During his keynote at the Bitcoin MENA conference in Abu Dhabi, Michael Saylor presented a new vision for bitcoin’s role in global finance, expanding beyond MicroStrategy’s traditional treasury approach.
Three layer financial model
Saylor described a system with three layers:
Bitcoin as the reserve asset, a corporate credit layer issued by his company, and a final layer of digital money that banks or exchanges could offer on top.
He explained that MicroStrategy currently holds about 660,000 bitcoin and is acquiring between $500 million and $1 billion worth each week. Saylor told the audience:
“We can buy more Bitcoin than the sellers can sell. We are going to take it all. We are going to take it out of circulation.”
Corporate credit and digital money
The next layer involves creating corporate credit instruments backed by bitcoin, aiming to turn bitcoin’s volatility into stable, predictable cash flows for institutions. Saylor stated:
“If you have a long time horizon, you should take the 30% annual appreciation in bitcoin, but most people do not want 30% with thirty volatility. They want 10% with ten volatility.”
The final component is the creation of digital money—dollar-denominated instruments constructed from the company’s short-duration bitcoin-backed credit, cash, and currency equivalents.
Saylor emphasized that such a product would “trade like a stablecoin” and could offer “an 8% tax deferred yield.”
Regulatory and historical context
Saylor’s structure would not comply with the new U.S. stablecoin regulations, which require full backing by cash or government securities and prohibit yield payments.
He acknowledged this, noting the likelihood of such a product launching outside the U.S., and highlighted discussions with sovereign wealth funds, banks, and regulators in the Middle East.
Centralization and bitcoin’s ethos
Saylor’s approach marks a shift from bitcoin’s cypherpunk origins to a model resembling traditional central banking—centralizing reserves, credit, and monetary design within a single corporate entity.
While this does not alter the decentralized Bitcoin protocol, it creates a centralized financial layer on top of it, raising questions about the future direction of bitcoin-based financial systems.
