start
with the the basic application of
digital energy as capital, digital
capital. Um, there's a trend right now
for publicly traded companies to
recapitalize on Bitcoin. Uh, our company
was the first in 2020, then there were
two or three, and then there were 10,
and then there were 20, then there were
40. And um about a year ago there were
60 and then about 3 months ago there
were 120 and right now there's more than
180.
And I would expect that one way you know
that the world is adopting Bitcoin as we
go from 100 to a thousand to 10,000
to a 100,000.
you know, as some people have said, one
day every company will be a Bitcoin
treasury company. Um, so re
recapitalizing companies on Bitcoin is
is one measure of adoption. I think
another measure of adoption is is
building support for Bitcoin into
software applications.
So, you know, right now you have
applications that run on iPhones or
Android phones like Cash App that have
Bitcoin in them. you have you have um
wallets that support Bitcoin, but I look
forward to the day when Apple builds it
into the iPhone, when Google builds it
into the Android operating system, when
Microsoft builds it into the Microsoft
operating systems, and it's either
integral to the operating system of
every consumer device or it's integral
to the hardware itself. and people start
to integrate um Bitcoin support into all
the hardware devices that propagate
throughout the world and I think that'll
be another really really big sign.
>> So yeah, you mentioned five years in now
um five years ago you kind of came onto
the scene, no one really knew who you
were in Bitcoin. how you know as you
mentioned you're you're kind of the
leader of these Bitcoin treasury
companies u Bitcoin corporations we we
talk to a lot of these uh executives who
are launching a bitcoin strategy there's
now 14 different countries represented
and a lot of times what I hear is you
know this so and so wants to be the
sailor of you know this country um how
do you see yourself I guess in the space
do you consider yourself a leader of
this movement so to speak
>> I feel like we have a responsibility to
sort good example and uh and to support
and nurture uh everybody else in the
marketplace. So, um we've uh we've tried
new things, we've experimented and and I
think we go out of our way to share our
learnings. We've we've sponsored a
Bitcoin for corporations conference ever
since we got in the space. Um and we
published our playbook. We've open
sourced what we're doing. you know, we
we publish securities filings explaining
exactly what we do, uh what we've
learned. You know, I I think it's uh
incumbent upon us to point out what we
think works, what doesn't work. There
are a lot of ways to approach this. And
I I think the the inspirational part of
this movement is that unlike uh a lot of
other industries where there can be a
winner and everybody else is a loser.
>> You know like you know Walmart wins,
most retailers lose, Amazon wins and
20,000 retailers lose. Apple wins and
20,000 device manufacturers lose.
There's a lot of that. Um, in the
Bitcoin ecosystem, everybody can win
because we're all aligned with the
common value system and the base asset
that we're using is Bitcoin and there's
only going to be 21 million or less. And
the network is the Bitcoin network. And
so so the growth and the success of a
Bitcoin treasury company or even just a
company that is holding Bitcoin in its
treasury, you know, we could just refer
to any normal company that's got some
Bitcoin. Any of those corporate
corporations adopting Bitcoin to any
degree is beneficial to Bitcoin, to the
entire network, and to every other
company in the movement. So I I I think
it's been you know very gratifying to
see the growth of the industry. You know
we do our part. Uh I think there are a
lot of great contributions made by other
companies and every day I I read about
another company trying a different
strategy and I think we're all learning
uh together and when companies try
something and it works well I think
you'll see adoption and when companies
try things and they're suboptimal then
we'll know not to do that thing and so
it's it's definitely a team effort.
>> I want to talk a little bit about some
of the the FUD or the critics. Um
there's there's some skeptics out there.
or some might call them haters of
strategy and kind of the work that you
do. Um, is there a critique or a
misunderstanding of your work that kind
of stands out?
>> You know, I I think
when uh an air foil moves faster than
the speed of sound, like an airplane
goes faster than the speed of sound, it
creates a shock wave and it and a sonic
boom. And it's very loud, it's very
noisy, it's very turbulent. What's going
on when you're going faster than the
speed of sound is is you're going faster
than the rate at which air can
communicate to the air in front of it,
right? The molecules in front in front
of your fuselage are not able to
communicate to the molecules 100 meters
in front of you. So, you end up with
this uh with this sonic boom and massive
turbulence and massive noise and chaos.
Um, what's going on with Bitcoin is
Bitcoin is is evolving faster than
society can digest it. And so I think
you could say this is this is all
consistent. Uh, Bitcoin was
misunderstood
in the year 2011. It was misunderstood
by me in the year 2013. It was
misunderstood again in 2015, 2017, 2019,
2021.
When we first got into the space in
2020,
there were people that misunderstood it
and and we had a lot of massive amount
of criticism. When our stock was $10 a
share when our stock went to $100 a
share, it was massive amount of
criticism again. When it crashed to $20
a share, there was still massive
criticism. When we had $2 billion of
Bitcoin, people were cackling or one
billion saying, "Oh, you lost a billion
dollars on this." when we made a hundred
billion, everybody disappeared and slunk
into the shadows and then a new set of
trolls, a new a new set of critics came
out when our market cap went above a
hundred billion. Um, it's a it's a
different set of cynics, a different set
of critics, a different set of
misconceptions.
I think you're going to see uh the eb
and flow of that set of misconceptions
and that anxiety. It'll continue when
Bitcoin is uh 100,000. It'll continue
when Bitcoin is a million. It'll
continue when Bitcoin is 10 million.
It'll continue when Bitcoin goes to 20
million. And there's always going to be
a new amount of a new narrative of fear,
uncertainty, and doubt. It'll be a
different generation.
>> You know, the people that used to laugh
and say, "Oh, yeah, you lost a billion
dollars trading in Bitcoin." They're
gone. They're they disappeared, right?
Uh there'll be a new generation of
people that say, "Do you think it makes
sense to buy Bitcoin at a million
dollars a coin? It's going to trade down
to 500,000."
Right? And then there'll be a set of
people that will say, "You're buying it
at 10 million a coin. It's going to
trade to four six million. You
You lost so much money." uh you know
this is how societies deal with new
ideas. If you study if you study
paradigm shifts you know how long did it
take to embrace electricity? How long
did it people thought John D.
Rockefeller was crazy for 30 years until
he was the richest man in the world.
>> And then that, you know, and at the
point that he was the richest man in the
world, people thought, well, that that
trait is done. And that was just when
they invented the automobile and he got
10 times richer, right? And so the
society doesn't really deal with
paradigm shifts uh that well and
near-term. But after 30, 40, 50 years,
you look back and you say, well, of
course, we should have embraced the
fire, the electricity, the wheel, the
crude oil, the nuclear. Even nuclear
power right now, for example, nuclear
power has only become cool or useful
>> in the last two years.
>> Okay, so for 50, you know, 50 years,
people thought nuclear power was was an
awful thing. and all of a sudden they
walk up and they realize that I guess we
need nuclear energy to power the AI data
centers to make us super intelligent and
if we don't turn it on we're going to be
slow and stupid. So you know if it took
them 50 years by the way nuclear power
is like unlimited clean free energy and
they had to fight for 60 years to get
people to embrace the idea of unlimited
clean energy. It doesn't surprise me
that they'll be skeptics about digital
energy. they won't get it. You know, Max
Planck said, um, science advances one
funeral at a time.
And what he meant was was the old guard,
they will never ever accept the new
idea. Whatever it is, they'll die. They
will not accept the new idea. The only
way you get people to accept a new idea
is you wait for a new generation of
decision makers and the old guard
retires and they age out or you need a
war, you know, and people that don't
believe in aircraft, you know, but to
start believing in aircraft when the
aircraft flies over their city and drops
a bomb on their head. And people that
don't believe in atomic energy start
believing in atomic energy if someone
sets off a nuclear warhead in the middle
of a war. And so I think that um
disruptive profound events like a
near-death experience like during COVID
I think that introduces new ideas and
new paradigms. That's how we got
introduced into this space. It was the
war on currency and the war on COVID in
2020 that caused us to open our eyes and
embrace the new idea.
um the great I would say 95% of the
decision makers in the finance world
still don't really embrace or understand
the idea of digital energy, digital
capital, digital money.
And I don't think it's a bad thing
because the only way you're going to
make 10 to 100x your money is if you
pick the right thing and everybody
disagrees with you. No,
>> if everybody agrees with you and you do
the right thing, well, everybody agreed
you should buy Amazon in the year 2020
during the lockdowns because it was
quite obvious that you needed Amazon
during the lockdowns. It's the worst
investment of the past 5 years cuz
everybody agreed that it was a good
investment and there's a lesson in that.
>> Yeah. Be interesting to see if there's a
tipping point where everyone starts to
come around kind of like what you're
saying. Sounds like you've seen that too
where skeptics maybe started five years
ago now they're kind of proving them
wrong. Um and a lot of the kind of what
you're speaking to is is the old guard
the banking uh uh industry. What about
skepticism within the Bitcoin community
specifically? Does any of that surprise
you or um stand out in particular?
>> You know, it's a it's a vocal community.
There are a lot of opinions. People say
Bitcoin is money for enemies. Uh there's
been skepticism in in the Bitcoin
community since before Bitcoin,
>> right? One could argue that Bitcoin was
was born out of skepticism, right?
>> And so it's it's uh deep in the ethos
and the culture uh the the idea to
question everything, slay your heroes,
uh don't trust, verify,
>> right? So the whole idea of Bitcoin is
you know don't trust anybody don't trust
any institution
and so if you start asking the question
h how do you create an economic protocol
where you don't want to trust any of 8
billion people and any of 400 million
companies and any government? That's an
interesting question. I I would say
uh it you know that skepticism has its
place. said is motivational, but at at
some point it can uh it can become uh
what is the word?
>> Counterproductive. Maybe
>> counterproductive idealism,
right? And and the truth of the matter
is you do need to trust the company to
create the airplane you fly in. You do
need to trust the company that creates
the car you drive in. You do need to
trust the dentist at some point because
you can't and you do need to trust the
doctor because you can't take your own
appendix out or at least it's very rare,
right?
>> And so at some point you do have to
trust something and and I would say
you know the the more evolved way uh to
look at Bitcoin is not that
uh you want to embrace it and never
trust anything. the, you know, the real
uh inspiration and the promise of
Bitcoin is once you've embraced it, you
have the option to extend and withdraw
your trust, you know, from time to time.
And if you choose uh to not trust the
government, you can relocate your
Bitcoin to a different country. And if
you if you choose to trust a custodian,
you can locate your Bitcoin with them.
And when you decide to stop trusting
them, you can relocate your Bitcoin to
any of a hundred,000 other entities or
if you don't if you go through a period
of life when you choose not to trust
anyone, you can self custody. And when
you decide you don't trust yourself, you
can transfer your custody to another
family member, right? And and change.
So, so the real power of Bitcoin is
optionality
and the the reason we have the
optionality is because the entire
movement was born out of distrust.
>> And so there is a yin and the yang.
There is a dialectic here. And uh you
you need a healthy degree of skepticism
and distrust and cynicism.
But but once you've created the
technology,
you're not going to reach your full
potential unless you work with other
human beings, right? And so ultimately,
you know, uh when you decide that uh
you're going to work with other human
beings either as a trusted custodian or
a trusted hardware device manufacturer
or trusted hardware wallet or or you
work with another corporation. And it's
a trusted team of people whether they,
you know, work on your teeth or work on
your heart or manufacture the food or
provide you with the aircraft, you know,
travel you need. At that point, you can
reach your full potential
and and you do it empowered,
you know, with property rights and with
economic rights. And the reason that you
will be able to trust them is because
you have the option to withdraw your
trust. Right. So, so I look at it as as
the great deterrent. If you know if you
think about gold and why gold failed,
one reason gold failed is it's so
incredibly difficult to custody.
And so if you look at in the history of
gold in the 20s, you had four great
central bankers and the central banker
in Germany was shocked and a central
banker in the US with Ben Strong. And
the world, you know, was substantially
on a gold standard. And the Germans had
gold and the French had gold and the
British had gold. The Americans had
gold, but for the most part, the goal
was either in London or in New York. You
know, the French gold was with the
British or the Americans or the German
gold was with the Americans. So there's
a famous story where where shocked
traveled to New York City, met with the
head of the Fed, Ben Strong, and Ben
Strong wanted to show him the German
gold, took him down into the basement of
the New York Fed, and they couldn't find
the gold.
>> And and of course, the message of the
story is this.
Gold is so difficult to custody.
Countries couldn't figure out how to
like the entire country of Germany
couldn't figure out how to custody their
own gold, much less the 100,000
companies in Germany or the 60 million
people in Germany. And so the reason
gold failed was it was too slow and too
difficult uh to custody and therefore
your property rights were always going
to be impaired by a central actor. And
um you know imagine the entire world
running on goldbased credit on a gold
standard when all the gold in the world
was sitting in London and New York City
and most of it was in New York City
you know and and we can say oh yeah
that's that's a a bearer asset but not
really because 40 million companies
couldn't bear it
>> you know 400 million people couldn't
bear it right and So, Bitcoin uh it
represents the bearer instrument, but it
but it really is practical for an
individual to take custody and it's
practical for a company to take custody.
And of course, I I guess what I counsel
to people that are idealists is is they
don't trust banks and they don't trust
companies. But the point that I would
make is during the entire gold era, gold
was so difficult to handle that no
company could could custody their gold
and no bank could.
If we lived in a world where 40,000
banks were custodians of Bitcoin, you
would have evolved from a world where
there were like eight or six custodians
of Bitcoin in the sorry custodians of
gold in the entire world, right? And uh
and so I think that uh Bitcoin offers a
promise
of in of economic integrity
and um I don't think we should rail
against a bank embracing Bitcoin. No.
Yeah. The truth of the matter is if
every country on earth embraced Bitcoin
and the countries became the custodians
of Bitcoin and the only thing we
accomplished was to have 150 countries
custody Bitcoin. That would be more
decentralized than the gold standard.
>> Yeah.
>> For hundreds of years, right? That would
be a it would be an order of magnitude
more decentralized
>> than we had under the gold standard.
What we're talking about is a world
where if if only banks and only
governments
custody Bitcoin, you would be a 100x to
a thousandx more decentralized. And if
corporations in uh custody of Bitcoin,
you would be 10,000 times more
decentralized. And of course in a world
where millions of individuals or tens or
hundreds of millions of individuals self
custody, you know, you're you're not
like one, two, three, four orders of
magnitude more decentralized. You're
like a, you know, six, seven, eight more
orders of magnitude more decentralized.
So I I tend to focus upon the fact that
that uh the worst case for the Senate is
a million times better than the best
case we had a 100 years ago or even the
best case we had ever,
>> right? in terms of decentralized
monetary integrity.
>> Yeah, like that. I mean, staying on kind
of a similar topic, you know, the the US
recently acquired 10% of Intel. There
was, of course, a strong response from
the community as usual. Uh, do you see
any parallels between sort of this this
equity strategy and the current
administration's stated goal uh of
being, you know, a global Bitcoin
superpower?
>> No,
not
totally unrelated. Okay.
>> I think I think when the administration
says they want to be a global Bitcoin
superpower, they mean they want to
encourage banks to bank Bitcoin, they
want our banking system to embrace it,
to extend loans against it, to offer,
you know, yield or credit against it.
They want to enable transactions. They
want Apple and Google and Meta and
Microsoft to support Bitcoin. They want
public companies to be able to buy
Bitcoin. They want uh an an explosion
and expansion of institutional grade
Bitcoin custodians. They want favorable
tax laws for Bitcoin, favorable security
laws for Bitcoin. and they want the
finance companies in the United States,
whether it's Black Rockck or whether
it's Coinbase or whether it's Strategy
or whether it's Block, they want the
finance companies in the United States
to lead the way in digital assets and
digital capital
and Bitcoin adoption.
>> Yeah, makes sense. Uh, one of the
criticisms is, you know, through a
humanitarian lens, if corporations hold
a large share of the Bitcoin, what does
that mean for the average person? Uh,
how do you, you know, avoid crowding out
small users?
>> Well, um, you know, when we got
involved, Bitcoin was trading $9,000 a
coin,
and today Bitcoin's
$115,000
a coin.
And it got that way because our company
bought 3%.
And Black Rockck enabled institutions to
buy like 4%.
And that means that 93%
of the gain and that's 93% of nearly $2
trillion.
So $1.8 8 trillion dollar
went to the individuals that owned the
Bitcoin before the corporations got
involved. So the individuals not been
crowded out. The individual just if you
if you posit that individuals, you know,
were the ones that owned the Bitcoin in
the year 2020, then those individuals
made $1.8 trillion
since the corporations got involved. So
the corporations aren't crowding out the
individuals. The corporations are making
the individuals that believed in Bitcoin
insanely wealthy. And now the
individuals can decide what do they want
to do with that economic power, right?
And and they'll do whatever. You know,
as a practical matter, it seems to me
that for our company, if we were to ever
get to 5% of the network, the network's
going to be at least a million dollars a
coin.
If we were to go beyond it, it's going
to 10 million a coin. So when we get to
7% of the network, if we do and Bitcoin
is $10 million a coin and a block raw
keeps up with us, that means 85% of the
network, right? And you're going to be
talking about $200 trillion.
So you're going to have $170
trillion
that will flow to the individuals. So
they're not exactly getting crowded out,
right?
>> If if anything, what you've got is the
corporations
are all engines turning the flywheel of
the Bitcoin economy. Every single
company, every Bitcoin treasury company
that capitalizes on Bitcoin is like
attaching a motor
to the network. And every time that
company buys $50 million worth of
Bitcoin, they spin that drive shaft one
turn. That's one day's natural supply,
right? And and so the more companies
that come on, whether it's Black Rockck
or whether it's Strategy or whether it's
MetaPlanet or whether it's 21 or whether
it's BSTR or you know or whether it's
similar, you know, whoever it might be,
each one of them is firing up a motor.
All of the motors are are powering up
the network. If you're an individual and
you believe in Bitcoin, you buy the
Bitcoin, you cold storage the Bitcoin,
and you let all the companies power up
the network. If the companies didn't
show up and and the network was all
individuals, Bitcoin would be trading
$5,000 a coin.
>> No.
>> And and here's the problem. It wouldn't
just trade at $5,000 a coin,
but the corporations, if they were to
choose a different network to power up,
you know, if if all the companies went
to Bitcoin Cash or Litecoin
or Ethereum or something else,
Bitcoin would max out at 5,000 a coin
and it would dwindle down to nothing
because because the companies would
latch on to the next network and then
they would go to every government in
China and Russia and Europe and South
America and Africa and the US and all
the laws would be modified to benefit
the other network and eventually squeeze
the Bitcoin network out. So this is um
this is a protocol
and you could even say there's a
protocol war
and it's a war to determine the future
of money
and the future of the war for the future
of money is going to be fought
and won with money.
So in this particular case it's uh the
people that have the money are the
institutional investors and the people
that can can uh organize the money are
the corporations and if you want to win
the monetary war you need the
institutions that control all the
capital and you need the corporations to
get involved because you need the
support of the government. the
government can with a stroke of a pen,
right, block 99% of all the capital from
flowing into a network
or they can enable it. And so I think
the corporations are very important
actors in this, right? They're the ones
that are going to hire the lobbyists.
They're the ones going to do the
marketing. They're the ones that are
going to defend
uh the network and the individual,
right, from having their Bitcoin seized,
>> from having their Bitcoin shut down or
from having a 95% tax on the Bitcoin,
right? The reason that'll happen is
because the corporations are a line of
defense. And when I think about Bitcoin,
I think the miners, you know, are the
first line of technical defense. They're
defending the network with energy and
power.
And uh the the Bitcoin treasury
companies are the first line of economic
defense. They're depend defending the
network with capital, right? And and and
even the Bitcoin exchanges, right, are
the first line of of defense
technically. They're the ones that are
going to implement the iPhone apps, the
Android apps, right, the websites. And
you really want uh very healthy
exchanges, healthy treasuries, healthy
miners. You want them to get big. You
want them to be well capitalized. You
want them everywhere in the world,
right? The the Bitcoin treasury company
in Shanghai
will lobby for the interest of Bitcoin
with the Chinese government,
>> right? You have to speak Chinese. You're
going to have to be in Beijing if you're
going to fight for Bitcoin. And it won't
be the individual. It'll be it'll be the
corporation and the better capitalized
the more effective they'll be. So I I
don't think there's um I don't think
there's any conflict of interest. It's
not a zero sum game. If the world is
going to embrace Bitcoin fully, that
means corporations, banks, exchanges,
operating companies, cities, states,
federal governments, you want them all
to embrace Bitcoin. You don't want to
leave anybody out,
>> right? And it's the last observation
I'll make is, you know, Bitcoin is like
speaking English.
You know, and if you spoke English and
you're an individual and you found out
that the most powerful person in the
world also spoke English, would you be
offended? You know, and if you found out
that the people that run the bank that
have all the money in the world in it
also spoke English and offered websites
in English, and if Apple and Google and
and Meta also offered software that ran
in English, you know, would you think,
"Wow, they took my language. I want them
to give it back. I don't you know if
your dentist speaks English and the
doctor speaks English and the cab driver
speaks English and the pilot speaks
English is that bad for you?
>> I don't I don't think so. I think I
think ultimately you want all of the
rich, powerful, influential people, even
the ones you disagree with,
>> you want them all to speak your
language. You want them to adopt your
protocol.
>> But if they're if they're doing
something that's bad for you, you want
to see it coming and understand that
they did it.
Right. And so and so Bitcoin is a
protocol. Ultimately, you want everybody
to use the protocol. The world's going
to be a better place and you're going to
be better for their embrace of the
protocol.
>> Yeah, I think that's really well said
and helpful. Uh thanks for indulging the
questions about FUD. Um let's pivot a
little bit to talk about the Bitcoin
Treasury companies, the this wave of
them adopting Bitcoin. You know, we
talked a little bit about competition
and how it's not a zero- sum game. um
still we're seeing there there tends to
be some um uh regional kind of disputes
and wanting to kind of be the first
mover the the competition for capital.
What would you say to companies who are
kind of in in that space where um what
would be your encouragement in terms of
competition?
>> Let's start with the basis the
fundamental premise of the industry.
Um,
Bitcoin is the monetary base of the
crypto economy. It is the monetary
crypto network. It is digital gold.
If you go back 3,000 years, go back and
read the Persian expedition by Xenopon.
It's about five 600 BCish.
uh and uh Xenopon's writing about uh a
bunch of Athenians and Spartans that are
mercenaries and they go into Asia Minor
and then they charge all the way through
Babylon to Persia and they're fighting
for, you know, Cyrus against his brother
and Cyrus gets killed, you know, and um
they have to make their way back to
Greece. They tra have to cross 800 miles
of hostile territory and they fight
their way back through a hundred tribes.
All the tribes speak a different
language. They all have a different
culture. They all want to kill each
other. The Athenians don't trust the
Spartans. The Spartans don't trust the
Athenians. No one trusts the Persians,
right? It's it's nonstop bloodshed and
war. And this is before the Lydian
coins. This is before we have coinage.
Now, here's the thing that's interesting
about the story. The one thing they
agree on is they all want to kill each
other for gold. They right they all want
gold. Now why do they want gold? Somehow
600 BC everybody agreed that gold was
valuable and gold was money even though
they could not agree on their gods,
their cultures. They couldn't agree on
anything else. But what's fascinating is
is the book takes it for granted that
gold is money. Gold has been uh has been
valued by thousands and thousands of
different cultures, all killing each
other, speaking different languages,
worshiping different gods, but they're
all fighting over gold. Uh and so gold
emerged as the as the primary monetary
metal, not silver, not bronze, gold.
For the for 300 years, if you look at
the 17th century, the 18th century, the
19th century, even into most of the 20th
century, the world revolved around
goldbacked
credit. Okay, we issued bonds backed by
gold. The British bonds, the you know,
sovereign debt in Britain in 1770
was a gold back bond. You know, in the
Rothschild's times, they had gold back
bonds, right? The French bonds were
goldbacked, the German bonds, the
Austrian bonds, the Spanish bonds
goldbacked. The, you know, all of the
credit instruments were to a certain
degree backed by gold and they would go
off the gold standard and back on the
gold standard. But this idea of
goldbacked credit goes from the 1700s to
the 1800s to the 1900s all the way
through 1971.
And so we have hundreds and hundreds of
years of goldbacked credit instruments.
Then we have to wait and and Satoshi
invents Bitcoin and we fight over what
is it and you know no one can decide.
And now in the year 2025
we have consensus that Bitcoin is
digital gold. So on C the CNBC talking
heads agree on it. Everyone in the
crypto economy agrees Bitcoin is the
monetary foundation. It's digital gold.
You know what are the other cryptos?
Maybe they're digital silver. Maybe
they're digital copper. Maybe they're
digital palladium or digital platinum or
digital silicon.
You know, but the history of Western
civilization isn't based on copper
bonds, right? And and there was
experiment with silver, but silver bonds
didn't really fly. It was it primarily
uh we we settled upon one metallic
monetary network and now we're settling
on one crypto monetary network. So
what's what is a Bitcoin treasury
company? Well, there are two profound
paradigm shifts. One, Bitcoin, digital
capital, right? Digital gold never
existed before. You could argue that
it's only been nine months since the
entire world agreed that Bitcoin was
digital gold. Okay, that means you can
now issue digital backed digital gold
back credit or digital credit. If
Bitcoin is digital gold is digital
capital and that means that any credit
instrument backed by Bitcoin becomes
digital credit. what we're talking
about, you know, is, you know, if you
look at it myopically, you're just
thinking, well, how are these companies
helping Bitcoin? If you look at it more
granally, the real point is how are
these companies transforming the equity
market and the credit market.
If if I create a company that buys
Bitcoin and I accumulate a billion
dollars of Bitcoin, I have a billion
dollars of digital capital. What can I
do with it? I can issue digital credit.
Now, I want you to think about this for
a bit. If I had a billion dollars of
gold, I'm a gold bank, a goldsmith. I
have a billion dollars of gold. I issue
a $100 million of gold back credit, gold
notes. And then they thought, well, why
not 500 million? And then they thought,
why not a billion dollars of gold notes?
And you know where the story goes next?
They're like, well, why not $2 billion
of gold notes? Why not 10 billion?
Pretty soon you had $ five dollar of
gold back credit for $1 of gold. Okay?
And the entire modern banking system
grew out of that issuance of credit and
the credit started from gold. And the
strong what was the strongest credit?
One for one backed,
>> right? One for one backed would be the
strongest credit. Okay. So that means a
a billion dollars of Bitcoin
could in theory be used to issue a
billion dollars of Bitcoin backed
credit. That would be one for one
backed.
>> Okay. Now what's that displacing? It's
displacing mortgage credit. Credit based
upon retail houses, residential houses,
commercial credit. That's credit based
on commercial real estate. A building
that's half empty, right? or it's
displacing uh corporate credit, credit
based upon the cash flows of a company
or it's displacing,
you know, fiat credit, credit that's
based on the promise of a government to
print more credit, right? That is the
status quo. And how big is that?
Hundreds of trillions of dollars of
those 20th century credit instruments.
And when you understand Bitcoin treasury
company, if you know the very compelling
business model is I accumulate a bunch
of Bitcoin capital through equity, then
I begin to issue credit instruments
against it. And those could be bondlike
instruments, they could be convertible
bond instruments, they could be
preferred instruments, they could be
convertible preferred instruments, they
could be variable floating preferred. So
there are all sorts of types of credit
that can be issued against the
underlying digital gold.
When you issue that credit, you create
leverage on the capital. And when you
create leverage on the capital, the
equity of the company issuing the credit
becomes digital equity. And that equity
can outperform the Bitcoin. So, if I
want to create a company that's going to
perform 2x Bitcoin, I take the Bitcoin,
I issue Bitcoin back credit against the
Bitcoin. I issue digital credit backed
by digital capital. I create digital
equity and the digital equity
outperforms the underlying capital
asset.
Now, that's a profound idea. Who are
those companies competing against? Not
really each other. What they're
competing against is the existing credit
instruments in the capital market where
they're going to issue credit or the
existing equity instruments in the
capital market where they're issuing
equity. They're all just using Bitcoin
as that leverage or as that base, that
monetary base in order to create better
equity and better credit. So that being
the case,
you're going to you're going to see an
explosion of these companies. And if
they understand
what I just said, if they if they
understand it, then you know it stands
to reason, let's take uh Brazil. I
create a company, you know, OBTC or
Orange Bitcoin in Brazil. They're
creating the first pure digital equity
in the Brazilian market and their their
base is Bitcoin and asset going up 55% a
year in dollars and they'll be competing
against other equities in Brazil that
aren't going up 55% a year in dollars.
Right? Think about a company with a 55%
growth rate being launched in Brazil. Is
the equity valuable? Sure it is. Who are
they competing against? every company in
Brazil, right? And then when they issue
credit instruments, they'll be competing
against every credit instrument in
Brazil. When you go to Japan, MetaPlanet
is issuing digital equity in Japan. Who
they compete against? Every Japanese
company. Bitcoin's growing 55% a year.
What's the growth rate of the average
Japanese equity? You know, one that,
120th that. Then when they start issuing
credit, you know, meta yield, they'll be
issuing credit, you know, against
Japanese credit instruments, the
Japanese risk-free rate or the corporate
bond rate for yield in Japan is like 50
basis points. If you offer 500 basis
points, you are 10 times better than the
thing they're issuing. So there's place
for monsters, you know, for mega
companies, right? uh MetaPlanet,
you know, won't just be the most
valuable hotel company in the world.
They may be the most valuable company in
old Japan, right? They can create uh and
by the way, they're they're small
compared to us, but the point is they're
not competing against us. They're
competing against Japanese equity and
Japanese credit in the JPY currency. And
that's a distinct capital market.
That's why it makes sense to launch a
Bitcoin company in Sweden, in Norway, in
the Netherlands, in France, in the UK,
in Brazil, in Japan, in Canada, and the
US. Now, having said all that, right,
all those capital markets that are
waiting for a a mega champion that and
and the mega ones, the ones that that
are pure digital credit issuers, they
could be a 100x.
They could be, you know, they're ones
you can take a 10 million or a $1
million company to a billion to 10
billion to a hundred billion. And if
it's a big capital market like the UK or
Germany or Japan, you can go to a
trillion, right?
That doesn't mean there can't be 10
other companies in Japan that also
follow MetPlanet and they they all 10x
>> because let's take the US.
We've issued uh digital credit
instruments in the US. We've issued you
know
101 12 billion of convertible bonds. We
have about 8 billion outstanding now.
We've issued $6 billion or so of
preferred credit. You know what is that
compared to the US credit market? The US
US dollar credit market is you know 100
trillion.
>> Oh so one trillion is 1% 100 billion is
1%.
So what is 10 billion?
>> Yeah.
>> It's like it's a basis point. Okay. So
what we're what we're doing is we're not
competing against the other Bitcoin
treasury companies. We are evangelizing
and advocating digital credit and our
move is to digitally transform the
credit markets. And if we are 1%
successful,
we sell a trillion dollar of digital
credit. Just 1% successful.
So what would help us? What would help
us is a dozen other comp companies in
the United States also marketing and
evangelizing and educating the investors
on digital credit, right? We we have a
hundred million retail investors. How
how many investors, you know, have
dollars and want 10% yield instead of 3%
yield from their bank?
>> It's a lot, right?
>> Okay. How do you, you know, how many of
the hundred million people that would
prefer a bank account that yields 10% to
a bank account that yields 3%. How many
of them know about stretch?
>> Yeah.
>> STRC.
>> I mean, a lot of people in the Bitcoin
community don't even know about Stretch,
>> right? So, I give you a bank account
backed by Bitcoin that gives you 10%.
Well, what would help us? A hundred
other companies
copying that. You're like, well, won't
that get crowded? Okay. Well, I'm
describing kind of a better bank, right?
Instead of going to a traditional fiat
bank and getting three or 2% on your
bank account, you go to a Bitcoin
treasury company and you get 10%. A
better bank. Well, how many banks were
there in 1920? 25,000.
Okay. How many banks are there today?
5,000.
Okay. So, might there be there could be
5,000
Bitcoin treasury companies in the US.
Would it hurt us? No. Would it hurt
them? Not really. Not until Not until
50% of all the credit in the world has
been digitally transformed to Bitcoin
back credit.
You know, when there's a hundred
trillion dollars of Bitcoin back credit,
the Bitcoin ecosystem is hundreds of
trillions. There's hundreds or thousands
of companies.
Who lost?
>> Okay. And I'll give you the answer, by
the way. Who's going to lose? Right?
Outside of the Bitcoin ecosystem,
20th century credit issuers, right?
people issuing junk credit, under
collolateralized,
illlquid,
you know, lowy yielding garbage, right?
They're going to find their credit lines
will dry up because why would you invest
in illlquid garbage that's not
collateralized that gives you 4%. When
you can invest in liquid credit to pays
double or triple that's 10x
collateralized, right?
So, so weak antiquated credit issuers
will get squeezed out. You you can't
even name them, right?
>> It's like 4,000 weak regional banks that
are selling preferred shares. You don't
even know who they are. You can't even
name them. They're trading over the
counter. The 20th century
over-the-counter market and the weak
credit issuers, they will see credit
lines. they will get squeezed not
overnight but over the course of decade
or two decades
within the Bitcoin ecosystem.
You know it's pretty hard to hurt
yourself but you know if you find a way
to get super leveraged on shortterm
extremely expensive margin debt you know
how do you hurt yourself in the Bitcoin
ecosystem? I guess you take out a five
to one levered loan from a crypto
exchange.
>> So it's not 100% levered. It's 500%
levered and you and you post your coll
if you can find a way to do a margin
loan super levered then maybe you hurt
yourself. But I don't think public
companies will be able to do that.
>> I I don't think the market will offer
publicly traded Bitcoin treasury
companies that kind of leverage. So, I
think if you stick to convertible bonds
with longer duration or if you go to
preferred stocks or even if you went to
junk bonds, as long as they were four
years or longer duration, you're fine
holding Bitcoin. The people in the
ecosystem that got hurt the most during
the crypto winter were Bitcoin miners.
And the reason they got they got hurt
and the reason many of them were forced
into the liquidation is they were taking
12 month and 18month loans that cost 15%
and they weren't buying Bitcoin. They
were buying Bitcoin mining rigs that
depreciate 20% a year or 30% a year. If
you take a short duration loan and buy
an asset that depreciates 30% a year,
you're going to have a financial
problem. If you take a mid duration or
long duration loan and buy an asset
appreciating 30 to 60% a year,
>> you'll probably be fine. So I I think
that you would have to be very creative
and and quite cavalier to hurt yourself
as a Bitcoin treasury company in the
public market.
>> Yeah,
>> you might do it. There'll be a few that
will do stupid things that will be
financially
uh irresponsible,
but for the most part,
you're gonna have three categories of
Bitcoin treasury companies.
You're going to have the pure play
digital credit issuers that are laserike
focused.
our company, a MetaPlanet,
someone like a probably a Strive, I'm
going to guess someone with a lot of
equity capital that's going to just sell
equity and pure credit and they're going
to be laser like focused.
They're going to 100x or a thousandx.
Those are going to be the screaming
equity winners. Those are going to be
the next mag seven stocks,
>> right? Those are companies that can go
from a billion to a 100red billion or to
a trillion, right? Uh then you're going
to have
the the strong Bitcoin players. Maybe
they're not the single dominant player
in their market, but they're strong
Bitcoin. They got a lot of stuff going
on. They'll 10x 20x.
You know, they'll be good. They'll win,
but they won't be the next Mag 7. Are
they issuing credit or what's kind of
>> They'll be like, you know, companies
that are very, you know, they buy a lot
of Bitcoin and do some it's not their
it's not their laser like 150% focus,
but they'll do some and they'll be
strong performers,
>> right? And then you'll have companies
that just buy some Bitcoin
>> and they'll buy some Bitcoin and they'll
have another business
>> and over time uh you know the other
business may trade sideways and the and
the Bitcoin will actually support the
equity market cap of the company. Yeah.
>> And so they're the ones that can't lose
that, but because they're not 100%
focused on Bitcoin because they have
another business, they have other
liabilities, they'll, you know, they'll
they'll grind up with the S&P and
they'll be successful even if their core
business doesn't work,
>> right? But but they'll still be, you
know, low risk. You know, maybe they'll
be two two, three, 4xer,
>> right? And I think you'll see all of
that. It all comes down to the
conviction of the management team and
the business model.
You know, if and if you're saying,
"Well, what would I like to be?" What
you'd like to be is a pure play Bitcoin
treasury company that that issues equity
and issues high quality Bitcoin credit.
And you want to own that capital market.
You want to be the category killer in
the UK, in France, in Brazil, in Norway,
in Japan,
>> in the US, in the in Canada, right? In
Germany, in Italy.
>> The the the home champion is always
going to have a home court. The national
champion will have a home court
advantage. You're going to have tax
advantages, issuance advantages,
regulatory advantages, marketing
advantages,
language, cultural advantages,
and focus advantage. Right? when you get
up and you issued the first the first
digital credit instrument in pounds,
>> your smarter web, and you're doing a 100
pound perpetual Bitcoin back credit in
London or than you do in euros on the
Frankfurt stock exchange, right? Or you
do it in yen in Tokyo, right? At that
point, you're selling the strongest,
highest yielding credit instrument in a
capital market
that's got garbage. Like, go to
Switzerland. You know what the yield is
for short-term money in Switzerland?
It's negative.
Okay? You have $10 million, you put it
in a Swiss bank, they take money away
from you. In fact, the yields are
negative out to four years on the yield
curve. Okay? So the risk-free cost of
capital is literally less than zero.
A Swiss company with Swiss with with
Bitcoin Capital selling something that
pays you 400 basis points in Swiss
Franks is offering four or 5% more than
everything else. And okay, well there's
like 800 billion that's getting eaten,
>> you know, why wouldn't that capital just
start to flow, right? So why couldn't
you issue $10 billion of of Swiss Frank
back credit?
>> Yeah.
>> And if you were to if you basically have
a cost of funds of 5% in Swiss Franks
and you're investing in Bitcoin
returning 50%.
>> Yeah.
>> Think about how fast you can grow that
business. You become the greatest Swiss,
you know, bank, right? You you become
the greatest Swiss financial company
>> in the entire nation and you do it in a
matter of five years. So you could
become the strategy of Switzerland
except you can do better than us. We we
got to from 600 million to
12 billion or whatever 110 billion
depending on the day. We got there in
five years but we had to learn as we
went along. We had to experiment and we
had to go through, you know, 20
different credit, you know, is issuances
and and we had to discard a lot of
stuff. If you were doing it from scratch
today, you would just skip the first,
you know, four years. I'm, you know, I
would say like here I already give you
the answer. You raise equity capital.
You buy Bitcoin. You put a 100% of it
into Bitcoin.
And then you sell a Bitcoinbacked money
market, a short duration credit
instrument that just strips the duration
to one month, strips the volatility,
right? Strips the delta and just give
people 500 basis points more yield than
the risk-free rate
>> in in the capital market where you're
selling the credit. And you could
literally have a company with one credit
instrument trading publicly and one
equity instrument,
rinse and repeat, and you're going to
grow as fast as you can educate the
capital market that you're selling into,
right? And you could in theory do what
we did, but you could do it in half the
time or a third of the time. It all
comes down to how charismatic is the
leader of the company. Are they trusted?
Is the brand trusted? Are they
laser-like focused?
>> Yeah, I love that answer. I think
encouraging sort of an abundance
mentality is much much needed uh in a
world where scarcity sort of dominates.
Uh you kind of answered my next
question, but I do want to dig into
stretch a little bit. Uh describe kind
of the this endgame. Is it I mean
building a better bank you mentioned. Uh
is that sort of where you see strategy
heading? And right now I mean this
product exists. People can put their
money in it. It's a phenomenal uh um
asset to to the to the market.
Is it just a matter of educating the
public that this exists or like, you
know, how do we how do we continue to
evolve?
>> Yeah. Well, I think the endgame is we
accumulate a trillion dollars worth of
Bitcoin and then we grow it 20 30, you
know, Bitcoin appreciates 21% a year in
21 years. And then we grow that capital
by issuing more credit. So, we're
growing faster than 21%. So the endgame
is get to a trillion dollars of
collateral growing 30% a year, be
issuing $100 billion of credit a year,
growing
20, 30% a year.
And that credit is yielding
two, three, 400 basis points more than
all of the real estate back credit, the
corporate back credit, the fiat back
credit, or any other type of credit
instrument in the world, right?
>> And what what's going on there then is
you reinvigorate the credit markets
instead of people having a credit, you
know, they're sick in Switzerland,
right? Instead of getting zero in
Switzerland,
you know, if someone is issuing if half
the credit in Switzerland is digital,
then the zero goes to two or 300 basis
points.
And because it goes to 300 basis points,
maybe the risk-free rate goes up and
financial repression
becomes less common and more difficult,
right? you're actually improving the
traditional credit markets and you're
offering uh Bitcoin believers something
3% better.
>> Same thing in and yen, right?
Eventually, instead of instead of
trillions of dollars yielding 50 basis
points, the average blended yield will
go to 300 basis points or 400 basis
points. and and you return health, you
know, and integrity to the credit
markets everywhere in the world. And
it's done by some combination of Bitcoin
treasury companies working in concert
with each other, right? The the Bitcoin
network becomes a multiundred trillion
dollar network. the amount of of digital
credit
10 trillion, 20 trillion, 100 trillion,
right? What what if there's a hundred
trillion dollars of digital credit and
hundreds, by the way, a hundred trillion
in digital credit backed by 200 trillion
worth of digital capital would be not
fractional banking,
>> right? you you haven't got to one to
one, you're still 2x over
collateralized, which would be better
than
but the the very best AAA corporate
investment grade debt in the United
States is like two and a half times or
two two and a half times overclocked. So
it's all AAA investment grade but with
more yield and more transparency.
So I, you know, I see the endgame as, as
the credit markets are reinvigorated and
digitally transformed to be backed by
Bitcoin, digital gold, digital capital.
And I see the equity markets are
reinvigorated because the equities uh
the equity indexes all start to hold
this these companies, right? We creep
into the equity indexes, Metaplanet gets
into the equity indexes, and then pretty
soon all these companies in the S&P 500,
they all have Bitcoin. And if all these
companies have Bitcoin, then the S&P
index is substantially got a component
of Bitcoin and Bitcoin's going up 21% a
year, right? So companies get healthier,
credit gets less risky
yields, you know, your savings account
doesn't give you 0% in Switzerland or
half a base, half a percent in Japan or
2% in Europe or one. It gives you six,
seven, 8, 10. Right? So I think uh I I
think the 20th century banking networks
get transformed. The 20th century credit
networks get transformed. The 20th
century equity capital markets get
transformed. Bitcoin becomes the
foundation of the 21st century. digital
credit, digital equity, digital banking,
digital capital, digital economy
and uh Bitcoin treasury companies are
the engines, the drivers, the dynamos
powering up that network
>> and you know the experimentation is
extraordinary. There's a Cambrian
explosion of ideas. You know the way you
do it in South America is different than
the way you do it in North America. At
some point, Bitcoin will find its way on
the balance sheet of insurance companies
and it'll find its way on the balance
sheet of actual banks and tech companies
and you know and if you start to
re-imagine insurance you know powered by
Bitcoin is a different world better
insurance and reimagining bank accounts
powered by Bitcoin. What happens when
your bank offers you a money market
>> that's not fiat powered? Because the
fiat powered money market would pay you
420 basis points right now, but a
Bitcoin powered money market would pay
you 10.2%
1,020 basis points right now. So as
banking gets reinvigorated and as
insurance gets invigorated and when the
Apples and the Googles are, you know,
custodying and offering Bitcoin via all
their rails, then you've got a digital
transformation that's a it's an
invigoration and and we start to reach a
digital economy which is smarter,
faster, stronger, 10x better,
10x more productive, maybe a 100x more
productive. And the people that are in
that economy win,
>> and the people that are blocked from
that economy look like the North Koreans
where their lights go out at night, you
know, you know, they get locked off the
power grid.
>> And um hopefully hopefully um it'll be
such a compelling future that no one
will want to be locked off the grid.
Your choice is to be smart and fast and
strong and rich or you could be stupid
and slow and broach and weak and poor.
Yeah.
>> So, do you anticipate in that sort of
future strategy being in a position
where you might extend Bitcoin credit to
to institutions, distress institutions
or or sovereigns um some point in the
future?
>> Yeah. Well, when we sell credit, we
don't buy it. Okay. So, when you say
extend credit, um we won't be making a
loan to them. We will be offering them
our credit instrument. So if you're a
nation state and you want 10% yield,
you'll buy our credit
instead of buying something that yields
3%. Right?
>> We will we will sell the credit, create
the credit, right? And I think our you
know our view is we want
to create you know not 10 billion but a
hundred billion and then a trillion
dollars
>> and then trillions of dollars worth of
credit.
backed by digital capital.
>> We talked a little bit about the
different types of treasury companies,
the pure plays versus, you know,
companies that have a significant
operating business. Um, what trends
haven't you seen that you're
anticipating or kind of what's the
what's the alpha here? You know, what
what should companies continue to
experiment with that you think would be
effective?
You know, I think that there's an
opportunity for crypto exchanges uh to
be more aggressive adopting a Bitcoin
treasury strategy.
>> I think we might see that. I think we
could see we could see more adoption
from the Geminis of the world or the
blocks or the Coinbases of the world
because they're now publicly traded
entities in the capital markets. And so
you might see something interesting
there. I think insurance companies,
especially public insurance companies,
could start to embrace uh digital
capital and they have a lot of capital
to invest and so they could move their
own balance sheet so they could start to
change the way they operate.
I think there are a lot of financial
players that are innovative. Uh the
Apollos, the Black Rocks, the Black
Stones of the world, they're publicly
traded. So, you know, you you would
wonder if if you're a Black Rockck and
you just had the most successful ETF in
history, maybe you might want to hold
some Bitcoin on your own balance sheet.
>> Right.
>> Right. And uh take advantage of that.
So, I think you'll start to see more
interesting credit instruments or equity
instruments created by financially
sophisticated players in the crypto
economy. And um and if it doesn't come
from the big players that are
established right now, then you'll see
the smaller startups, the pure Bitcoin
treasury companies, they'll get into the
space because there's a vacuum.
>> Yeah.
>> Just like Coinbase is filling a vacuum
left by traditional banks because the
banks don't want to custody Bitcoin. So
Coinbase has got the ability to fill it.
If the insurance companies or the crypto
exchanges don't embrace Bitcoin, well,
then you'll see smaller startups like a
strike or something that will embrace
it, right? And if you go public and and
you start to raise a lot of capital and
then you build it into your wallet or
you build it into a credit offering or
something, then I think that could be
compelling.
>> So, as as things kind of continue to
play out, the game theory um is
interesting. It's compelling. How do you
how do you think about the future when
it comes to maybe consolidation or M&A
opportunities with Bitcoin treasury
companies in a in a significant draw
down? Is is strategy sort of the the
buyer of last resort in these scenarios?
No. No. I you know, here's what I tell
everybody. I expect Bitcoin to go up 29%
a year on average for the next 21 years,
>> right? I'm expecting $21 million Bitcoin
in 21 years. So I expect Bitcoin to
appreciate 21% a year thereafter.
The riskfree rate is 29%.
If I do nothing, take no risk. If you're
if you're in the Bitcoin network, you
know, every single investment idea you
consider has got a return more than 29%
plus a risk premium plus another premium
for the headache. And even if you did
that, there's a diversification
discount.
And the thing you got to keep in mind,
you know, and when you're running a
public company is there is a
diversification discount. If people look
at my company and they say 100% of the
risk and 100% of the return
is levered to Bitcoin. It's a very easy
business model. You can go to our
website. You can crank in the Bitcoin
volatility, the Bitcoin ARR, the Bitcoin
price, and it spits out the risks, the
fair credit spread, everything. It's
very simple. You can update it every 15
seconds.
If we were to go and buy another
company, you know, buy X billion dollar
company that we think was 40%
undervalued,
>> now it takes like an hour for someone to
figure out whether that's right and
wrong. And it takes 10 years for them to
know we were right or wrong.
>> Okay. You've just created a
diversification discount. You've create
you've turned something which was
transparent where I know exactly what
I'm getting in 15 seconds to something
where I if I believe you after an hour
maybe it's better. But how many ideas do
you have that are guaranteed to return
40% a year for the next 20 years?
>> No. Like I I've never seen a public
company that ever did an acquisition
that promised 40% return every year for
20 years, right? So
when you think about Bitcoin, the right
way to think about it is you're a public
company. You have a billion dollars of
capital. You have an option. You could
go buy a billion dollars of Bitcoin at
one times revenue and it's growing 55% a
year.
>> Mhm.
You can buy something growing 55% a year
at one times revenue,
>> right?
>> And all of your investors already
understand it and support it. Long-term,
you can buy something that's going to
grow 29% a year. No risk. No risk. No
integration headache. You can buy
something growing nearly 30% a year at
one times revenue and all of your
investors back it. Right? There's no one
holding our equity that doesn't believe
in Bitcoin. You see,
>> right?
>> They're all Bitcoin maximalists.
So
why would you do anything other than do
the same acquisition at one times
revenue of something that's hyper
growing monopoly growing 30% a year?
We've done that like 77 times or
something.
>> Right. So So when I look at M&A, I think
I I think the perfect M&A partner is
Bitcoin. You know, you have a chance to
buy the dominant digital monetary
network growing 30% a year for the next
20 years with zero risk and keep doing
the trade over and over and over again.
>> Yeah.
>> Why would you ever do anything else?
>> Yeah.
>> Right. And uh and when you do the other
thing, you're going to create opacity.
You're going to create a diversification
discount. Conglomerates normally trade
at a discount to their net asset value
because people think that was a dilutive
transaction. and it was a dilutive
acquisition. It's distracting.
>> So I think that companies Yeah, that
there is a place for companies to buy a
Bitcoin treasury company trading at less
than NAV.
>> It won't be us,
>> right? The world's full of companies
that do M&A. You know, it's kind there's
a lot of people that would rather buy
equity. They would rather there are
private equity investors and there are
public companies. They like to buy other
companies. That's their business model.
By the way, none of those companies are
Bitcoin maximalist with 100% of their
balance sheet invested in Bitcoin.
Right. They're not Bitcoin maxis.
>> Right. There's a lot of, you know, if
you're a fiat maxi or if you're a
whatever maximalist and you know, you
might look and say, "Hey, uh, you know,
I believe in this company and it's
trading, you know, I can get the
business for free because it's trading
at its Bitcoin balance sheet." You'll go
buy that company because you feel like
you're getting the operating business
for free and you're getting the Bitcoin
in the mix,
>> right?
>> And that's what will support the value
of that company. So, I think it makes
sense, you know. Yeah. You buy a
retailer losing money, you know, that's
valued at its Bitcoin.
>> Yeah.
>> You know, they'll get bought by another
retailer,
>> right?
>> And the other retailer will be like, I'm
going to get rid of the cost and I'm
going to rationalize the business and
I'm going to strip out the Bitcoin
>> because I see the value in the Bitcoin,
but
>> but I don't want to be in the retail
business. You see? No.
>> I don't want to be in a money losing. I
I don't want to buy a business losing.
If the business is trading less than the
Bitcoin, it's because the marketplace
perceives a liability in the operating
business.
>> Right.
>> Right. And so
I'm buying the world's greatest business
in the world, the digital monopoly
growing 29% a year for the next 20 years
that all of my investors love. I'm
buying that.
Why would I want to go buy a bunch of
trouble businesses that have problems
that I have to solve and I'm going to be
throwing my investors money to solve the
problem?
>> That's not what they want, right?
>> So, it doesn't make sense for a pure
play to buy another Bitcoin treasury
company or to buy another company with
Bitcoin. It totally makes sense for a
private equity investor or an LBO or
another conglomerate.
They've got all their own dynamics.
They'll do the trade. It'll it will be a
benefit to them.
>> Yep.
>> It will be a benefit to the Bitcoin
treasury company that will, you know,
the equity will trade up more,
right? And it all just comes down to
what is your cost of capital? And if
you're a Bitcoin maximalist, your
risk-free cost of capital is 29%. If if
that's what you believe Bitcoin's going
up at for the next 20 years, and that's
what I believe. Most people don't have a
risk-free rate of 29%. There's a lot of
a fiat maxi in Switzerland. Their
risk-free rate is minus 50 basis points.
You see,
>> so other companies will have other cost
of capitals and other outlooks because
of their frame of reference. They will
actually do those transactions.
>> Well, you just keep buying Bitcoin
there. That's uh that makes sense. So, I
mean, does this playbook work in every
public market? I mean, there's there's
some untapped markets. We haven't seen
really anything happen in Africa yet.
Um, where does the most opportunity
exist that you see? Is there markets
that are being overlooked right now?
>> Okay. Well, for every company in the
world in any capital market, they're
always better off to buy Bitcoin as
their capital asset.
If you're in Cuba, but it might be
illegal in Cuba, but you're still better
off as a Cuban company to capitalize on
Bitcoin, right? North Korea might be
illegal, but you're still better off,
right? So, barring the legality of
whether you can do it, you know, you're
better off in Venezuela and Nigeria,
every country in Africa, you're better
off to hold the Bitcoin for the obvious
reason that it's going up 55% a year and
it's going to go up nearly 30% a year in
dollars and most other capital assets
are are either collapsing against the
dollar. local credit, local currency is
collapsing against the dollar in Africa,
right? Or it's pegged to the dollar,
right? And so every company should
capitalize on Bitcoin. Now the next
question is if you're a public company
investor, where where could you create
the screaming meta planet or strategy
return? How do you get a 10x or 100x
return on your equity?
The most compelling opportunities there
are are mature
large capital markets
suffering from financial repression.
So what you'd like to find is a capital
market like the Swiss or the Japanese.
It's big. There's a trillion dollars in
it. But the risk-free rate or the one
look at the one month government T bill
rate and when it's zero or when it's 50
basis points,
Bitcoin's giving you 55%.
>> You can borrow money at 5%. If you offer
500 basis points more than zero, you
borrow 5%, five and a half, then you're,
you know, you've got massive leverage.
you're investing at something like 30%
over the next 20 years and you're
borrowing at five. That means you're
capturing 100% of the spread up front
and you're capturing, you know,
initially,
you know, 80 85% and it's compounding to
95% over the decade. So you're capturing
100% on the front end and 90% plus on
the back end and you can generate
you know four or five x leverage you
know or 50 50% leverage or 60 or 70%
leverage on your balance sheet you could
do 4x the Bitcoin return five six 7x the
Bitcoin return so in theory a pure play
company in one of those markets in any
European and euro market where the
risk-free rate rates 200 basis points.
Switzerland, Japan, those are all great.
If the US sulfur rate comes into 200
basis points,
that's very bullish for every single US
Bitcoin treasury company, right? Because
now you can offer 7% dividend yield.
Invest in Bitcoin.
You'll capture 90% of the back end, 100%
of the front end.
It's a screaming profitable business for
you.
>> I want to talk a little bit about uh
this narrative of tokenizing the world.
It seems to be one that kind of doesn't
doesn't really go away. Um what's your
take on sort of how this plays out in
the Bitcoin ecosystem? What's the next
asset that that gets tokenized?
>> Well, I mean, the idea is is you'd like
to move everything at the speed of light
and so why not tokenize dollars? Why
not, you know, even even Bitcoin
tokenized on the lightning network,
right? Or tokenized somehow. Everybody
wants to move the Bitcoin in a second,
then they'll want to move it in a
millisecond, right? So tokenized Bitcoin
on a layer of three would actually
abuse, right? Um
you can tokenize every every stock,
every bond, right? Uh, Black Rock has
tokenized US treasuries in one of their
instruments and um, if you tokenized
Apple stock or Microsoft stock then
people could take custody of Apple stock
in India on Saturday afternoon.
>> Yeah.
>> Okay. So tokenization makes the entire
capital markets work more efficiently,
more egalitarian, faster, smarter,
stronger.
Uh and it also provides the power of
self-custody or quasi self-custody,
right? Uh it it takes you to a point
where if you tokenize on a decentralized
network, then equities and securities
could look more like bearer instruments,
>> right? when you're holding the security
at a regulated custodian in New York
City and you know you're on the sanction
list, you don't re you can't you lose
custody of that, right? So so
tokenization could provide a quasi, you
know, a a higher property right and a
and a higher utility to a lot of
financial assets that have value to
people. Mhm.
>> Um, right now I think where where we're
at is there's broad consensus that
things should be tokenized.
There is support from Atkins at the SEC
and Contez at the CFTC, you know, and
from the Secretary of the Treasury,
Scott Bessant, that uh, you know, we
should lead in digital assets, which
means tokenization of all form of
assets.
We only have one law, the Genius Act,
which kind of touches on the
tokenization of dollars,
>> but you know, it goes it goes part way
to establish a framework for the
tokenization of dollars, but but um it
doesn't fully empower them to be, you
know, utilized. I mean there are a lot
of constraints in the Genius Act like
like for example you can't offer a yield
on a tokenized dollar unless you're a
bank right so so there are some
constraints you know and there are some
obligations but there's also some
legitimization
and the Genius Act the Clarity Act is
really the next thing up on the docket
which will be the priority this fall
probably for the rest of the year and
there there at some point there'll be
some understanding of whether you can or
cannot tokenize, but the Clarity Act
doesn't fully uh embrace the idea of
digital securities yet.
So, it's not clear to me whether or not
you'll have tokenized securities of
socks and bonds and real world assets
codified into law
>> even after that act. And so, there's
going to be a gray area about what the
law allows you to do. And because
there's a bit of a gray zone, that
actually creates some uh some ambiguity
about what's the right technical
approach.
>> For example, if the law said it's okay
to tokenize this stuff and move it, you
know, peer-to-peer at the speed of
light, there's nothing that stops Apple
from tokenizing every every stock on the
Apple Pay network.
But because the law doesn't make it
clear whether Apple has liability if you
transfer you know securities between
sanctioned individuals in India. Right.
>> Right. It kind of is going to slow down
Apple which means that that the
decentralized networks or quasi
decentralized networks will have an
advantage because they could tokenize
and and they don't need regulatory
clarity. And so I think that we're
moving toward a world of de facto
recognition of
digital securities and and digital
tokens from the SEC and the CFDC and
it'll come through the rules process,
but we don't quite have it yet.
And I don't know if we'll get in law
legitim legitimization or legitimacy for
tokenized stocks, bonds or other crypto
tokens. Not for a while. So I would say
we're we're in this in between period
where um where there'll be leadership
probably the leadership will come from
the cabinet.
The industry will adopt things. they'll
become de facto, you know, standards.
And as the de facto standards build,
you'll see a lot of capital flow in to
these standards.
And maybe they'll be codified in law
before 2028. Maybe they won't. Maybe
there'll be some, you know, controversy
over it. Uh I can't say at this point.
The only thing that's very clear to me,
right, that the greatest regulatory
clarity is Bitcoin is a digital
commodity.
and you can hold it as a store of value
and you can issue digital credit against
it. I think a certain lesser clarity is
you can create a stable coin if you're a
corporation and not pay interest on it
and you can create a stable coin if
you're a bank and maybe you can pay you
know maybe you can tokenize your
deposits. There's a little bit of
clarity there. And I think the rest is
is it's a wild west,
but it's a wild west in a liberal
progressive political environment
where there's support from the White
House and the SEC, Treasury, and the
CFTC. And two years ago, it was a wild
west, but in a regressive,
cynical, skeptical environment without
political support where the White House,
the SEC, the CFTC, and Treasury were
against.
>> And so that's where we stand today.
>> Love that. Michael, that's all the time
we have. Thank you so much for having
us. Really appreciate the conversation
and uh thanks for hosting us.
>> Yeah, my pleasure. All right.