Michael Saylor pushes Bitcoin as hard asset, not money

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Yaroslav Dmytrenko

20.12.2025

Michael Saylor pushes Bitcoin as hard asset, not money — Debate grows as Saylor builds financial products aound Bitcoin

Bitcoin supporters are divided over whether Bitcoin is money or a commodity, as well as over how Bitcoin is perceived by its largest public holder — Michael Saylor and his company, Strategy.In Satoshi Nakamoto’s original Bitcoin white paper, the first cryptocurrency was envisioned as “a peer-to-peer electronic cash system.” However, Michael Saylor appears to have a wholly different view on this.

Recently Saylor publicly explained his opinion that Bitcoin is a hard asset that can serve as a foundation for various financial products, and he has repeatedly demonstrated this in practice. Saylor has used various corporate financing mechanisms to allow investors to gain exposure to Bitcoin.

For example, the company’s Class A common shares (MSTR) allow investors to buy Strategy stock, which essentially represents the use of leverage to bet on Bitcoin’s price, since the company’s core strategy is to accumulate BTC.

Strategy has also raised billions of dollars through the issuance of convertible senior notes—a type of debt that can later be converted into equity—to purchase even more Bitcoin. His latest innovations include issuing several classes of perpetual preferred shares (STRK, STRF, STRD, STRC) for institutional investors. As of December 15, 2025, Strategy has accumulated 671,268 BTC using these methods, and many believe the company aims to become a kind of “Bitcoin central bank.”

Economist Saifedean Ammous, widely known in Bitcoin circles as the author of “The Bitcoin Standard,” also believes that Saylor does not view Bitcoin as money, unlike many other Bitcoin supporters. “I don’t think he sees Bitcoin as money. He has been obvious about that. He sees Bitcoin more as an asset. One of the great metaphors he uses is that Bitcoin is like crude oil—it's a hard asset,” Ammous claims.

“Just like Standard Oil refined crude oil into standard consumer fuels like kerosene or gasoline, he sees Strategy’s role as refining raw Bitcoin into various financial assets that give people access to it,” Ammous said on Cointelegraph’s Chain Reaction program.

Nakamoto didn’t think of this

It is known that Ammous and Saylor communicate regularly, and Saylor even wrote the foreword to Ammous’s most famous book. Nevertheless, it seems both Bitcoin supporters believe that Bitcoin’s nature goes beyond theoretical definitions.

According to Ammous, the global money supply, which increases by 7–15% annually, itself stimulates the use of leverage—including leverage based on Bitcoin.

“There are a huge number of people around the world who are used to financial debt for various purposes… As Bitcoin grows, you will see different fiat-based financial instruments and products being built on top of it.”

What does this actually mean? In short, companies and individuals will need to acquire Bitcoin as pure capital to gain access to affordable loans. In the long term, this will become one of the motivations for accumulating Bitcoin. However, such an interpretation hardly fits into Satoshi’s original vision—and would certainly not have been encouraged by him.

As we wrote, Strategy stock rises 3.34% as oversold technicals and rebound buying boost price

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