Michael Saylor is the co-founder and CEO of MicroStrategy. Lately, he has become one of the leading crypto influencers.
In August he announced that his company had adopted bitcoin as its primary reserve, and since then MicroStrategy has invested over a billion dollars in BTC. Now the 71,000 BTC are worth more than $3 billion.
During a recent interview with Bloomberg, Michael Saylor said:
“The scarcest asset in the world is Bitcoin. It’s digital gold”.
In finance, a ‘scarce’ asset is an asset whose supply on the markets is very limited, and far below demand.
When the supply of an asset is so scarce that it cannot meet demand, the price goes up.
Today there are about 18.6 million BTC in the world. Every 10 minutes or so another 6.25 million BTC are created, amounting to about 900 new BTC per day. So in one year the world’s existing BTC increase by about 1.7%.
In early 2024, the production of new BTC will be halved, bringing the annual increase to below 1%, and by 2028 it will also fall below 0.5%.
These percentages will also be lower than for gold, as there are an estimated 190,000 tonnes of gold in the world, while around 3,000 tonnes are mined each year. In other words, gold will maintain a total supply growth of about 1.5%, or a little less, while bitcoin’s total supply will collapse to below 1% in three years’ time.
In other words, bitcoin is destined to become an even scarcer asset than gold, so much so that it is probably the scarcest commodity in the world.
Why Bitcoin is better than gold: Michael Saylor’s opinion
According to Saylor, this makes it better than liquid fiat currency reserves, especially for corporate shareholders.
In fact, the CEO of MicroStrategy held a webinar last week on exactly how corporate treasuries should convert some of their cash into BTC, attracting viewers from over 1,400 companies.
Saylor said:
“If we bought gold instead of Bitcoin, we would be down $2 billion. It would have been a disaster. Once people start thinking about what they want, which is a non-sovereign, safe-haven store of value, they’re going to realize that Bitcoin does the job of gold better, and you’re seeing all of the institutional flows move out of gold into Bitcoin”.
