Michael Saylor: 21 Ways To Wealth | Bitcoin 2025 Keynote Speech

[Music] [Music] [Applause] [Music] I am uh I'm delighted to see everybody here today and the number one reason I'm delighted is because this speech is for you. I have I have traveled the world and I've spoken about Bitcoin and I've told countries why they needed Bitcoin and I've told institutional investors why they needed Bitcoin and I've told boardrooms and companies and CEOs why they need Bitcoin. And I've spoken to the disembodied spirits about why our children's children's children need Bitcoin.

But my presentation today is directed at the 8 billion people on the planet. It's the 21 ways to wealth for every individual, every family, every small business, every entrepreneur is not for the billiondoll public companies. It's for everybody.

And I focused for quite a while on that. So, this is for you. The 21 ways to wealth.

The first way to wealth, clarity. Clarity is the topic. And that that clarity of mind comes when you realize that Bitcoin is capital, perfected capital, programmable capital, incorruptible capital.

The significance of that is every smart person, every thoughtful individual everywhere in the world is going to want perfected capital. Every every one of your enemies is going to want uh incorruptible capital. And all of the AIs are going to want programmable capital.

The demand for this is huge. What's it worth? It's worth half of everything.

Half of everything. The second way to wealth, conviction. It starts with the observation that Bitcoin is going to appreciate faster than every other asset because it is engineered to outperform.

It's going to grow faster than the S&P. It's going to appreciate faster than gold. Sorry, Peter.

I should say that again. It's going to go faster than gold. Sorry, Peter.

It's going to grow faster than real estate or collectibles or anything else you can imagine because it was engineered that way. And that leads us to our third way to wealth. If you're going to generate wealth, if you're going to get rich on Bitcoin, you're going to need courage.

And courage means wealth favors those who embrace intelligent monetary risk. Satoshi started a fire in cyberspace. And while the fearful run from it and fools dance around it, the faithful feed the flame, dreaming of a better world, bathed in the warm glow of cyber light.

What does that mean? It means that a lot of people that look at Bitcoin are going to be afraid of it. They'll never touch it.

They'll never been benefit from it. They'll be left behind. Then others will just juggle it.

They will juggle the fire. They will make fireworks with the fire. They will create trinkets with the fire.

They will create magic tricks with the fire. But those that truly understand it will feed the fire. How do you feed the fire?

You feed the fire by buying the Bitcoin. Buy it. Take your fiat currency, trade it for Bitcoin.

Take your long-term capital, trade it for Bitcoin. Sell your bonds, trade for Bitcoin. Sell your inferior equity, sell your inferior real estate property, buy Bitcoin.

Feed the fire. And what will come of that? A an extraordinary explosion in the network, in the power of the network, and you will have bought your ticket to prosperity.

The fourth way to wealth is cooperation. And this is very important. You're more powerful not as an individual but but with a with the support of your family with your family aligned around this.

If you understand Bitcoin, you can act as an individual. But when your entire family understands Bitcoin, you're much more powerful. Your parents, they have credit, they have capital.

You, you have capability, you have conviction, you may have courage. Your children, they have time, they have potential. Your 80year-old grandfather can draw down capital from an IRA, can borrow money from a bank, has a portfolio.

The secret is transfer that capital into the hands of the child. The child's got 80 years ahead of them. Right?

When you think in terms of how do I actually transfer money uh transfer capital from the past and turn it into money for the future, it's a generational thing. So think about the family. Uh families that work together are extraordinarily powerful on this journey.

[Applause] The fifth way to wealth in this day and age is capability. And here I could list all sorts of technologies for you to master and I thought about it. But at the end of the day, the overarching compell compelling observation is you need to master artificial intelligence if you would be wealthy.

When in this day and age in the year 2025, you have at your fingertips an array of accountants. You have a group of lawyers. You have a set of professors, historians.

You have at your fingertips all the collective wisdom of every great entrepreneur. You have everything that I know, everything that any other CE knows. All you have to do is go to the AI, put it in deep think mode, plug in all of your circumstances, all of your hopes, all your aspirations, all of your problems, and then start to query it and then engage with it.

I tell all my executives before you ask a lawyer, before you ask a banker, before you ask any expert, go to the AI, ask the AI, make it think. Grind the Silicon Overlord. Okay, this is very important because many of the suggestions I'll give you next, they were out of the reach of of the working man.

They were out of the reach of the middle class. You could say, "Yeah, those sophisticated trusts or those sophisticated legal constructs, that's great, but I don't have the money for that. I can't afford to spend hundreds of thousands of dollars on lawyers.

" And let me tell you a secret. I have dozens of lawyers that work for me, thousands of lawyers I've employed, spent hundreds of millions of dollars on lawyers. The first thing I do when I have a question is I go and ask the AI.

After I do that, I argue with it. It tells me no. I ask a different way.

I threaten it. I ask it to give me a solution. I find I find a 95% solution.

I find the solution and then I and then I take that solution. And I send the link to my management team and my lawyers and I say, "Look, I solved the problem. This is what I want to do.

Give me your execution plan. " And then I give them anywhere from 2 to 5 days. If you're feeling charitable, give them 5 days.

If you're in a hurry, give them two days. If your fi if your financial advisors, if your accountants, if your lawyers, if your executives can't if anybody, your friends, your family, if they can't figure it out in two to four days, they're going to get exited from the gene pool. Change the lawyer, change the whatever.

If someone said, "I can't use the telephone. I can't I can't figure out the web link. You sent me a book, but I can't read.

" you would find someone else to work with. This is very important. You know, the path to wealth is through capability.

But 2025 is the year where every one of you became not a super genius. Every one of you is collectively a hundred super geniuses that have read everything the human race has published. If you have the humility to ask for help from the AI, don't put your ego first.

Put your interest first. Your family will thank you in years to come. The sixth way to wealth is composition.

Construct the legal entities that scale your strategy and protect your assets. What do I mean by that? I mean that you can go and borrow money against your 401k and maybe you can make an investment in an IRA and maybe you can construct an efficient insurance policy.

Perhaps you're going to want to put together a dynasty trust in Florida that's good for 300 years, but you may find that you want the timeless dynasty trust out of South Dakota that lasts forever. The normal reaction would be I don't know how to do any of this. But that but my observation today is ask the AI figure it out because if you figure out the appropriate legal rapper the corporate container right and and by the way I'm not giving you the exact answer because if you live in UAE or Singapore it's a different answer and if you live in North Dakota it's a different answer and depending upon who you are it's a different answer but what I am telling you is you go to the web you fire up your AI and you start to ask it it will give give you a customized answer.

So, you can work hard or you can work smart. But I got to tell you, you work smart, you'll go a hundred times as far, it'll be a lot easier. 10 years ago, someone would have said, "It's just too hard.

It takes a year. You know, the lawyers are too slow. They're too expensive.

" And you would punt. Not this year. This year, everybody ought to be as smart as the most sophisticated, you know, mega billionaire family would ever be.

You can have the same legal advice they get. You can have the same efficiency if you decide to pursue [Applause] it. Lucky number seven, the seventh way to wealth is through citizenship.

Choose your economic nexus. Doicile where sovereignty respects your freedom. What does that mean to you?

Well, it depends on who you are. Everybody's circumstances are different. But I give you a simple prompt.

Go to the AI and ask, "What are the 10 best states in the United States for people that hold Bitcoin? " Now go to the thing and say why don't you rank every country in the world based upon my intention to hold Bitcoin or invest in it and then describe your circumstances and it will give you answers and I would encourage everyone to think about it because it's different living in Florida than living in certain other states. We like Wyoming.

We have the Bitcoin senator from Wyoming. Thank you. sent the alumus.

I like Florida. I'm from Miami Beach. But you have to figure out where.

At the state level, at the county level, at the city level, at the country level. Think deeply. It's not about this year.

It's about this century. Where are you and your family going to be for the next 100 years? Your grandchildren will thank you.

Eight. The eighth path to prosperity, the eighth way to wealth, it's through civility. Respect the natural power structures of the world.

If you go on safari, don't wrestle with the lions. Don't try to outst the elephants, you know. Don't fall off a cliff while you're taking a selfie on a hike.

Respect gravity. Respect the force of nature. I think everybody understands that.

But what I would say beyond that is if you would generate wealth in the Bitcoin universe, think about the way the world is constructed. And just remember, you don't have to topple your least favorite government in the world. You don't have to change someone's religious beliefs.

You don't have to topple any particular system that exists in this world. You need to choose your battles, right? Respect social norms.

Don't don't uh fight unnecessarily. You're just dissipating energy. Right?

Whenever I look at at the world, I think there's a hundred things I'd like to change. And then I think the world really only cares about my opinion on one of those things. And the likelihood that I'm going to succeed in changing the other 99 things is not high.

Right? If if you would generate wealth, figure out what you're going to do. Focus on the thing and be civil.

Often times you'll meet people that have have different religious beliefs, different political beliefs, different economic beliefs, different cultural beliefs than you. Strive to find common ground with them and and move forward because the inflammation and the distraction just slows you down as you move to the future. So civility it will do you [Applause] well.

The ninth way to wealth is through corporation. A well ststructured corporation is the most powerful wealth creation engine on earth. So you're an individual.

What's my suggestion? You go to that AI and you figure out how to create a company whether it's a small company or multiple companies. Companies have advantages.

They have special access to the banking system. Companies have special rights in every business. Companies come with legal immunities.

Companies come with duration. Companies come with tax efficiencies. Companies come with all sorts of efficiencies.

They're more creditworthy. Companies can sell equity. Companies can finance the future.

A company could look out 30 years, project and then draw the economic energy back to today and invest it now. Individuals can't do that. So as much as it is admirable to be an individual, right?

There is no shame in being a company of one or a company of a family, I would think about what is your path. If you look at the hierarchy of the world and you're ranking it, it's the individual is at is at the at the bottom of the hierarchy. The family is more powerful.

The partnership is more powerful still. The small midsize private business is more powerful still. The large private company is next.

The the small public company on an OTC market is next. Then a public company on a large capital market. than a public company on NASDAQ or New York Stock Exchange.

Then there's the seasoned issuer in the US capital markets. And at the very top of the pyramid is the well-known seasoned issuer in the US capital markets. There's a few hundred of them in the world.

What can you do when you crawl to the top of that pyramid? You can file a registration statement and sell a billion dollars of securities in six hours. That's what you can do.

I want that for each one of you. I want you to reach your full potential. And and incorporation is a start to that.

And now, can you give me slide 10? My clicker is jammed. Thank you.

The 10th way to wealth is through focus. Just because you can do a thing doesn't mean that you should. I have done lots of things.

I have done I am 60 years old. One of the reasons that I have embraced Bitcoin with the religious passion and the ideological fervor that I have is because I had the opportunity to do things in my 20s and my 30s and my 40s and my 50s, you know, and uh what you find is that it's very challenging to change the world operationally. Most of my great ideas I thought were infallible, but it turned out that they didn't work out the way I thought they would.

In fact, if you invent a new product, a new service, a new whatever, there's a 90% chance over 5 years it'll fail. If you invest in Bitcoin on your balance sheet, there's a 90% chance over 5 years it'll succeed. as I push out to the 30 or 40year time frame, there's a 99% chance every operational idea fails and there's a 99% chance every financial idea that rest upon a foundation of Bitcoin succeeds.

So don't confuse ambition with accomplishment, right? Keep in mind that the property company, the company that owns the Bitcoin is looking at a 30 to 60% AR every year. You're growing 30, 40, 50% if you do nothing.

Now, think about every operational business, your restaurant, your hotel, your whatever you get up on day one of the year and then you're going to grow the business 30% every year for the next 20 years. It's been done by seven companies. We called them the magnificent seven.

There's 400 million that tried. So in this particular case, make sure that when you come up with a strategy, focus on it. You know, don't get distracted.

The 11th way to wealth is through equity. What does that mean? It means share your opportunity with investors willing to share your risk.

A company can do this. An individual cannot do this. Metaplanet has done this.

Metaplanet went from 10 million to a five billion dollar market cap with the partnership of their equity investors. Without their equity investors, they're nothing. My company went from a billion dollar enterprise to a hundred billion dollar enterprise with the help of our equity investors.

What are you doing? Right? You have the company.

You have the strategy. You offer them the opportunity, right? That what you're really If you're a dentist and you make $200,000 a year in cash flow, you can buy 200,000 of Bitcoin every year for 20 years.

And that's not a bad idea. You'll be the richest dentist on your block. But you can incorporate the dental practice, get it valued at five times cash flow, get a million dollar value, sell 50, sell 33% of it for $500,000.

Take the 500,000, invest in Bitcoin today, wait a year, raise another 500,000 at a double market cap, two, three, four times NAV, invest that, wait another year, raise 3 million, invest that, you'll be the first billionaire dentist on your block. And what what did you do differently? you partnered with someone else and you cut them in, right?

That's what that's that's what Strategy's done. That's what Metapun has done. That's what Similar is doing.

You can do it. The 12th way to wealth is through credit. What does that mean?

It means there are a lot of people in the world that are afraid of the future. There are a lot of people that want to protect their money or they want a small yield. and Japan corporate bonds yield 50 basis points and the US investment grade bonds yield four 500 basis points.

When you as a corporation give creditors certainty, you give them a fixed coupon. You give them a fixed dividend and you give them seniority in your capital structure. You turn that risk into yield.

You're giving them certainty, security, yield. And what you're getting back is the capital. The world's full of people.

I'm a retiree. I want a guaranteed 8%. I don't want to lose my money.

If you give them that proposition, you're going to get the money and it's going to compound at 30 to 60%. The worst case is you're capturing the 22% spread, but it's compounding up with all the capital up front. And so credit sometimes is a bad word, but at the end of the day, you as the individual creating a company can create credit.

If I want to be the billionaire dentist on the block, I incorporate. I sell some equity. I sell some of my future.

I get to I get to stock up and then I go borrow some money or I sell a preferred stock or some instrument to someone that wants less risk, less return, more certainty. And I rock back and forth. And and the goal is not to take $200,000 of cash flow a year or 50,000 of cash flow a year and invest over 20 years.

The goal is to accelerate a hundred times as much money through proper financing on my corporate entity now and invested in the world's greatest asset which is Bitcoin. SL here we have 13 weigh 13. 13 is not always a happy number.

I use the word compliance. You should create the best company you can create within the rules of your market. Every market is different.

But think about this. Public companies have special rights. They can issue equity and debt.

Trust companies have other special rights. They're more tax efficient. Insurance companies have special rights.

They can reinvest annuities and they can assume risk and they can create very taxefficient vehicles. A broker dealer has special rights. An exchange has special rights.

The bank has special rights. A bank can take a million dollars of capital and print $20 million worth of fiat currency. They can lever 20 to one.

Okay, that's an advantage. So while compliance sounds like a difficult world word, if you create a company and you understand the rules of the road in the market you function in, you can create a special very very productive enterprise and then you can use the power of that enterprise in order to raise capital, invest in Bitcoin and create wealth. So, it's more intricate, but if you have the talent to do it, you know, uh it will allow you to go faster and further.

14. Capitalization. Your your goal is to raise and rein reinvest capital relentlessly as veloc as fast as you can.

As much as you can, as fast as you can. the velocity compounds the wealth. So, you know, you create that practice, the small hotel, you incorporate, you sell 10% of the equity, you buy Bitcoin, Bitcoin goes up, the value of the hotel goes up.

You sell 20%, you buy more Bitcoin, the value of the enterprise goes up. You borrow a little bit of money, you buy Bitcoin, the value of the enterprise goes up. You're continually raising capital.

You have cash flow, you buy Bitcoin. You have treasury assets, you buy Bitcoin. You have a house that doesn't have a mortgage on it.

Okay. Well, good for you. You could borrow money at 6% invested at it's been 80 going up 80% for the past year.

So, you can capture even if you look at a 30 or 20% ARR. You're borrowing at six. You're investing at 20.

You're capturing the spread. It's compounding. This is a race to capitalize on Bitcoin.

He who has the most Bitcoin at the end of the game wins. [Applause] communication. No one's going to give you money if they don't trust you.

The creditors won't give you they won't take a or give you a loan. They won't buy your bond. They won't buy your preferred stock.

The equity investors won't buy your stock. No one will do business with you. Employees, vendors, they're not going to trust you.

You must speak with cander. You must act with transparency. You should repeat that often using every modern digital channel.

You don't need a complicated strategy to build wealth in the Bitcoin universe. You simply need a straightforward one that you're that everyone else understands. Once they understand what you're going to do, they will they will support you and then they will make you successful.

So, communicate. Way number 16 is commitment. Don't allow yourself to be distracted.

A lot of people discovered Bitcoin before me. People discovered in 2011, 2012, 2013, 2014, and then they went on to build Yoyocoin. And then they went on to build the thing to juggle the Bitcoin.

And then they went on to write the book about how smart they are about having discovered the Bitcoin. And then they created the business and they got a board of directors that made them sell the Bitcoin. Right?

So commitment to the Bitcoin. The Bitcoin is the idea. Don't feed the trolls when people at you online and tell you're stupid.

Don't argue with them. Don't chase, By the way, don't get distracted by your good ideas. Don't chase your good ideas.

Satoshi gave you an idea worth half of everything on earth. The most common mistake entrepreneurs make is they fall in love with their own idea and and then they chase it. You have the world's greatest idea, the greatest idea in the history of the human race.

It's there. You get you're living during an age where the majority of the planet doesn't get it. All you have to do is figure out how to capitalize it right now.

But there will be a million other ideas. Don't fight lost causes. Choose your battles.

Don't try to fix stuff, you know, beyond your reach. You might have an opinion about this and that and the other thing, and it might make you really mad, and you might be burning about it, and you might think this is just awful. All that is true.

I agree with you. But the truth is, the world probably doesn't care what you think. And unless you can stop the war yourself then and if you can stop the war you know you can do that then you should focus on that.

But if you can't then don't take your own success for granted. You know avoid dilutive distractions. Way number 17.

Deliver consistent, precise, reliable execution. Be relentless. Don't take your customer for granted.

Don't take your security for granted. Don't take your success for granted. Laserlike focus.

The world wants perfection from you. Or when I first got to DuPont, they said you are allowed up to but not including one mistake. Okay.

So maybe you think you can juggle 10 razor blades and do 20 things while you will pine on 50 topics on Twitter X. Right? The person you're competing with is laser-like focused and the marketplace will shift to whoever is laser-like focused.

18. Adaptation. Over a long enough timeline, every counterparty will fail, including you.

Over a hundred years, everybody you trust, every bank, every company, everything, every structure that works now will fail. You will need to adopt adapt. A wise person is prepared to abandon their baggage at several times along the road of life.

So be prepared. Have a plan. Work it now.

Be monitoring it every quarter, every year. At at some point when that is no longer the right path, you know, don't be ashamed to change the path. Have a succession plan.

Keep your affairs in order. Way 19, evolution in build on your core strengths. Leverage your strongest assets.

Um, your goal is graceful evolution, not radical mutation. Right? If you happen to have skill in a culture, in a capital market, in a thing, you want to you want a business that grows based upon leveraging that.

When you get over your skis or you decide to go do something in a totally random new area, the risk of that execution goes up by a hundfold. Way 20, advocacy. Inspire others to walk the Bitcoin path.

Become an evangelist for economic freedom. The more individuals, corporations, governments, institutions, cities, leaders embrace Bitcoin, the more likely you are to succeed, the more likely they are to succeed. The more likely Bitcoin is to succeed, the more likely the human race is to succeed.

[Applause] [Music] 21. The way to wealth is through generosity. When you are successful, and you will be successful, get up every morning and and spread happiness, share security, deliver hope to those less fortunate than you.

You found the path first. You found the way first. You should spread good karma.

Make sure that you're delivering that to your employees, your family, your friends, your customers, your investors, and your community. They will see that glow. They will respect you.

They will support you. They will be inspired by you. They will follow you.

It's good for you, good for business, good for Bitcoin, good for the world. And I'm going to end with this final thought. You know, 16 years later and two trillion year two trillion dollars of proof later and after who knows how many millions of pages of wisdom have been delivered to the world, I'm able to give you this speech.

But someone much greater than me, Satoshi, with none of that information, with none of that proof, with none of that time, said this many, many years ago, the most important 12 words in the English language, it might make sense to get some in case it catches on. Thank you. Thank you for your support.

I'm here because of all of you and I look forward to seeing you next [Applause] [Music] year. [Music] [Music] Heat. [Music] Heat.

Heat. Heat.