Johnny on Nostr: Congratulations ETHerans! Michael Saylor is getting pretty bullish on Ethereum! Or ...

Congratulations ETHerans! Michael Saylor is getting pretty bullish on Ethereum! Or what do you think?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t0mhU6umAuI

(1:11:04 till the end of the video… it’s incredible that there are so few Bitcoiners who are willing to call this bullshit out.)

TRANSCRIPT

Bankless dudes: “Michael, I want to ask about your relationship to #Ethereum, your thoughts about Ethereum, because as I understand it, it kind of started off just pretty outright dismissive and it's adapted over the times to be a little bit more open to Ethereum. What do you think about Ethereum today?”

Saylor: “I think that the crypto market has really evolved into various segments. And one segment is digital capital, just long-term economic assets, store of value asset, and without cash flows and without utility other than just to preserve its own scarcity. And that's what Bitcoin is. I think that there's another evolving segment, which is these staking networks. And, you know, the use case is tokenizing of securities, tokenizing of currency, tokenizing of other assets, tokenizing of commodities, right? And you need smart contracts and you need bandwidth and functionality to do it. It looks like.”

“Ethereum is the early creator of that, and there's going to be competition between Ethereum and #Solana and Hype and other, you know, #Sui and all these other coins. Ethereum clearly is the leader in that space right now, and all of the other proof-of-stake networks are going to be competing, you know, to tokenize securities and tokenize currencies and the like. I think that the idea of tokenizing securities and other real world assets is strongly legitimized post the last election, right? I mean, this administration, Paul Atkins at the SEC, Selig, you know, at the CFTC and the new White House, they have legitimized the idea of tokenizing assets. And so that was a big boost. It was a much more difficult future to see two years ago than it is today. At this point, I would say there's still a lot of uncertainty about the utility that you can provide to a tokenized currency, tokenized security, or tokenized commodity, or just the creation of a token. There's a lot of uncertainty there. And we're hoping for the Clarity Act to clear some of that uncertainty away. But there's no question that there's a consensus that there's a consensus.”

“That there is utility in being able to tokenize securities, tokenize currencies, tokenize commodities, right? Create tokens, right? The perfect world is you can issue a crypto token to raise capital for a small mid-sized business and it takes like two days and 40 bucks, right? Like the ICO on steroids, what if 40 million companies could all issue their own token to raise capital, right? That would be good for the world. And it's pretty obvious that if I could move money at the speed of light in the form of digital dollars, you know, like a stable coin, and if it had all the utility of, you know, paying yield and the like, that'd be great for the dollar, right? There'd be $10 trillion of demand for that.”

“And I think there's consensus that people would like to be able to do digital exchanges, DeFi, right? We'd like to be able to enter into trades, you know friction free permissionless speed of light you know if i want 50x leverage you know in a flash loan on sunday morning right against any two any two asset pairs cool and i think you need these uh you know you need these tokenizing networks and and i think ethereum led the charge on that. So I think that's being recognized by the marketplace. And I think the big staking networks have achieved kind of de facto legitimate status in the eyes of the regulators. And I think we're waiting for the Clarity Act to make that du jour.”

“And what we'll see going forward is we'll see a market competition, who can bring the most utility to the market, who's got the most stable network, who's got, you know, I look at these things like, how technically sound is it? How economically sound is it? How ethically sound is it? You know, I don't think there'll be one winner, but the winners in the future will have a a sound economic basis, a sound technical basis, right? A sound ethical basis. And the market is going to sort all that out with the wild card being that the regulator, you've got the market, the ultimate arbiter, I like this and not that.”

“And that'll be expressed by users and capital locked up in these networks. And then you've got the regulators who are making decisions, you know, about what use cases are acceptable or not acceptable and how, you know, where they're going to draw those lines and just how functional are you allowed to make all those digital assets. And then the final boss is the legislators, right? And they can pass a law saying you don't get to give yield or you don't get to do an ICO or you don't get to take self-custody, right? And I would say for all the staking networks, and especially, you know, Ethereum especially, the last two years have been pretty instrumental. They've moved from, I would say the previous administration looked at those use cases as illegitimate. And this administration and the consensus that's formed is, this is legitimate.”

“That's all good. and now there's a lot of uncertainty about. You know, where the regulars will draw the lines, where the legislators will draw the lines, and then what the market will decide. So it's exciting. Interesting.”

“There's a future there. You know, how big it is? Like, look, guys, if it was up to me, and it's above my pay grade, no one's asking me, but if it was up to me, I would define digital currencies that could pay yield and move at the speed of light, and there'd be $10 trillion of stablecoin out there issued by reputable parties backed by currency equivalents. And it was up to me, every small midsize business could issue a digital token over the weekend, and they could articulate, this is the promise we're making, we're accepting civil and criminal liability for misrepresentations, et cetera. And they would be able to raise capital and they would be held liable and we would eliminate the two years or three years of friction.”

“Right now, it takes three years to come to public. It's ridiculous, right? It takes a year to raise a small amount of money. The amount of money people spend on lawyers is greater than the amount of money that they need to raise in most cases. So yeah, I would have a digital token which people could use to raise capital and we would have digital exchanges that you know, work 24-7, 365 that were friction-free, that, you know, had massive functionality and the AIs would trade with the AIs a billion times a minute, right? And we would be able to tokenize every security. So every single security would be tokenized and be trading 24-7, 365 with self-custody everywhere in the world. And the world would be a better place.”

“And I published that, you know, I think March I went to the White House summit And I published A digital assets taxonomy I posted it on my Accent on my webpage, That would have been March of 2025 About a year ago, the point is, it's above my pay grade, right? No one's asking me. And I don't think we're going to get 100% pure, you know, digital assets moving at the speed of light with all of the guardrails taken off. I think there's a tension between TradFi and the established financial structures and the established banking, established securities, established law, established whatever. And the crypto ethos, permissionless, self-custody, friction-free, perfect everything. And so I think, you know, to come back to your last question, Ethereum's in the middle of all of it right now. And I say two years ago, the future was bleak. Now, you just got to fight for the best future you can get. And it'll be determined partly in the market and partly in Congress and partly in the global, you know, the global economy. Yeah, I know a previous guest, Tom Lee, has been on here.”

Bankless dudes: “And he said that he was very inspired by your work at Strategy to come up with... his Ethereum digital asset treasury. And he's certainly grown that a lot. Maybe as we move to the close, Michael, and thank you for joining us. It's been a pleasure to chat with you and catch up on all these things. I'm struck with the fact that if you're right about Bitcoin in terms of its price appreciation, what it does in the years and decades to come, Strategy becomes an incredible company. And an incredibly important asset, both for the world and also for America. I mean, you will have created the largest Bitcoin reserve in the world at $400 trillion I mean, quite obviously, Bitcoin would be a global reserve asset, far exceeding what gold does. What's the end game for strategy in that world? I mean, do you see a scenario where strategy, like one day there's a financial crisis and strategy gets nationalized by the US government? Or do you see yourself playing a role like JP Morgan in the 1907 financial panic where he was organizing to help save the banking industry in the US? I mean, that world where Bitcoin is the global reserve currency asset or store of value, let's say, what role does strategy play? And how is your future shaped by that?”

Saylor: “You know, very motivated by the opportunity that we've been given. And I'm very humbled by it. And I feel very blessed. And the truth is, guys, we just got lucky. Like you've followed this entire art, you know, since 2020, you've been here. I didn't start down this path. We started out of desperation and frustration. And for a while, it was opportunistic and it was very uncertain. But at this point, I think.”

“The light at the end of the tunnel is becoming clearer and it's actually getting very simpler. And so here's the very simple idea, right? How do you make the world a better place? You provide a utilitarian value, something valuable to a billion people that everybody just agrees on. And so, you know, with Rockefeller, it's like kerosene, gasoline, and everybody just lives a better life. And then with Ford, it was an automobile. And who doesn't want an automobile? And then Jobs gave a billion people an iPhone. Nobody just wants an iPhone, you know? And then we had like electricity, you know? And so we all, we like those things. So what is the equivalent in the digital asset space? And the answer is, everybody would just like a bank account that pays them more than the inflation rate. Like, how about, give me a bank account that pays me 8%. Right now, your bank pays you zero, right? The money market pays you 3.7% before tax. If you live in Japan, it's 50 basis points. If you live in Switzerland, it's nothing. So what is the idea? Well, I would just like social security or I'd like to live comfortably ever after. What we say tongue in cheek is fix the money.”

“How do you fix the money? Well, Bitcoin people have been thinking about how to fix the money. And I think what we've realized is the way to fix the money is to integrate the promise of technology. What does Bitcoin represent? It represents digital, capital, digital, something that moves at the speed of light to a billion people, capital, scarcity, right? It represents a capital asset with integrity. So how do we fix the money for a billion people? And what we realize is the answer is not convincing a billion people to adopt Bitcoin as the currency instead of the dollar or the yen or the euro. And the answer is not getting them to, you know, throw away their bank, replace the government, rethink their world, you know, disclaim interest in all corporations and self-custody. These are all crypto ethos things. And it's not that I'm not negative on them. They're all valuable. But I think after five years, and believe me, I preach Bitcoin to more people than anybody.”

“It's a thousand hours and you're going to convince one, two, three percent of the people to put five percent of their money into this asset. You're not going to convince 75-year-old retirees, right? Nor should you. So, you know, What's the great product idea? Wouldn't it be great if I just bought a product and it paid me money for the rest of my life? I just want 10%, a bank account that pays me 10% or 8%. If the natural organic inflation rate is seven, and I think you can make the argument, and I've made this argument with you guys probably in the past, over 100 years, the natural currency debasement rate is about 7%. And so if your money is paying you more than 7%, then you're keeping up with the cost of living. And if you're getting 2%, you're getting debased and you're getting poorer. So how about bank accounts that pay 8% to a billion people, right? That's the product. How do you create that? So we create a credit instrument. We strip the vol off of it. We offer 11, but if you're a bank in Australia, you could just take that 11 and you could pass through eight, convert it to AUD. And if you're a bank in Europe, you could offer 6% or 7% in euros.”

“So we basically create digital credit and we offer it to Deutsche Bank and JP Morgan and Commonwealth Bank and Morgan Stanley and BlackRock and Vanguard.”

“And if people, if you think of it is just high-powered money. What is high-powered money? It's a unit account, a store of value, a medium of exchange. Well, stable coins prove that they were medium of exchange and unit of account. But if we cripple their ability to pay yield, they're not a store of value. So I want something that's stable to the dollar, but I want it to appreciate, ideally tax deferred, more than 7%. So, and this is.”

“Basically, this is me drawing inspiration from the entire crypto industry, right? The stablecoins taught us something. Bitcoin taught us something. Digital exchanges taught us something. What's the big idea? The big idea is give people this digital money market type instrument. Maybe we're not the money market. Maybe we're the digital credit layer. Bitcoin is a digital capital layer. And the third layer is digital money and the banks and the financial advisors, they create the digital money. It's like I meet with the Emiratis and I said, okay, you got a bank. What if your bank just offered people 8% on their dollar deposits?”

“Okay, well People want to overthink this thing It's like you see fire Some people run away from the fire, Some people want to juggle the fire They're fools They want to juggle the fire And then some people put the fire into the car or the plane And they create a jet airplane or a car It's like most people juggle the fire, Like you're trading Bitcoin and trying to be right and wrong It can be juggling the fire Here's the idea The big idea, The bank in the UAE pays you 8%. You wire $100 billion They pay you 8%. They get the $100 billion.”

“They keep 100 or 200 basis points. You just double the gross national product of the country. Okay, what did you do? Not that complicated, right? The irony is, and this is what drives people nuts, They're looking for a complicated solution When in fact the obvious simple solution Is right in front of them And that is this.”

“You just step digital credit down to zero vol, convert it to the currency of choice, give people a bank account to pay 6% in yen, 8% in euros, 8% in dollars. The money flows into the bank, then it flows into digital credit, then it flows into digital capital. Digital capital is scarce desirable and cannot be debased. The price of the digital capital goes up the collateral goes up right we remit the a derivative the cash flows from the capital gain back to the credit investors so what is the end game let's give a billion people a bank account that pays them eight percent like what what is the best product in the world like and in my opinion the best product in the world is a product that you buy once that brings you utility forever, right? What is the universal word in the English language for utility? Money. What's the best product? I'm just going to give you four times the monetary yield of the bank, four times the risk-free rate. What do I got to do? Nothing, right? I could be blind. I can be deaf, right? Even with an iPhone, right? You need hands, right? Right? You got to, If you're blind and you don't have hands and you can't see or whatever, then maybe the iPhone is not the best product.”

“You know, guys, we're getting to a world where there are going to be perfect products. I'll give you three off the top of my head. One, a digital bank account that simply pays you more than the inflation rate with all the volatility stripped off of it for the rest of your life and for the life of your children's children's children. That's one. That is something like digital money, digital credit. Here's another one. Self-driving car. You see people doing this with Teslas now. I buy a car. I get in the car. I tell it where I want to go. It gets me there. It parks itself. It's stress-free. I can sleep in the car. If you can be blind and sleep in the car, that is closest thing to a perfect automobile. Do you want one? Of course you want one. And then the last Intelligent robot I get the robot It does all of my work forever Without complaining Everything I don't want to do.”

“Okay, what do all three have in common?I spent $20,000, $50,000, $100,000. I bought something once, a one-time purchase, and they have digital intelligence or digital assets, something digital in them that makes them work forever. Okay, so we are on the cusp of some of these revolutionary products. Like, what's a robot worth? It's a trillion dollar. I could say it's a trillion dollar idea, but it's worth more than a trillion, right? In fact, NVIDIA and Tesla, they know it's a $10 to $100 trillion idea, okay? And what is self-driving cars worth? It's like worth more than, like Elon's charging $100 a month for self-driving right now, right? It's worth more than all the other cars. Who wants a car that doesn't drive itself? Why would you want that? The average rich person spends $100,000 a year to have a driver to drive them. It might cost you $250,000 a year in order to have a car drive itself. And so what's it worth to a billion people? $250,000 a year. So maybe they're only going to pay $1,000 a year, but it's $1,000 times a billion a year, right? And then what's it worth to have a bank account that pays you 8% forever, no stress?”

“Can quantify that. Right now today, there's 300 trillion in credit, 100 trillion in equity investments. If you get 10% of the market is $40 trillion, right? So what do we want to be?”

“We spent nearly $58 billion in order to create a crypto reactor to create digital credit. Like people talk about all the money spent on AI and all the money spent on an airplane. I used to think spending 10 or 20 billion on an airplane was a lot of money. We spent $58 billion to create a crypto reactor. What do you do with it? For every dollar of equity, you can create 10 cents to 20 cents of credit per year. So we basically created a $50 billion thing to be able to create 5 to $10 billion of credit a year. And now we can scale that 30 to 50% a year. We just want to be the company that brought digital credit digital money to the world and if we do that it's worth trillions and trillions and yeah it would be a it'd be a good product you know will it be as important as electricity or oil i i don't know but it's like…”

“To my mind, it's worth devoting one's life to if you have even a small chance of success. And so that's why we're monomaniacally focused on this because fix the money, fix the world. We have a chance, in my opinion, to fix the money for a billion people. It's not complicated. Just requires that one not get distracted.”

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