Bitcoin insights you should know from Michael Saylor's best interview
Key takeaways from his best interview, imo.
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“When in doubt, zoom out and see the big picture”. That’s been my mantra for a while, and with the crypto market being volatile, scaring off many people, it seems like a great time to practice this with you all, and go back to basics.
To do this, I’ll be sharing the key takeaways of my favorite interview of Michael Saylor, explaining his thoughts about Bitcoin.
This is an almost 2 hours interview by Natalie Brunell, and the reason why I found it really insightful is that Saylor gets a chance to share his personal story, as well as outline his journey to crypto in a thread of very logical and relatable sequence: he had a problem, he analyzed his alternatives, and landed on the best solution available, aka Bitcoin.
Some people say he is the father of Bitcoin, you may agree or not, but what matters here is that he is a real visionary and leader in this space, so it’s worth taking some time to hear him up.
So let me outline the main takeaways for you. But for those who have the interest and time to go through it directly, I’m leaving the link of the full interview of almost 2 hours at the end of this article. Don’t miss out, it’s highly recommended!
Before jumping into it, here are some pre-reads I’d recommend if you are new to this space:
In case you don’t know who Michael Saylor is, here is a brief overview:
Michael Saylor is the Chairman & CEO of MicroStrategy (MSTR), a publicly-traded business intelligence firm that he founded in 1989.
He is also the founder of Alarm.com (ALRM), named inventor on 40+ patents, & author of the book “The Mobile Wave”.
He founded & serves as trustee for the Saylor Academy (saylor.org), a non-profit organization that has provided free education to over 1 million students.
He has dual degrees from MIT in Aerospace Engineering & History of Science.
Now, why is he so famous in crypto?
Well, MicroStrategy is the first publicly-traded company to invest significant treasury assets in Bitcoin since 2020, and has continued to accumulate.
TLDR
The core problem is that you can’t hold cash anymore because of inflation, and at the same time, big tech stocks are no longer a great option.
The best investments are when you buy into new technology trends, that everybody needs, nobody can stop, and nobody understands. Therefore, Bitcoin as digital property stands out as
great investment opportunity.
You wanna own the highest quality property: it’s hardest to steal, hardest to tax, easiest to move, most desirable, and easiest to upgrade: Ergo, Bitcoin is the
highest quality property
to protect your money.
Let me break down the thought process for you, and explain why.
Firstly, why did Michael Saylor lose faith in big tech stocks?
To quote him… “I think the best investments are when you buy into new technology trend, that everybody needs, nobody can stop, and nobody understands”.
This statement would describe the likes of Facebook, Google, Apple before they went public, or Amazon back in 2010.
But by 2020, big tech trading is no longer unique, and everyone agrees that these tech companies are digital dominant monopolies networks.
Therefore, it is highly unlikely these companies will go up by a significant factor. I mean you can hold them, but they aren’t the same companies they were before, with too much politics involved, workers getting unionized, etc.
So without making a clear statement of what might happen to these companies going forward, Saylor’s view is that they are no longer the fast-growing digital innovators they used to be, and as a consequence his passion for these big tech as investment options kind of died down.
To make things worse…
Alongside this observation on tech companies, seems like Saylor also lost confidence in traditional treasury strategies: the real yield on cash is negative, and if you are tracking asset inflation, it gets even worse…
The Solution: a Journey that landed in Bitcoin
We established that the landscape that constituted the problem statement Michael Saylor faced back in 2020 was that you can’t continue to hold cash, and tech stock is no longer a good alternative anymore.
So what can be done to protect your assets and wealth? Or what is the best investment option to hedge against inflation and maximize return?
Going back to his core statement: “I think the best investments are when you buy into new technology trend, that everybody needs, nobody can stop, and nobody understands”.
Bitcoin fits into this category quite well: it is a big tech, but without the company. It’s just a pure big tech network, with no CEO, no employees, no board of directors. You don’t need an iPhone to be competitive because the product of Bitcoin is just Bitcoin.
Following this example… one iPhone 3 today is worth nothing, and one iPhone 12 in a hundred years will be worth nothing, whereas 1 Bitcoin in 100 years will be worth much more.
Therefore, we are looking at a digital property that can’t be inflated (there will only be 21 Million ever), and is on a big tech network that you could accelerate using technology.
The core principle of how to get rich, or how to stay rich in the 21st century is you dematerialize something from the physical world to the digital world, and you make it smarter, faster, and stronger.
If you digitize music you get Spotify and Apple music. if you dematerialize concerts and shows, you got Youtube.
So if you call Bitcoin the digital gold, then the big tech element means that you could plug layer 2 and other applications into it, to make it smarter, faster, and stronger. It is the digital transformation of property, and it is how you construct the 21st-century cyber economy.
What’s the potential outlook of how the market would unfold, and why is Bitcoin the smartest choice?
In terms of what would happen with the macroeconomy, here is Michael Saylor’s take:
The bankers and governments will likely continue to inflate money supply, until they can’t anymore.
When they can’t continue anymore, they will switch to taxation, in the form of income taxes.
When income taxes are not enough anymore, then it will come to property tax.
This is mainly focused on the US landscape, and it will of course depend on the city, state, and administration, but in the large scheme of things, would be applicable globally, and we’ve seen this happen in history many times before.
Quoting Saylor… “When that time comes, you wanna own the highest quality property: it’s hardest to steal, hardest to tax, easiest to move, most desirable, and easiest to upgrade”.
And Bitcoin is the best property to hold.
If you hold a building in the middle of the city, it’s hard to hide it, it’s hard to move it to another city. You can’t move your office building, and you can’t move the land of the office building.
But you can move Bitcoin.
Now, why is an acre in the middle of NYC more valuable than an acre in the middle of Kansas City? Because the acre in NYC can be developed into more things, there is a huge amount of demand as there is all this economic density in Manhattan. You can put 10,000 people on this acre, but you can’t do that in Kansas.
Similarly, Bitcoin you can develop because it’s an open protocol.
That’s why it’s better quality property than a million dollar worth of gold, or land, or real state, because all of these are properties that are easier to impair, harder to develop, harder to move.
Just Imagine a situation of rapid inflation…
If they do increase income tax, then this would be the property you don’t have to sell. If they increase property tax, ultimately you can move your Bitcoin elsewhere. However, what’s the point of taxing something if you can move it?
so Bitcoin would be harder to tax.
Also, if you need to sell a property… will you be able to sell that to a rich person in Monaco? maybe, but it’s probably not at an ideal price.
But your BTC can be sold to the highest bidder in the whole world.
In conclusion, the way to protect your wealth is with a universally desirable scarce asset which is portable and fungible.
Makes a whole lot of sense, no?
His last words of advice…
Bitcoin is currently a big tech network that is underappreciated and has massive upside potential because it’s a solution to everyone’s problem on the planet: gold and silver are not the solutions, and the tech companies are already matured. They are probably not a bad investment if you are looking for a 10% or 15% return, but it won’t be more because too many people already understand what they are right now. You are not first.
Now, if you are buying into something that the majority of the uneducated public doesn’t agree with you on and doesn’t understand, then you are gonna have to study enough so that you have the conviction that you are right and not that they are right.
If you study something for 1,000 hours and they studied something for 1 hour and they think it’s garbage, but you think it’s good, then you can reasonably assume that this is a chance for you to make a wise investment.
However, if you studied it for 1 hour and they studied it for 1 hour, now it’s just a coin flip…
Wise words!
……………………………..
And I couldn’t agree more on the importance of educating ourselves to be confident enough in the thoughts and facts that build up our decisions.
Saylor’s pragmatic yet visionary perspective, articulated in a very logical and relatable way is really a must for everyone.
And to close off, here is the promised full interview. Enjoy!
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