Michael Saylor Bitcoin 2024 Keynote Speech

[Music] [Music] [Applause] [Music] thank [Music] you thank [Music] [Applause] you what a what an awesome Gathering of bitcoiners I am delighted to be here in Nashville i c know for music a city known for freedom and uh I'm honored to to follow Senator Hagerty and uh address you today uh today I've decided to use slides and for those of you seen my presentations some are with slides some are without slides I got a lot of a lot of good comments on the ones with slides and so I figured the best way to make this presentation better was more slides so number go up and with uh with no no more delay I want to talk about the Bitcoin Revolution and I also want to talk about rebuilding our global economy with digital Capital the world as we know it it's based on 20th century ideas and 20th Century technology stocks trade 9:30 to 4: unless there's a bank holiday you can't do things on the weekend everything is slow everything is expensive if we want to prosper in the 21st century we need new ideas and they need to be based on new technology this chart you've seen before I popped it up it's $900 trillion do of global wealth it's that 900 trillion it's spread across physical assets and financial assets that are 20th century ideas 20th century technology and in the upper left corner is a little orange blip the little orange asset that could what we call Bitcoin it's one trillion it seems like a lot if you started with zero but when you look at it against the greater scheme of things in the world it's . 1% here's another way to see that same chart it's not 900 trillion of assets it's a bunch of assets held for their utility value and a bunch of assets held as a store of value long-term capital when I buy a house I want to live in it but when I buy a bunch of bonds I just put my money there because I didn't know what else to do with the money and when you start to see the world as a big a big chunk of long-term capital $450 trillion or more of capital and you start to think about the way we store that Capital you see you see the engine for the revolution the global economy struggles because we're relying upon imperfect assets and imperfect systems to store that Capital it's crippling our Capital preservation so how do we engineer a better system well this is Tesla and Tesla had a quote he said you want understand the universe think in terms of energy frequency and vibration I'm going to translate that I'm going to talk about the physics of money now what are the physics of money energy is money or capital or wealth you could use them interchangeably for this speech frequency is about the duration or the lifespan how long will it take a minute an hour a year a century and and we vibrate money every time we trade with each other or we transfer from one local to another or we transform a a property into another type of asset and so here is an important uh important equation this is uh useful life is equal to the value of an asset divided by the cost to maintain Ain that asset um if you're looking for the useful life of your money in an asset then the way to figure it out is ask how much does it cost every year to maintain that asset in pristine condition what do I have to spend in order to avoid depreciation or Decay it turns out that that L that useful life is very close to something we know in the Bitcoin Community as stock to flow they're very related if you're measuring them in years many individuals and most corporations they use Financial assets to preserve capital and this is the source of a challenge for us let's talk about financial assets I want to keep my money for a long period of Time start with a billion dollars put it in the peso and the money is decaying in two years right a 98% inflation rate strips you of your eon ecomic energy or your Capital this is not a good long duration asset the Turkish lra your Capital last three years the US dollar under under traditional monetary inflation for the past Century might last 14 years but it's not like you have it for 14 years the life is being sucked out of you linearly over the 14 years put your money in a head hedge fund what's the annual cost it's 2% management fee and then 20% of The Upside about 4% a year if you're investing in normal assets that means it's a 25-year asset treasuries you're going to get a yield but the 3 and a half% after tax yield goes against the 7% monetary inflation maybe your money last 30 years capital and a mutual fund where you pay a 1% fee years that's about the best you're going to get if you manage to buy a diversified portfolio at 10 basis points the counterparty risk is going to drive you to a 1% cost so those are your financial assets we're running the world on a 20th century set of ideas and on average a financial assets going to last you 30 years we all know inflation dilutes the value of financial assets but inflation is just the tip of the iceberg you're also going to get diluted by tariffs and tolls and torts and transfers taxes we got all sorts of taxes income tax capital gains tax every time you vibrate and move the money you get taxed on the money and then if the taxes don't take you and and and the torch don't undo you you've got weather and competition and obsolesence and politics catastrophe those are the things that dilute the value of your capital over time and if if you want to maintain economic energy you have to fight against that friction well most people realize that's a frustrating Endeavor and it's a no win Endeavor so they give up on financial assets and they start turning to physical assets to preserve Capital well here's the physical asset of Ferrari not a good way to keep your money forever though because after 5 years you've spent as much on the insurance and the upkeep and the depreciation is it's worth Yachts aren't much better if you spend 10% of your money operating it you also get hit with depreciation don't store your money in Yachts a home in Miami Beach if you buy a $10 million house you better come up with $10 million to maintain the house over 17 years now you've got no money left silver 22 years a warehouse 40 years maybe 50 years bar of gold 62 years a painting 72 years land the average property tax in the United States is 1. 1% that means your money is going to last 91 years unless the government reassesses the value of your property then it's going to last less than 91 years the oldest family ranch in the United States is King Ranch they made it 173 years every other family and the country failed and here's the here's the longest held property the crown estate in the United Kingdom you could say the royal family held it since 1066 but on the other hand it passed from the plantagenets to the stewards through the lancasters and the Yorks and eventually found its way to the Handover family and so maybe seven different families split that none of them got to take it with them so physical assets you might think might last a thousand years probably about 50 to 75 years is the best you're going to do entropy is deluding the value of your physical assets it's sucking the capital the energy out of them there's a reason it's called Earth and not heaven because politicians are very creative they got a city tax a county tax a state tax a federal tax a transfer tax a Usage Tax on the property and if that doesn't get you there's rent control price control or a culture shock then you got competition you might get discriminated against there's recession the currency can collapse your tenants won't pay you someone will slip and fall on the front sidewalk and sue you there's weather War crime and catastrophe and if Energy prices go through the roof it's going to be hard for you to make a go of it physical cap capital is not a simple solution something I learned at MIT the three laws of thermodynamics you can't win you can't break even but you can't get out of the game so you could stop right here and be a little bit depressed but then again we don't want to lose so you start thinking what if we could find a way out of the game then we could break even then you could win Satoshi found a [Applause] way he gave it away and he went away and that's Bitcoin Bitcoin is digital Capital that's what he created bitcoin's Immortal immutable and immaterial capital and I use that in this sense it's it's got an infinite lifespan it's not being attacked by the forces of weather and entropy and inflation it's immaterial in the sense that it's not in the physical world it's not it's not suffering from all of those parade of horribles that the scourge of Financial and physical assets and it is the solution to our economic dilemma the transformation of our capital from financial and physical assets to digital assets it solves the problem that we're all facing now how long lived is Bitcoin well take your Bitcoin and put it at scale with a custodian an Institutional grade custodian you pay 10 basis points you know by the you know first law money that means you're going to last a thousand years the custodian might not last a thousand years but that doesn't matter because you can move the Bitcoin every year or every decade and you can stay one step ahead of the custodians failing you can't teleport a building you can't teleport to King Ranch you know and so Bitcoin is that is that thing that you can move say you custody your Bitcoin you can self- custody your Bitcoin for about one basis point a year assuming you buy good Hardware wallets and signing devices and spend a day a year to keep track of it now you've got a 10,000 year asset and what happens if you give it to the AI well the AI or a computer program can maintain those private keys for the cost of electricity you've got a 100,000 year asset the AIS are going to want the Bitcoin if they have a choice between owning the Bitcoin and owning The Ranch in Texas or owning the bar of gold or owning the Argentine peso it's pretty obvious what they're going to want and you can see here why they're going to want it digital assets are in a class all their own when you compare them to all the other assets that you can use for Capital preservation you can see they're off the scale everything else is living in the domain of 30 40 50 years and and you're in the domain of a thousand to 100,000 years it's a breakthrough in capital preservation but it makes it a revolution in economics if you would be W if you would be rich trade wisely and here's very simple principle trade temporary for permanent trade s you know trade your ice cream cone that's melting for the peso the peso for the dollar the dollar for the land and the land for the Bitcoin trade the currency for Capital trade something fragile for something resilient trade something local for something global trade something physical for something digital trade the security for the commodity trade the commodity for the scarcity you can't go wrong moving in that direction so let's talk about some great trades in history some trillion dollar trades the Dutch understood Naval power they they understood ships they had thousands of them they bought the best port in the new world for a couple hundred dollars in plastic and textile Trinkets and that's worth two and a half trillion dollar today okay it's it was an investment that's returned 6% for 398 years straight it it's a 10.

5 billion x return and if you think about it you're like why why would I actually give up the best port in America for a bunch of textiles and plastic and glass but the people that sold the thing to them didn't understand Naval power if you don't appreciate the reason you're going to want the property you won't value the property Napoleon wanted to gallivant Across the old world and Jefferson wanted to expand in the new world so France sells Louisiana to the US for $15 million in 1803 the $15 million probably lasted a few months fueling the French army it's gone Jefferson got that he got 27% of the United States it's at 800 ,000 X return wor 12 trillion or more it'll be worth more Jefferson had some Vision as did this man seart pays $7 million for Alaska two years after the country is decimated by the Civil War John D Rockefeller was trying to start an oil company today there's a trillion dollars of oil underneath Alaska it's a massive return for a piece of paper how much is digital Capital worth take the $450 trillion multiply by 3% that's your entropy cost or your inflation cost it costs the world 13. 5 billion dollar a year to take to take all of those parade of horribles when they're trying to preserve their wealth if you put a 20 pte on it like you value a company or a long duration Bond that's worth $270 trillion so digital capital is worth 10 20 15 trillion a year and it's worth hundreds of trillions of dollars reality check is he full of BS well digital capital is returning 55% for the past four years Financial Capital the best in the world is the bond it's minus 5% imagine capitalizing your company or your country on a minus 5% instead of a plus 50 55% it's obviously working and now let's come back to my chart here Global wealth we can look at it like this and we see the little Bitcoin you know Square in the left corner but what's happening here's my macro Bitcoin forecast it's 21 years goes out to the year 2045 what do I think will happen well I've got a barricade in a bull case but what I think will happen is that 55% AR goes to 50% 45 40 35 30 2520 it's between 50 and 20 it'll gradually decelerate till it's growing about twice as fast as the S&P index and at that rate bitcoin's $13 million a coin in the year 2045 13 million it could be it could be a 3 million barri case it could be a 49 million bull case but what is bitcoin 7% of the world's assets then what about the rest of the assets well I actually think that Ai and Technology going to revolutionize Tech we had no companies worth the trillion then we had a bunch of trillion dollar companies you're going to see more because you're going to see companies with a 100,000 AIS and no employees and they're going to do the work of companies that used to have 100,000 employees you're going to see Mega corpse develop you know shipping robots and self-driving cars and a company that gives a personal physician to a billion people without any doctors on the payroll so clearly Equity is going to grow fast Gold's going to get demonetized land will be less monetized but look here's the future in 2045 doesn't look that revolutionary it looks like today it's just that Bitcoin is visible on the chart to you when Bitcoin is visible that's going to be the base case now what are the implications of this how do you make money well let's talk about individual Bitcoin strategy what should you do uh make Bitcoin your primary treasury asset convert your excess earnings to bitcoin utilize subsidized credit if the if the government will loan you money borrow the money at cheap rates and buy Bitcoin and find a tax efficient way to invest the Bitcoin what shouldn't you do don't quit your day job don't lose your focus on bitcoin don't use margin loans and trade with leverage you get wiped out while you're asleep on a Saturday night that's not good good 30-year loan for 3% back by the government on your land bad overnight 10x leverage so what's typical person well we actually model an individual and we said what if you had 750,000 in net assets and you made 200 Grand a year and you're going to make 5% more every year and you got a savings rate of 25% and you can invest 50,000 a year well there's a lot of strategies you could be the Normie and do a normal strategy Diversified portfolio you can be a 10center and you can put 10% of your assets into Bitcoin you can be a BTC Maxi and put 80% of your assets and put 80% of your earnings into Bitcoin you could be a double Maxi and that's when you basically take an extra $250,000 loan against the house and then the triple Maxi is you finance the house for Bitcoin you buy Bitcoin you flip all your assets to bitcoin and then you move to a cheap tax jurisdiction where you actually can avoid some taxes and invest an extra 50 Grand in Bitcoin maybe a Singapore UAE or something what's the result well this is the result the Normy ends up with 8 million in 21 years the BT the 10center will more than double that the Maxi ins up with 100 million the double Maxi 150 the triple Maxi 214 million you can see the power of Leverage and the choice is yours and you can also see you know it takes 15. 9 Bitcoin to be a triple Maxi you know 6.

25 Bitcoin will make you a wealthy person let's talk about corporations dues convert your Capital to BTC convert your cash flows to BTC issue Equity to buy BTC when it's accretive issue debt to buy BTC when it's accretive don't don't bleed your Capital with taxable dividends don't surrender your Capital with stock BuyBacks don't dilute your shareholders with risky overpriced m&a activity here's our typical Corporation $100 million of cash flow a billion dollars of Enterprise Value it's grow it's generating a lot of cash flow it share price is 100 bucks and now the issue is what's your strategy Normie Maxi double Maxi triple Maxi well the Normie is going to be okay you'll make you'll be have a $1,200 stock price but just 10% allocation doubles it the Maxi is going to nearly 8 exit the double Maxi $177,000 stock the triple Max ma he 28,000 what kind of company do you want to run reality check this is a triple Maxi strategy at work right now this is micro strategy it will be it will be 48 months on August 10th of this year since we started down this road 48 months and uh you know if you're running a company and there's 300 million companies out there if you're running a company and you think you can do what Microsoft and Apple and Google do then good for you you can get to a 20 to 25% ARR if you want to copy Nvidia you will beat everybody but I think that right now in the boardrooms of Microsoft and Apple and Google and Tesla they're stressed out about copying Nvidia and the irony is it's easy to copy micro strategy I just gave you the Playbook it's simple this is how it compounds over four years right four years of doing that gets you to 1300% Improvement so bottom line build a strong capital structure avoid dilutive Financial practices let's talk about an institution you got a church a charity an endowment of Harvard you know any nonprofit what should you do modify your Charter to invest in BTC reallocate from short-term duration assets to long duration assets you know you wouldn't invest in ice cream cones don't invest in the peso but why are you holding 20-year financial instruments don't own 50y year physical land instruments buy a Thousand-Year instrument use BTC BTC is the cost of capital not the S&P the S&P is 133% BTC is 55% right think of 55% that's your cost of capital and then use intelligence leverage okay here's our model a billion doll portfolio you want to be a Normy a maxi a triple Maxi here at the at the Maxi we just said put 100% in at the Double Maxi and triple Maxi is take 10% leverage and that's what happens you start with a billion dollars and in 21 years you'll have 5 billion of your enormi and you'll be patting yourself on the back talking about what a good job you've done managing the endowment but it could have been 300 billion it could have been 100x not that hard very straightforward now let's talk about Wealth of Nations this is the interesting one what's the national Bitcoin strategy dos and don'ts well reallocate your treasury from gold and bonds their short duration assets to a 10,000-year asset issue currency to buy Bitcoin issue debt to buy the Bitcoin encourage Bitcoin ownership with favorable laws protect self- custody for individuals and corporations and support integration with the banking system of your country those are all dues the don't don't pursue policies hostile to bitcoin and Bitcoin holders this one's not complicated now let's say you're an indebted country you're actually in debt you're running a a deficit I could name these countries but I won't I'm just going to say you owe a lot of money and you're struggling your interest rates are high and you don't know what to do well here's your strategies are you a normie or a 10center or a maxi double Maxi or triple Maxi the Maxi is you put a third of your treasury into this a double Maxi is 65% and a triple Max is put all your treasury into it and start issuing debt for those of you who can actually read right the sub the sub text of this is the first country to buy Bitcoin by issuing its own currency wins this is simple you print paper remember that sewer check you issue the check you be like well you know you could whine oh we couldn't afford it you know it was two years after the Civil War the country was bankrupt millions of people are dead the south is in disrepair the north is angry and this guy Seward comes up with an idea to buy frozen tundra a lot of it from a bunch of Russians that wanted the paper okay so people have done things under worse situations but you can see here the Normy strategy is you owe $3 trillion you're not getting anywhere the Maxi strategy pays off your debt the double Maxi strategy makes you rich the triple Maxi strategy makes you very rich why because you're buying the property that everybody is running to in a hundred years and you just go buy it now like Standard Oil was nothing there was no gasoline there were no automobiles we had no diesel locomotives in 1867 we invented all that stuff but common sense says oh I can buy something that's equal to about 1 of the size of the nation for a few dollars why don't I just grab it Bitcoin strategy for wealthy foreign countries let's say you have a lot of money you know maybe you're Saudi Arabia Norway and you make a lot of money well what's your strategy you want to be a normie a maxi a double Maxi a maxi puts 25% of their money into Bitcoin a triple Maxi goes 75% and converts their surpluses into Bitcoin here's what happens you just get insanely Rich $58 trillion of rich but you know more than that this strengthens your National security because you end up with 50 trillion doll or more of digital Capital nobody can take you know they can't steal it right they bomb your country they invade your border they're not getting the Bitcoin right so this is good for your financial security and your National Security but note if you are Saudi Arabia or Norway and if you pursue the triple Maxi strategy sailor says it's very easy to do but it's 4.