Michael Saylor, co-founder and executive chairman of MicroStrategy, wishes to leave his wealth to humanity, following in the footsteps of the pseudonymous Bitcoin creator Satoshi Nakamoto.
In a recent interview with The New Zealand Herald, Saylor reflected on his personal motivation, revealing his goal goes beyond wealth.
“I’m a single guy, I have no children — when I’m gone, I’m gone. Just like Satoshi left a million Bitcoin to the universe, so I’m leaving whatever I’ve got to the civilization,” he said.
In the interview, Saylor described Bitcoin as the future of economics, comparing it to steel and electricity.
“You take away steel and electricity—those are two big ones—take away the electricity, you have no elevator,” he said. “Take away steel, the building falls over.”
Saylor believes Bitcoin offers a similar foundation for the economy, describing it as "clean, silent, programmable, immortal money."
"If you want your company, family, or endowment to last forever, you need to capitalize it with an asset that doesn't degrade," Saylor said during the interview.
In his view, traditional currencies degrade like fragile “economic clay or balsa wood,” while Bitcoin retains value over time.
"The rate of the dollar is 7% a year for 100 years. When you lose 7% of your energy for 100 years, you lose 99.9% of whatever you are," Saylor noted.
He also compared Bitcoin to a battery that never loses its charge, implying how it retains economic energy indefinitely.
The Bitcoin evangelist sees the world’s largest cryptocurrency as “a profound step forward for the human race, because for the first time, economics crosses from being an art to being a science.”
Saylor reflected on the role Bitcoin can play in building the future: “With 8 billion people with crypto steel or economic steel, we can build something much grander in the 21st century than all the 20th-century economists struggling with clay and cotton candy.”
While Saylor acknowledged that Bitcoin is not a solution for every problem, he stressed its importance as a source of economic energy.
“It won’t fly you, it won’t cure your cancer, it won’t make you happy, it won’t solve your mental issue, and it won’t make your children love you.” However, Saylor remarked, "It’s economic energy—it’ll solve half the world’s problems."
Under Saylor’s leadership, MicroStrategy has accumulated 252,200 Bitcoin, worth approximately $16 billion, positioning it as the largest Bitcoin holder among companies.
Earlier this month, Saylor explained MicroStrategy is shifting from a software company to what he calls a "Bitcoin bank" with a potential trillion-dollar valuation by issuing securities backed by Bitcoin.
Although critics have labeled this strategy an "infinite money glitch," Saylor dismissed the characterization in the interview: "It’s not a money glitch—it’s a digital transformation of the capital markets."