👉 News. The price of bitcoin has lost more than 50% since its all-time peak at $69,000 in November 2021.

👉 Background. MicroStrategy's boss sees bitcoin as still the only way to fight the ever-increasing inflation.

👉 Why it matters. With $3.5 billion in bitcoins, American Michael Saylor is one of the most exposed investors on the planet.

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The Big Whale: The markets have been going down for months and don't look good. How are you doing?

Michael Saylor: Everything is going great (laughs). The price of bitcoin has gone down, but its intrinsic value is still intact. I've always said that we take the long view. That bitcoin is a technological, economic and social revolution. And nothing has changed in that respect. All these debates about prices are completely useless and make us miss the point.

Whatdo you think is essential?

With bitcoin, it is the first time in history that we are able to circulate value in the digital universe. For 30 years, everything we have created in the digital space, our writings, our music, our videos, that is to say absolutely everything, has been information. But information is duplicated, it does not keep its energy, that is to say its intrinsic value. If I create a song and put it in a digital file, I can copy it and send it to millions of people. If I send you a bitcoin, I don't have it anymore, it's in your house. It's moved into digital space and still has value. And I really emphasize this idea of value.

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You often say that Bitcoin is what the Internet has been missing since its creation, what do you mean?

Every day I get thousands of bots on Twitter, Instagram... This all happens because it can be done for free. There is no cost to creating millions of fake accounts and fake information. This is what Elon Musk understood with Twitter and why he wants to transform the social network. In the physical world, I can't go at the speed of light, I have limits, whereas in the digital world, everything is possible. I'm not saying we should limit the potential of the Internet, but Bitcoin is the basis for rationalizing this universe and what gives value in cyberspace.

You say that Bitcoin is "digital energy", what do you mean by that?

One bitcoin is a file that represents one 21 millionth of the entire energy of the Bitcoin network. How do I create this file? I create it with electricity and mining machines. So it's "digitized energy". What is the dollar? Political energy: I work and get paid with a currency provided by the US government. Bitcoin works the same way: it's digital energy. You can keep that energy on the network or you can spend it.

The debate around mining and its environmental impact keeps rising. Is this an issue for you?

We tend to focus on the energy consumed by Bitcoin when all human activity requires energy. When you go to work, you eat, you take transportation, you consume energy!

Do you think Bitcoin solves the problem of energy storage? Can we think of Bitcoin as a super battery?

If you have a million dollars, how do you store it for 100 years? Do you put it in the bank? I ask because our current monetary battery, the fiat currencies (euro, dollar, etc), are losing at least 2% of their value per year. In other words, if you don't invest that money, you lose a little bit of it every year. Bitcoin solves this problem. You store the value as energy. And the advantage is that you can move it around easily. Try moving gas or oil, you'll see... There are transportation and storage costs. You lose value in the process. With Bitcoin, I can send tens of millions of dollars of energy in a few minutes from Paris to Tokyo, I can move that energy easily and store it. What does it cost to store the equivalent of a billion dollars on Bitcoin? Almost nothing!

What do you say to those who say that nothing can be done with bitcoin?

If I give you digital music or a digital movie and you don't have a computer, there's no point. To listen to my music, I have to put it on the network and get it out of my iPhone. If I send you a file with Beethoven's 5th symphony, and you don't have electricity, nothing will happen. Does this mean that there is no digital music? No. And that goes for everything. Google Maps is a digital map, Facebook is a digital relationship, YouTube is a digital university, Netflix is a digital cinema.

And what is Bitcoin?

Bitcoin is special because it is several things at once: digital energy, digital property and digital currency. It's just a matter of perspective. If I keep my Bitcoin for 10 years, it's digital property. If I use it to buy things, it's digital currency, and if I regularly transfer it around the world, it's digital energy.

You talk about digital property. Over the last 10 years, Bitcoin has been an excellent store of value. But what guarantees that it won't collapse? Are we sure it can last another 10, 20, 50 years?

No one is sure of anything. Bitcoin is a decentralized peer-to-peer network that anyone can use and anyone can become a validator on. The more validators there are, the more stable the network is, the more resilient it becomes and the more valuable it becomes. This is what drives people to become miners to secure transactions and get bitcoins in exchange. It's an incredibly ingenious system that has caused the Bitcoin network to grow steadily. I don't have a crystal ball, but I'm convinced that Bitcoin's value will continue to rise because unlike anything else in the physical world, Bitcoin is not dependent on a central agency. It does not have a weak point. This is a key point that many people have not yet understood. Trying to destroy Bitcoin is like trying to kill a bees' nest with a sword. You will never succeed.

You are known as a "maximalist", i.e. someone who only believes in Bitcoin. Is there no other crypto that finds favor in your eyes?

The big difference between bitcoin and other cryptos is that bitcoin is digital property while all others are digital assets controlled by a central entity. The project managers can decide to issue new tokens, there can be forks, the protocol can be changed, which gives enormous power to its creators as is the case with Ethereum which wants to move to proof of stake. With Ethereum, Bitcoin Cash, Litecoin, you have no real control over your cryptos, and I'm not even talking about "shitcoins" like Luna.

Speaking of the Luna token, are you surprised by the collapse of the Terra project?

Ever since our first bitcoin purchases in August 2020, I've been saying to avoid these projects that have shown little or nothing. The only reason Terra was being talked about in recent months was the 20% returns UST was offering. What a joke.

After El Salvador, the Central African Republic has just made bitcoin its legal currency, alongside the CFA franc. Other countries may follow. Is there a real groundswell?

El Salvador has bought a few hundred million dollars worth of bitcoin. That's a lot and a little at the same time. If I were President Nayib Bukele, I would buy billions of dollars of bitcoin! I would not buy gold or sovereign bonds, but only bitcoin. After that, I don't know exactly what El Salvador's reserves are. And then they don't just do that. They gave digital wallets to everyone, which is a very good thing. It's important to allow people to be able to keep and transfer their money.

And it could work in other countries?

Venezuela, Argentina, Turkey, Lebanon, Syria and many other countries have currencies that are worthless. All these countries will gradually switch to stablecoins in dollars or euros, and also to bitcoin. But in the longer term, these countries should just buy Bitcoin, in large quantities, and peg their currencies to it. That's kind of what we've done with MicroStrategy. We have invested a very large amount of our cash in bitcoin, so the value of MicroStrategy's stock is no longer based on cash flow, but on the value of bitcoin.

Isn't it dangerous to do that?

What is dangerous is to keep your cash in dollars or any other traditional currency. All currencies in the world lose value over time. Even gold loses value every year because we keep discovering new deposits! All of the world's currencies are like airplanes with a fault line. Even if you only lose a few meters of altitude per day, at some point you will crash...

So you think it's absolutely necessary to have bitcoin?

Yes, everyone, individuals, businesses, communities. Apple has $200 billion in cash, it's crazy to keep it all in dollars, especially with inflation going up. If I were the boss of Apple or the mayor of New York, I would borrow a billion dollars at 1.5% or 2% over 20 or 30 years to buy a billion dollars of bitcoin, which would yield at least 15% annually over the same period.

In less than two years, you have become one of the figures of the crypto. We see you on Twitter, on TV. Many people wonder what your daily life is like...

I'm the head of MicroStrategy, which is a Nasdaq listed company, so I have a lot of operational stuff to deal with. But I have a great team and the business is doing well. I also manage the financial strategy. Should we buy more bitcoins? Should we issue debt? Do we do a capital increase? Invest our bitcoins? The rest of my time is dedicated to communicating with investors, institutions that want to understand what we do and how we manage our cryptocurrencies. It's very exciting. I spend a lot of time talking to other companies that would like to buy bitcoin, but are still wondering. I also spend a lot of time running the Bitcoin Mining Council, developing the Saylor Academy, which teaches courses on bitcoin, and of course talking to journalists because there's a lot to explain (laughs).

How do you store your cryptocurrencies?

We work with several companies, including Coinbase.

What future do you see for traditional currencies? Do you think they will disappear?

Not at all. The dollar, the euro, the yuan, the yen, the pound sterling will continue to exist. But for the others, I don't know. If you have a state with economic and military power to defend your currency, that's fine, but I wouldn't put my hand up for those who don't have that... Name me a currency in Africa or South America that you would like to hold instead of the euro? Currencies like the Argentine peso or the Turkish lira still exist because the locals have a hard time converting them into other currencies. Argentines are under great exchange controls to prevent them from jumping into the dollar or the euro. I think we need currencies, but not all currencies. The most important thing is that people can pay and protect their wealth. And bitcoin is going to allow Salvadorans and Central Africans to do that.

Could MicroStrategy ever focus solely on bitcoin?

I don't think so. We are a software company and that business is profitable. And one important point for me is that MicroStrategy is an operational company, we're not a financial company, so we can do a lot of things, like make acquisitions or issue debt to buy... bitcoin.

As far as regulation is concerned, we can see that things are moving fast, especially in Europe. And in the United States?

There is indeed a big movement. I think the most important thing is to give visibility to the industry. We need clear legal definitions. What is a digital currency? A digital asset? Digital property? How should the custody of cryptos work? Things are still very unclear, while the industry is getting structured with heavyweight investors, global platforms and miners. There are also NFTs.

Do you still trust the US government? Do you think the dollar will remain the world's currency?

The dollar is going to be more and more powerful. Of course, it will continue to lose value relative to bitcoin, but it will become more and more powerful because other currencies will depreciate even faster... In fact, things are quite simple: the world needs currencies and property. You need currencies to do your everyday trading, while you need property to maintain the value of your wealth or to make it grow. I think that in the next few years, everyone will have a wallet to store their local currency (peso, pound), their global currency (euro, dollar) and bitcoin to protect their wealth.

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