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March 11, 2024, 8:06 p.m. EDT | 2 minutes read
Michael Saylor. Source: a video screenshot, Natalie Brunell / YouTube
MicroStrategy CEO Michael Saylor – whose company now owns 205,000 Bitcoin (BTC) – says people should buy their coins and HODL for 100 years.
“I would encourage people to think of it as a digital property — a billion-dollar building in cyberspace,” Saylor said in an interview with CNBC on Monday. “Hold it for 100 years.”
Hold Bitcoin for 100 Years, Says Saylor
Earlier in the morning, Saylor announced another seismic Bitcoin purchase for $800 million at an average price of $68,377 per coin. The new purchase was funded with the proceeds of a recently announced $700 million convertible note, on which the company will pay a paltry 0.625% interest and is due to be redeemed in 2030.
His company is now the world's largest corporate holder of BTC, holding almost 1% of the total BTC supply ever in existence. His conviction to buy more is based not only on his core beliefs as a Bitcoin maximalist, but also on the premise that BTC is not intended to be sold – or spent – at all.
“People refer to it as 'digital currency,' and that is an unfortunate historical artifact,” Saylor said, comparing the asset to valuable real estate property. “The compelling use case is capital preservation for everyone in the world.”
#Bitcoin is digital property. It is superior to other investments like gold, stocks or real estate because it is digital, available, global, ethical and useful to millions of companies and billions of people. pic.twitter.com/738dblB0Zt
— Michael Saylor⚡️ (@saylor) March 11, 2024
The executive noted that Bitcoin's total addressable market as a store of value is a whopping $100 trillion, compared to the $1 trillion market for a desirable medium of exchange. Bitcoin's market cap today is still under $1.5 trillion and is slightly higher than silver, leaving plenty of room for growth.
Don't call Bitcoin a currency
Meanwhile, the asset's use as property is far less “controversial” or troubling to regulators than its use as a medium of exchange.
In fact, many of Bitcoin's loudest critics, including Elizabeth Warren, Jamie Dimon and Gary Gensler, consider money laundering to be one of Bitcoin's key transactional use cases, while a large political focus on crypto is on regulating stablecoins, exchanges and other payment and commerce intermediaries.
“It doesn’t have to be a currency,” Saylor said. “Nobody’s trying to buy a cup of coffee with a fraction of their building on Fifth Avenue.”
The billionaire added that Bitcoin will “eat gold” – whose monetary properties are inferior to Bitcoin, but whose market capitalization is still 10 times larger. Bitcoin spot ETFs, which first launched in the US two months ago, are now more than half the size of all gold ETFs.
“It competes with risk assets as a long-term investment option, and it competes with being a middle-class person buying an Airbnb as a source of retirement income,” Saylor concluded.
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