No, but I am saying that Saylor played a big role for the Controllers and now they have little use for him, they'd now rather that you buy the ETFs because ETFs allow for better control over Bitcoin's price and volatility.
But Saylor, knowingly or unknowingly normalized plebs holding Paper Bitcoin by selling them MSTR shares.
Imagine if Larry Fink came out with his ETFs, maybe the plebs would've reacted "Hey, not your keys, not your coins, remember?".
However, Saylor became a folk hero in the Bitcoin space and gained almost everyone's trust.
It is also a bit convenient that MSTR's stock outperformed basically everyone at the exactly right time 😂
He was the perfect person to usher in the paper Bitcoin era.
He is now continuing to claim that "Bitcoin is a SoV, not MoE" because he has a lot of pull with a big audience and he has to be very careful with what he says.
The Controllers could easily wreck his company or worse if he gets out of line.
I think the whitepaper said "Bitcoin: A Peer-to-Peer Electronic Cash System", and not "Bitcoin: Buying stocks from Charismatic salesmen".
Most Bitcoiners still don't understand that you can't enforce SoV (the 21 million cap) by not holding your coins, by investing in Bitcoin ETFs (remember GLD?), and by not asking treasury companies for Proof-of-Reserves, etc.
Saylor is also trying to align himself with the Controllers by not normalizing Proof-of-Reserves as well.
As I said in the post, if MSTR introduces proof-of-reserves, most, if not all treasury companies will need to follow.
I am not accusing him of anything, he might've been a useful idiot, however, when you watch his interviews, you see that he's very aware of what he says and he's great at toeing the line.
He most likely started as a good, genuine actor in the space, and later on god corrupted, and I can't blame him. If you go against the system, you will inevitably get wrecked.
With a big audience like Saylor's, getting wrecked in this context means getting killed.
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Previously I talked about how Michael Saylor's role was to normalize paper Bitcoin and NOT normalize proof-of-reserves (knowingly or unknowingly).
In short, you would've been more skeptical if Larry Fink's Blackrock was the first Bitcoin paper product that came out.
Instead, a Bitcoin folk hero was used to normalize the idea of "Not your keys, yes your coins".
Something very similar is happening in the financial system.
We are in a transition from the current rails -> regulated stablecoins (plus tokenized deposits) -> phased CBDCs, with years of overlap.
Stablecoins do the heavy lifting of user education, compliance plumbing, and merchant normalization; CBDCs slot in once the UX, legal, and vendor stack are domesticated.
Once crises are triggered, CBDC rollout speeds up, stablecoins get corralled into narrow roles.
The plan is for stablecoins to normalize "programmable money".
They are the Trojan horse for UX, compliance, and merchant behavior:
- They acclimate users to KYC wallets, blacklistable funds, recoveries, and automated tax.
- They give governments a vendor ecosystem (identity, analytics, AML, dispute infra) without owning every app.
- Once routinized, CBDCs can re-platform settlement while keeping the front-end familiar.
Many people will tell you how stablecoins are useful to the US government because they buy treasuries.
However, they are much more useful to the US government because they are the Trojan horse that normalizes programmable money (CBDCs).
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> Most Bitcoiners still don't understand that you can't enforce SoV (the 21 million cap) by not holding your coins, by investing in Bitcoin ETFs (remember GLD?), and by not asking treasury companies for Proof-of-Reserves, etc.
But would then not a foreign opponent post proof of reserves that proves the figures are false, impacting their opponents economy and integrity?
It's complicated.
Technically, you don't need to fake coins to suppress the price with financial instruments.
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It is possible that there is an organized run on exchanges/ETFs/treasury companies and people move to self-custody because of a scare (a bank run of sorts).
In other words, you're going to need the grassroots, ordinary people to organize a run on these institutions and self-custody.
"Foreign opponent" posting proof of reserves is extremely unlikely because there aren't really any foreign opponents.
Thinking that an "adversarial" government would want to pump the parallel, competing monetary system (Bitcoin) is not realistic.
There are a thousand ways governments can impact each others economy and integrity but they don't because that's not how the world works.
ALL governments (well there's really only 1 government) would fight to the death to preserve their monopoly on money issuance and violence. Bitcoin used as a MoE messes up their monopoly on money, so you can kind of connect the dots and follow the incentives.
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Thank you this is very thoughtful and thorough content. A lot of it is above my mental pay grade my but I will comment:
1) I’ve never bought the “finalization is good narrative” esp as reported by the ex-tradfi on podcasts.
2) I’m very surprised Saylor was “allowed” to execute his playbook without really any friction
3) If Bitcoin wins and it’s a natural law of sorts then I will remain hopeful that it can chart an unforeseen path
I will also share a personal opinion that I’ve held for a couple of years, the US government wants you to buy bitcoin. Everyone loves to rebel…
I'd gave to disagree that the US government wants you to buy Bitcoin.
But if you're going to be buying Bitcoin, they'd like you to buy the ETF and not self-custody.
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The concept of Controlled Opposition assets also applies here:
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If Bitcoin wins and it's a natural law of sorts, that would probably be very close to the best case scenario.
I've speculated on why Saylor was allowed to execute his playbook in my other posts:
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