On a The latest episode of the Galaxy Brains podcastMichael Saylor explained that Bitcoin is not a currency and that it is better to think of it as capital and capital only.
He also shared that Tether (USDT) and Circle’s USD Coin (USDC) are the real cryptocurrencies and unveiled his “evil genius strategy” (in his own words) to get the world to embrace USD stablecoins instead of Bitcoin.
In this article, I will quote some of Saylor’s own words from the podcast before explaining why many of the points he makes are incorrect.
Capital, not currency
“It’s not currency, it’s capital,” Saylor said about halfway through the episode.
“You just have to deal with it — it’s not digital currency. It’s not cryptocurrency. It’s digital capital. It’s crypto capital,” he added.
I’ve searched Bitcoin worksheet To find out how many times the word “capital” appears.
It’s not mentioned once.
However, in both the title and text summary, Bitcoin is referred to as “electronic cash.” While cash can of course also be capital, it is not only capital. To think of Bitcoin only as capital is to deny some of its most important characteristics – such as the ability to use it to transact with anyone, anywhere in the world, without permission.
To deny Bitcoin as a currency is to deny a significant portion of its value proposition. Bitcoin’s roles as a store of value (SoV) and medium of exchange (MoE) are closely linked. For more information on this, I advise you (and Michael Saylor) to read Breez CEO Roy Shenfeld’s article, “Bitcoin’s False Divide Between SoV and MoE.”
As the episode continued, Saylor continued to make the case (poorly) for why Bitcoin is capital and not currency.
“There are a lot of people who say: ‘No, we want it to be a currency. We want to be able to pay for our coffee with our bitcoin.’ He said: ‘Pay me in bitcoin.’ “It’s like ‘Pay me in gold,’” he said. Pay me at the building. Pay me with a piece of your professional sports team. “Pay me with a Picasso.”
In fact this is not the case at all.
Bitcoin is certainly rare, somewhat like gold, Manhattan real estate, sports teams, or famous paintings, but it possesses a number of other properties that make it very different from any of these other assets.
To illustrate one aspect of this point, I will cite my colleague Alex Bergeron:
I invite anyone who thinks Bitcoin is like gold to launch a gold wallet to save.
I will wait.
– Alex B (@bergealex4) December 22, 2024
Saylor then cited — wait for it — Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell’s position on bitcoin in an attempt to make his point that bitcoin is capital, not currency.
He said: “The reason Bitcoin rose to more than $100,000 is because Jerome Powell told the world on stage that Bitcoin does not compete with the dollar, but rather competes with gold.”
It is strange that Saylor said this without acknowledging that the man who said this is the head of the institution that Bitcoin should theoretically replace.
USDT, not BTC
In the interview, Saylor also explained that the real cryptocurrencies are US dollar stablecoins.
“The cryptocurrency, the digital currency, is Tether (USDT) and Circle (USDC),” he said. “It’s a USD stablecoin – that’s the digital currency.”
That’s when I started feeling nauseous.
For those who don’t know it yet, Bitcoin came into the world in the wake of the Great Financial Crisis of 2008, when the US government in collaboration with the US Federal Reserve chose to print US dollars. a lot (Devaluation) to bail out bankrupt banks, the burden of which was placed on American taxpayers and US dollar holders around the world.
Bitcoin is a decentralized money created as an alternative to the US dollar and all other fiat currencies. Trying to convince people that Bitcoin isn’t so is disingenuous at best, and deeply manipulative at worst.
But that’s not the worst thing Saylor said in the episode.
He went on to suggest that banks bailed out in the 2008 financial crisis could issue their own stablecoins, which would help support the US debt market.
“They should create a regular system for issuing digital currency backed by US Treasury bonds,” Saylor said.
“The US should have a framework for Tether to move to New York City. That’s what you want, right? Then you should basically have a free-for-all place where JP Morgan or Goldman Sachs can issue their own stablecoins,” he added. .
No, Michael Saylor, that’s not what I want. In fact, it’s very far from what I want.
I don’t want Tether anywhere near New York City (my hometown) and I don’t want JP Morgan and Goldman Sachs issuing USD stablecoins they control, which are essentially equivalent to central bank digital currencies.
When I think of Goldman Sachs, the first thing that comes to mind is award-winning author Matt Taibbi’s description of the institution from his book New York Times best seller Gryphobia.
“The first thing you should know about Goldman Sachs is that it is everywhere,” Taibbi begins in the book. “The most powerful investment bank in the world is a giant vampire squid wrapped around the face of humanity, relentlessly jamming the bloodstream into anything that smells like money.”
Goldman Sachs, like the US Federal Reserve, is an institution that sucks the life force out of humanity. Bitcoin was designed to take power away from such institutions, not consolidate it.
At the end of the episode, Saylor lays out his master plan for Bitcoin and the US dollar stablecoin.
Here is:
“Everyone outside the United States will be donating their left arm to tap into American bonds. So, my strategy will be — and I really think it’s an evil genius strategy; it’s fine that our enemies hate us, but our allies will complain too. And the United States will make $100 trillion in no time.”
This is the strategy: You get rid of the gold, and you destroy the entire gold network. You buy Bitcoin – 5 million or 6 million Bitcoin – and monetize the Bitcoin network. All the capital in the world, held in Siberian real estate, Chinese natural gas, or any other currency derivatives, is held as a long-term store of value – Europeans, Africans, South Americans, Asians, they are all getting rid of their bad properties and possessions. Bad capital assets and they buy Bitcoin. Bitcoin price is going to the moon.
The United States is the biggest beneficiary. American companies are the biggest beneficiaries. As you do this, you are normalizing and backing the digital currency, and you are only defining the digital currency as a US dollar backed by its US dollar equivalent in a regulated and audited US custodian. What will happen next?
$150 billion of stablecoins are worth $1 trillion, $2 trillion, $4 trillion, $8 trillion, and possibly $8-16 trillion, and create $10-20 trillion of demand for US sovereign debt. .
While you are taking away a little bit of demand due to Bitcoin capital asset growth, you are adding demand back to support the stablecoin. (The digital US dollar then) replaces the Chinese yuan, the ruble. It replaces every African currency. It replaces every currency in South America. It replaces the euro.
If you truly believed in the US global reserve currency and American values, every currency in the world would in fact merge with the US dollar if it were freely available.
At this point, I stopped listening to the episode and projectile vomited all over the New York City subway car I was sitting in.
I didn’t come to the Bitcoin space to help the United States run a scheme in which it gets a huge percentage of Bitcoin while the world is stuck with its throwaway currency, and it saddens me deeply that someone so sought after by so many in the Bitcoin space would come up with such a conniving plan.
Bitcoin is money
Bitcoin is money. It is a type of money that cannot be monitored or underestimated, and its value has increased amazingly over the past decade, making it one of, if not the most powerful, tool ever created for individuals.
Thinking of it as less than that, or trying to convince people that a new version of the current version of money is better, is very misleading.
Although Bitcoin is capital, that is not all it is, and please don’t let Michael Saylor or anyone else convince you otherwise.
This article is a takes. The opinions expressed are entirely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of BTC Inc or Bitcoin Magazine.
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