Transcription
Ladies and gentlemen, up next: Tales from the crypto, Bitcoin, and the digital economy. Please welcome strategy executive chairman and co-founder Michael Sailor and CPAC board member Christo Maratos.
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Maratos: There she is.
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Good morning, everyone. What about that speech from our Vice President and our great Mercedes Schlapp? I am not as good a moderator as Mercedes. Michael turned to me; he said, “Man, she’s good.” I go, “Mike, I’m not that good.” But good morning, everyone. Thank you so much for being here. It’s an honor to be here at CPAC, moderating one of the most critical discussions of our time: the future of Bitcoin, digital assets, and financial freedom.
We are witnessing a once-in-a-generation transformation in how people store and transfer wealth and value. And today, I have the privilege of introducing a man who didn’t just predict the future of money; he’s helping build it. In 2020, as governments printed trillions of dollars, which weakened our US dollar, one CEO made history. Michael Sailor became the first major CEO of a US publicly traded company to transfer his entire balance sheet from cash into Bitcoin. Historic! That’s incredible. That’s risk. He is the largest single corporate holder of Bitcoin in the world, owning 478,740 Bitcoin, now worth $48 billion. Michael just didn’t talk about Bitcoin; he bet on it, he built on it, and he led the way for corporations, investors, and people like me and you to invest and remain sovereign. He remains one of the most influential voices in financial and technological history, proving that Bitcoin isn’t just an investment; it’s a revolution that America has to dominate. Please join me in welcoming one of the most fearless and financial minds in our future, a champion of digital freedom and a trailblazer: Michael Sailor.
Sailor: Well, thanks for the intro. Uh, I’m really excited to be able to address this group today because I think that Bitcoin represents the most powerful technology force for conservatism in the world, and I don’t know that that’s fully appreciated. But Satoshi, many years ago, had this vision for sound money and sovereign money, uh, via technology, via modern cryptography, modern semiconductors, the modern internet. And that idea of giving economic power to the individual in the face of the overwhelming power of the collective: when you feel like the government’s against you, the banking system against you, the currency is against you, big big Tech is against you—when you’re the little guy, when you’re struggling for freedom and struggling, uh, struggling in the face of overwhelming power, you need some advantage. And Satoshi created this network that’s based on two principles: one principle is integrity, and the other principle is sovereignty. The integrity, we all know, is—is there’ll never be more than 21 million Bitcoin, and that’s enforced by millions and millions of computers and hundreds of millions of people everywhere in the world that believe it’s not okay to lie, cheat, or steal. It’s not okay to distort the truth. There is a truth there; there is a universal common ledger that no one can tamper with, no one can corrupt—not nation-state, not a company, not a politician. And that idea of a censorship-resistant, unstoppable version of the truth was, uh, was a first in human history; was a first. And then the second idea, sovereignty: it’s like, well, if there is a truth, can you own it, right? So with Bitcoin, the idea is you can own a Bitcoin, and not—you don’t have to trust a bank with it; you don’t have to trust the city with it; you don’t have to leave it in the custody of a big company. You can take self-custody. So we often times say, uh, what do you own? The only thing you own are your memories; everything else in this world that you own, you own at the pleasure of someone more powerful than you, and they can take it away from you via force. What they can’t take away from you is your experience and what’s in your head. And the brilliance of Satoshi was: what if we could put all of the money in the world into the heads of the people? What if what you knew was the password to unlock all of your wealth or protect it, and nobody else could take it away from you? And—and that’s a profound shift because what—what Satoshi did was gave us a network where hundreds of millions of people can, uh, can own and control their their economic energy in a censorship-resistant, unstoppable fashion. And, uh, that—that was an idea worth nothing for a year, and then it became worth a million, and then it became worth a billion, and then it became worth 10 billion, and then it became worth 100 billion. And when MicroStrategy—now Strategy—got into business about four years ago, was worth 150 billion, and today it’s worth 2 trillion. And at that time, you were a software company, and you saw this as an opportunity, a different opportunity. We—we were a software company, and we were staring at a quick death or slow death, or take a risk. And you know, when the COVID lockdowns took place and the interest rates went to zero, we had to decide, uh, were we going to sell the company, throwing in the towel, or could we find a way out? And this is—this is the challenge that 40 million companies in America have, which is: if you’re not one of the Magnificent Seven, if you’re not Apple or Google or Microsoft, how are you supposed to compete in a world where trillion-dollar companies have all the power, big banks have all the power, big government has the power? And Bitcoin, Bitcoin offered us the way out because if you recapitalize a company on Bitcoin, you’re not slave to the bank; you’re not—not slave to the currency; you’re not slave to the local politician that tells you what you can do and—and how you can use your money. Instead of having the Central Bank take interest rates to zero and keep them there forever, right? Bitcoin gave us a 60% return every year because the Bitcoin, uh, the Bitcoin interest rate is set by a global decentralized system of capital flows. So my company was able to save itself when we switch from Bitcoin from the the US Treasury or the bond to Bitcoin. Our market cap increased from a billion to 100 billion, and our Enterprise Value increased from 600 million to 5 billion, and we went from a $500 million company growing 0% a year competing against a monopolist Microsoft, where it’s hopeless, to a $50 billion company growing 60% a year that’s part of the digital economy. So I—I—I feel blessed, and we are very fortunate, but that really motivated me with a mission, and my—and what I realized is Satoshi gave us a—a way out of our conundrum. Satoshi gave us a strategy that makes a small company big and powerful, that makes the individual more powerful than the state, that turns the power balance between the collective and—and the individual on its head. And the—and the secret to that is this powerful worldwide Network that puts the individual first, that’s uncorruptible, that anybody can join, that gives you unfettered, uncensored property rights.
Maratos: Well, to that point, I’d spent the last couple days preparing for this and had a list of questions for Michael, and about 10 minutes before we sat down on the stage, and he goes, “Let’s talk about why Bitcoin is conservative. Let’s talk about why this is your coin and this is your industry.” So Michael, how is Bitcoin conservative? Why should it be important to this audience, the largest conservative conference in the world?
Sailor: Bitcoin literally represents the conservation of energy in cyberspace. Satoshi implemented a protocol which is inherently conservative. If I send Bitcoin to you, I lose it; you have it. I can’t create more; I can’t lie about it. There—the—the thing that’s beautiful about nature is conservation of energy. Conservative is based on natural law; it’s based on the idea that if you just make something up which isn’t true, you’ll be punished. And the Bitcoin Network represents that innate—in—integrity and truth. So you know, if you think about the world today, there’s just an inherent force, there’s a struggle between capitalism and—and socialism, between people that believe in freedom and free markets and those that believe in central planning and collectivism. And if I’m a socialist, I want to take away your guns and your money. And Bitcoin is money that they can’t take away. Like, what freedom do you have if you have all of your money in a bank that can freeze it? What freedom do you have if you have your money embedded in a currency where someone can print—or—more of it without your approval and debase it to zero? What freedom do you have if you own real estate in a city where the mayor can put rent control on it or expropriate, or the governor can tax it away from your family? What freedom do you have if all your wealth is in a business where the government can tell you you can’t operate, shut down your pipeline, tax your employees, tax your income, regulate, uh, your product? And the answer is: you only have conditional freedom until the government changes and they just take away that freedom. And then when they take away your wealth, when they take away your economic power, they’re going to starve you to death, and then you’ve got nothing. So Bitcoin represents putting your economic wealth in cyberspace; it’s beyond the reach of the mayor, beyond the reach of the governor, beyond the reach of any nation-state, beyond the reach of any other company that would do you harm. It is the first time in the history of the human race that you can bind economic energy tightly to an individual, to a family, to your—to your company, and you don’t have to ask permission to—to have economic wealth, to have money, and you don’t have to live in fear that someone gets up on a morning and just takes it all away from you, to—to power you down. And so if I am conservative, I want a family, I want a company, I want freedom. Well, how are you going to pay for it? And, uh, if you live in a country like Venezuela and the—and the currency goes to zero, you’re going to be begging for food next week. Wouldn’t it be great if I could—take the wealth of my family and put it into a network that no one can loot, no one can corrupt? And—and at the end of the day, I don’t want to gamble my future; I don’t want to take my life savings and gamble in the stock market; I don’t want—want to take my life savings and gamble that the mayor of the city won’t just take my property away from me. I actually just want to own the—the wealth; I want to own my money. And Bitcoin is—is a way for you to convert your capital into digital capital that will last a thousand years. Your country will be—your company—your country or your family will be wealthy for generations to follow. You don’t have to live in fear. And when you don’t have to live in fear, when you have economic independence, you can actually stretch your time horizon out, and you can build an institution, you can build a family, you can build, uh, a life for yourself.
Maratos: Michael, you talked about several things there: one is wealth sovereignty, agency, the ability to come in and for someone—a mayor, a city councilman—to take what you have. We’ve seen that happen from New York to California; a lot of us have been subject to this. And then you also talk about leadership. We have President Trump; we have the greatest leader our nation has ever had. He’s compared to George Washington; people love him; we love him. He sees Bitcoin, he sees the digital asset industry as an exceptional opportunity. How can America ensure its dominance moving forward?
Sailor: You know, that this nation became great because of the Louisiana Purchase. We bought a third of the country from Napoleon for a few million dollars. Then we purchased Texas and California from the Mexicans for a few million more. Then we purchased Alaska from the Russians for a few million more. We didn’t even know there’d be a trillion dollars of mineral rights underneath Alaska when we purchased it. They called it Seward’s Folly. But what I’m describing as Manifest Destiny: if you want to create a great nation, you have to build it on valuable property. You have to know where is all the money headed; where is the future? When we bought California, we didn’t know there’d be a Hollywood; we didn’t know there’d be a Silicon Valley. No one really—in 1867, we didn’t have a petroleum industry. And so where is the money headed in the future? The money’s headed to cyberspace. Bitcoin is—is property in cyberspace. The Manifest Destiny of this country is to own cyberspace, uh, and I think that President Trump understands the value of owning scarce, desirable property. If we go to cyberspace and we buy Bitcoin and the—and the nation embraces Bitcoin, then all of the capital in the world—all of the Chinese money, all the Russian money, all the European money, all of the money from the 20th century, the money invested in a Siberian warehouse, the money invested in fill-in-the-blank, anything you could possibly own in Africa—all of that capital is flowing into cyberspace; it’s going from physical to digital; it’s flowing from the 20th century to the 21st century. The 21st century is going to be a billion AI thinking a million times a second, and what are they going to be using to move their money around? They’re going to use digital money because they can’t get a bank account; they can’t get a credit card. I—I have to approve my wire transfers from my bank once a week; it takes about 20 minutes, and they ask me on the phone whether the money should move. It’s a good problem with 478,000 Bitcoin, Michael.
Maratos: The computer—we don’t feel too bad—is what I’m trying to say.
Sailor: All yeah, I get it. But my point—you really—is we’ve been doing it that way for 50 years, and if you look at the way the digital economy is going to run in the 21st century, it’s going to be a billion computers thinking a million times a second, moving—moving assets at the speed of light. Bitcoin represents digital capital; that network is $2 trillion today; it’s going to be $2 trillion in 4 to 8 years; it’s going to be $200 trillion in 20 years; then it’s going to grow faster than every other asset in the world; it’s going to continue to grow. The United States should own it, right? Is that the conversation? Talk to us about the US Bitcoin Reserve.
Maratos: Everyone—and we’ve heard a couple other coins, uh, being yelled out by the—by the crowd—and people want to know: are we going to have a US Bitcoin reserve, and when is that going to happen?
Sailor: The way—the way to think about Bitcoin is it’s the most powerful digital Network in the world; it is cyber power. If you—if you want to dominate the next 100 years, just like the last 100 years is—is based upon dominating sea power, fire power, you know, air power, space power, nuclear power, you want to—you want to dominate cyberspace; you want cyber power. It’s the unstoppable Network that no one can corrupt, and the use of the unstoppable Network, among other things, is hundreds of trillions of dollars of capital moving from point A to point B. But the other use of the network is: I can send a message which is unstoppable, and I can store information that is unstoppable, and I can prove beyond a shadow of a doubt the authenticity of an instruction or a document. No country, no company, no individual, not a trillion computers can corrupt that message. So if you want to own the future, you want to own cyberspace. How do you own cyberspace? You own Bitcoin, and then you run the Bitcoin Network; you mine Bitcoin; you own Bitcoin. President Trump understands property; he understands the value of Greenland; he understands the value of Alaska; he understands the value of oil rights; he understands “Drill, baby, drill!” would be impossible if we didn’t own the land, right? Understand American dominance and—and land is physical property. When I run electricity through semiconductors and I create a wall of encrypted energy, I create digital property. Bitcoin is digital property; you should own it; your company should own it; our nation should own it. It is the future.
Maratos: In your perspective, how soon do you think we’re going to be buying Bitcoin and have within our US Reserve? At a timeline.
Sailor: It’s going to be 12 months. I—I think there’s an appreciation of—of the power of Bitcoin throughout the cabinet, throughout the House, throughout the Senate. There’s going to be a political process by which we build consensus with the White House, the House, the Senate, and the cabinet and find the right way through. But you know what I would say on this topic is: the US could own 20% of the network like that for free; the dollar would strengthen; the nation would be enriched. And the real promise is: if you own four to six million Bitcoin, you’re going to pay off the entire national debt; you’re going to neutralize it. We can generate a 50 trillion to 80 trillion benefit to the United States—people—to the citizens, to the taxpayers—and we can do it simply by seeing the future. It cost $6 million to buy Alaska; the payoff was a trillion. Just like right now, you can literally buy it for a song and dance. That’s the opportunity. The risk is that you wouldn’t want the Saudis to buy it first, or the Russians, or the Chinese, or the Europeans. And there’s only room for one nation-state to buy up 20% of the network, and obviously I think it should be the United States. I think it will be the United States. It’s a way for us to enrich ourselves and emerge as a creditor nation in a matter of a decade. It’s also a way for us to ensure that we’re the economic leaders in cyberspace and the digital economy for the next 100 years. And if we do that, every one of our allies will follow us, and then all of our enemies will end up having to buy into the network once it passes 10 or 20 million Bitcoin, and they will enrich us. And we saw that just yesterday: President Trump was in Miami, and he was talking about Bitcoin.
Maratos: The Bitcoin Reserve is a touchy subject. A lot of people want to know what other coins within the—digital asset industry are going to be involved. The US does not just hold just gold and oil within our reserve; it holds up to 27 other trace minerals, and so we’re completely diversified. Do you see room for another digital asset to be included in the Bitcoin Reserve or the—the US Financial Reserve System?
Sailor: I think the key thing to keep in mind right now is that Bitcoin is a commodity; it is an asset without an issuer. There is no company, no individual, no country, no entity that can corrupt it. It has reached escape velocity; it has—it has gotten to the point where it is basically a freedom virus, a truth virus, a monetary virus. It has been embraced by a trillion—of—smart money; that is a trillion dollars of real money has been invested in the network; it is 99% of the digital power on Earth; it’s fairly unstoppable. And so if you’re going to capitalize a company or a country, you want to capitalize it on property or a commodity or a network which is beyond the point where anybody could change the nature of it. And so that makes Bitcoin the most certain thing in the Digital Universe. And when you talk about certainty and when you talk about truth, over the last four years we’ve experienced, as a culture, travesty; we haven’t been able to speak; we’ve been censored. How does Bitcoin—what is Bitcoin to you? What do you see that others don’t? And how can conservatives capitalize on the opportunity to take advantage and make sure that America is dominating our future, that we have the economic freedoms that children and our families in America will stay at the front runner of this industry?
What I would say to everybody in this room is: if you want freedom, if you want liberty, if—if you want to live your finest life, you’re going to need economic power; you need physical power; you need political power, but you need economic power. Uh, Bitcoin represents economic armor. When you put on the suit of armor, then no mayor, no government, no collectivist, no socialist can debank you; they can’t take your money away; they can’t impoverish you. It’s just like a gun is a deterrent; Bitcoin is a deterrent because if you have wealth in Bitcoin, you have the option to move it to any jurisdiction, and you can keep it, and no one can take it away from you via force of violence, no matter where you are on earth. And so, uh, Satoshi gave us an opportunity. I—I hope I intrigue all of you with the opportunity, and you go do the research and determine for yourself how you benefit from it, but I just leave you with a thought that Bitcoin is economic armor. You have—
Maratos: Michael, thank you. God willing, we have as much Bitcoin as Michael one day. This is a defining moment for digital assets; it’s a defining moment for our country. We thank all of you. Michael, thank you so much for joining us. CPAC is going to be at the front of the digital asset industry; we see Bitcoin and the entire industry as a significant resource for our country and our people. Thank you, everyone. God bless America. Thank you.
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