مايكل سايلور: المستقبل للبتكوين.. الاستثمار فيه يتفوق على الذهب والأسهم والعقارات

Michael, thank you very much for joining us today.

It's delightful to be here. Tell me more why you are in Abu Dhabi. What do you want to achieve?

Well, this region has always embraced digital technology. This is a banking center. It's a sophisticated, progressive, innovative culture and is open and inclusive. Uh, I, my company is the biggest holder of Bitcoin in the world, and Bitcoin represents an economic protocol for economic empowerment, and, uh, many people call it digital gold. We think of it as digital capital, and it represents the digital transformation of the capital markets. And so I'm here, uh, to speak with policymakers, with regulators, with bankers, with sovereign investors, with private investors, and with all of the interesting, tech-interested, technical enthusiasts about the opportunities for digital capital and digital credit and digital digital equity.

On that point, why do you think it's important, uh, for companies or, uh, countries, uh, especially companies outside crypto? Uh, why it's important for them to hold Bitcoin on their balance sheet?

Yeah. Well, for 3,000 years, people use gold as commodity capital, and Bitcoin is digital gold. And if you wanted to make gold better, you would make it possible to teleport it. You would limit it so no one could make any more of it. And you would program it on a computer. Bitcoin is that digital capital asset which is better than gold and programmable, and it's been appreciating about 45% a year for the past five years. Gold is appreciating about 15% a year. So you cannot capitalize a company on securities portfolios. You normally have to run a company treasury on money markets. Money markets deliver about 3% performance a year. So your choice is either 3% from money markets or 45% from digital capital. And, uh, that being the case, it's every single company in the world would benefit from flipping from the 3% money markets to the 45% digital solution.

Building on that, Michael, how do you define strategy today?

Yes. And how dependent is the company on capital markets to survive? Yeah. Strategy is is the leading issuer of digital credit in the world. It's a digital credit vehicle. Think of it as a structured finance company. And we're the first company to begin to securitize this new asset class. Imagine a company showed up in New York City and they were the first company to go public and then issue public securities, equity, and preferred stocks to build buildings. And then their stock and their securities became a way that people could invest in real estate. We have created equity and preferred equities that the public can buy. There are actually five preferred equities that float, and then there's one common equity, and, uh, we take the capital that we raise and we buy Bitcoin with it.

Now, we're not dependent on the capital markets, but, but we are in, we are powering the capital markets. The the company's idea is pretty simple. It's we simply buy Bitcoin, we hold it forever. Now, when we sell a preferred stock, we pay a dividend on the preferred. The way we pay the dividend is either we sell equity in the company if it's appreciating faster than than the Bitcoin, or we just sell the Bitcoin.

And so we, we could, in theory, build a company like ours and make it private. You could just sell private securities. You could hold the Bitcoin, and then when your real estate portfolio, your property portfolio appreciates, you would sell some of it. But it's a much better idea when you're public because the truth is the equity investors want to buy that equity, and the credit investors want a liquid credit, and if you want to create it, you need a capital asset that you can put on your balance sheet in the middle, and that capital asset is Bitcoin.

Two, two points from, uh, what you said. Your never sell Bitcoin is still absolute or not?

Because you just mentioned it's an option now.

I, I believe that people shouldn't sell their Bitcoin, and I'm very famous for that. But if you're a real estate investor and you raise capital from the public markets and you bought $60 billion of real estate, and the equity markets close to you, you would simply sell your highly appreciated real estate or your high basis real estate to meet your corporate debt obligations. So generally, our view is we will either pay our dividends out of our dollar reserves. We have about one and a half billion dollars worth of USD, 1.44 billion, and we can do that for about a year and a half, 21 months, or we would sell the equity if it's at a premium to our NAV, or we would sell the Bitcoin if the equity was at a discount to the NAV, or we would sell derivatives. We can sell call options and engage in the basis trade because we have $60 billion of unpledged collateral that we can use in that activity.

So this is when it comes to your debt obligations and dividend, uh, obligations. Do you think that Bitcoin price would outgrow those commitments going forward or not?

The important numbers are if Bitcoin goes up 0% a year for the next hundred years, we have about 75 years worth of dividends. If Bitcoin goes up 1.4% or more, then we can pay the dividends forever.

If we sell credit instruments equal to 1.4% of our capital assets, we can pay the dividends funded in Bitcoin, and we can increase the amount of Bitcoin we have forever. And if Bitcoin goes up more than 10%, 10 and a half% a year, we have escape velocity. The equity outperforms Bitcoin. And, uh, what you'll find is the, the company's like a rocket, right?

You're very confident. Uh, Michael, let me challenge you here a bit. Uh, Standard Chartered pushed its 500,000 Bitcoin target to 2030.

Okay.

Is this just a delay, or is it hard for Bitcoin to reach that number?

Bitcoin was going up 80% a year with 80 vol five years ago when I got into the business. It's 45% a year. 45 V right now. I expect it to decelerate until it's about 20 V, 20 ARR over the next 20 years. It's going to be a higher performing asset than the S&P index. It's going to be more volatile than the S&P index. As long as you have a time horizon of more than four years, you could reasonably buy the asset and you'll do better than the S&P. If your time horizon is less than four years, you should buy the credit instruments because they strip the volatility off. The our credit will pay you a 10% dividend without that volatility, but you'll lose the other 20%. If you're, if you're an equity investor, you ought to buy the equity because you'll outperform Bitcoin. If you're, if you don't trust anybody and you're a commodity investor, you should buy the Bitcoin because it's about 30% a year for the next 20 years. I think what you do.

30%.

That's what I expect.

Wow. So, so what is, what is the number? What's your outlook for Bitcoin over the course of five years? Give me a number though.

Well, I, I can't give you the math in my head. What I would.

You need to, you need to, you just mentioned the 38% number.

I, I think it's definitely going up at a rapid rate. 30, more than I'm, I'm thinking right now it's 40. It'll probably appreciate about 40% a year, 30% a year in that range over the next five years.

Every year. 40% increase.

Yes. Yeah. It's going to, it's going to outperform the S&P because it doesn't have the risk factors of the S&P. It's going to outperform real estate because you can't teleport real estate. You can't program real estate on a mobile phone. And it's going to outperform gold because you can't make any more Bitcoin. And so it, it has none of the liabilities of conventional capital asset classes. It has all the benefits of a digital monopoly like a Google or an Apple. And it also has all the benefits of a commodity because it's an asset without an issuer. So it doesn't have the risks of an equity. And that's why it's a very compelling asset to build a new credit market on. And that's why every company and every investor ought to be thinking about, do they want to buy digital capital? Do they want to buy digital credit? Do they want to buy digital equity? It, it's something you should be considering this year.

I think you made so many CEOs and decision makers in the world, uh, probably question, uh, themselves if they're doing the right thing, uh, or not, and, um, that will lead to my next question. Michael, how do you want Strategy and yourself to be remembered in 20 years?

Well, we think that Bitcoin represents, uh, the highest form of property rights the human race has yet encountered. For the first time in human history, you can tightly bind economic energy to the individual or the or the company or the family or the country. Uh, you can put the money in your head. So, our number one mission is to spread the the hope, the promise of Bitcoin to the 8 billion people on the planet. Bitcoin gives you a way out if you can't trust the bank, if you can't trust the currency, if you can't trust the government, or if you just want, uh, digital capital that you can move at the speed of light, a million times a second. Bitcoin's the future. So, we want to be remembered for advocating for institutional adoption and global adoption of Bitcoin as a digital capital asset that you use to base the digital transformation of all financial markets.

Michael, looking back, is there anything you regret doing or not doing?

Um, I think.

More Bitcoin. Please don't tell me that.

I, I think that everything that we've done along the path in our life conspired to get us here. And so I'm, I'm feel fortunate and blessed to have the opportunity to do what I'm doing right now.

Let's do this fast. I, please, first answer that comes to mind. All right. Bitcoin at $1 million. Inevitable or impossible?

Inevitable.

When?

Probably within a decade.

Within a.

So in 10 years, gold in 20 years, relic or still relevant?

I think it will be, it'll be relevant but marginalized. It will be, it won't grow as fast as Bitcoin will grow. Bitcoin will grow faster.

Who's going to be the next safe haven?

Bitcoin or gold? No, I think.

Because Bitcoin was, was once seen as a safe haven.

I expect Bitcoin to emerge as the dominant digital monetary network in the world, and it is the, the world's reserve capital. So I think it'll grow from the two trillion to 20 trillion to 200 trillion over the next 20 to 30 years.

I don't think gold will do that. I think that, I think that Bitcoin will be 10x bigger than gold.

One word to describe fiat money.

Conventional currency. Conventional currency.

And what is the misconception about Bitcoin?

I think the misconception is that it's a speculative asset, and it's really, uh, a protocol for economic empowerment for the entire human race.

One habit every successful investor should do. And no.

I think every successful investor should study Bitcoin, should, uh, and then should decide whether or not they can plug their company or their fund or their country or their family or their individual portfolio into it, either via Bitcoin, the commodity, or via a security that's that's exposed or indexed to Bitcoin, or via credit instrument that's powered by Bitcoin. So this for investors, but to our audience, what do you tell them about Bitcoin? Um, what percentage you should keep in a portfolio?

I think, uh, you take money that you don't need for the next four years. Call it long-term capital, and you should allocate your long-term capital to some mix of your favorite equity capital, real estate capital, digital capital. Perhaps you might find some other trophy, trophy art or something capital. If you're a conventional investor and you don't have a strong opinion, but you think it's real, you should have 5% to 10% of your portfolio in it. If you're a digital investor or a technology investor, it ought to be a much larger percentage. If I was a tech investor, I think the big trends of the world are digital intelligence and digital capital, which means that you probably want to own the companies that are going to create the billion robots that do everything and the cars that drive themselves and all the AIs that do all the thinking for us. And that's going to be very valuable big tech equity. And then you ought to own digital capital because the AIs and the robots are going to want the Bitcoin.

Anything that keeps you up at night, uh, Michael?

No.

Really? But honestly, you're not worried about anything?

The continued challenge to communicate the promise of Bitcoin and digital empowerment to the world that was built on 20th century ideas and conventions. What we need to do is take the world from the 20th century into the 21st century. And there's a lot of inertia and a lot of institution, institutional inertia that is very human. And so we just have to explain to every bank, every investor, every company, every politician, every individual why their world is better with digital capital than it would be without.

If you have an extra $1 million, Michael, where will you invest? And give me a percentage, please.

Bitcoin. I bought 960 million of Bitcoin last week. I bought nothing of any kind.

That's the company money. I want to know your money. I would buy Bitcoin.

The whole million dollars.

Whenever I have money, I buy Bitcoin.

Oh my god.

I don't sell the Bitcoin. I just buy the Bitcoin.

Because for me, if you believe in Bitcoin, Bitcoin, as I said, I expect it to go up 30% a year. That's the risk-free rate.

So, is it.

So every investment I could consider, h would have to be 30% without risk for me to consider it. So, if you promised me 40% returns for the next 20 years on a monopoly, that would be about equivalent to what I'd get from Bitcoin, but I couldn't be sure. So, I'd probably still buy the Bitcoin. Bitcoin is a digital monopoly on capital growing 30% a year. You can buy it at one times revenue. Any CEO, any investor given a chance to buy a monopoly growing 30% a year at one times revenue would think that's the best deal they've ever had in their life. We've done that deal over and over again. I will do that deal over and over again. And I would, I would tell everybody else it's the best deal in the world if you're a financial investor.

Thank you, Michael.

Thank you.

Thank you very much. It's very difficult to argue that. Honestly.

I'm a Bitcoin maximalist.

I know. I know you are. Thank you.

Now you know why. Thank you. Thank you for joining us.