MicroStrategy founder Michael Saylor has been completely convinced of bitcoin (BTC) for years. In 2020, for example, MicroStrategy became the first publicly traded company to make a major investment in bitcoin. In an interview with Kitco, Saylor claims that every bank will hold bitcoin in the future. According to him, this has to do with the implications of, among other things self custody.
Self custody is not the solution
Self-custody is the storage of your cryptocurrency yourself. The best example of this is a hardware wallet. This is normally the safest way to store your crypto. But according to Saylor, this certainly doesn’t mean banks won’t hold bitcoin in custody in the future.
On the contrary: Institutions or government agencies will almost certainly not let the director or a mayor walk around with a hardware wallet in his pocket. Banks are crucial for such bodies.
“Large institutions, churches, corporations, and so on will need an infrastructure of custodians and banks. Therefore, I think there will come a time when all major banks will hold bitcoin.”
Saylor said. Other examples, he says, are children who inherit bitcoin or the elderly who are no longer able to keep bitcoin themselves. In such cases, a trusted institutional custodian is the logical solution.
MicroStrategy’s bitcoin
As mentioned, Saylor’s faith in bitcoin is second to none. He believes bitcoin will “inevitably permeate all traditional institutions.” His company’s activities reflect this belief. To date, MicroStrategy has already purchased 140 thousand bitcoin. That number is close to 1 percent of all bitcoin that will ever be mined.
Critics find the amount of bitcoin the company is purchasing absurd: “What is the point of bitcoin if one entity owns the majority,” the criticism often reads. However, MicroStrategy still has to buy a lot if it wants to own a really significant part of the total bitcoin supply.