Saylor's Plan To Build A Bitcoin Powered Shadow Central Bank

In a keynote at the Bitcoin MENA conference in Abu Dhabi, Michael Saylor set out a three-layer financial system: bitcoin as the reserve asset, credit instruments issued by his company and backed by that bitcoin, and a final layer of digital money that banks or exchanges could offer. He said the company holds about 660,000 bitcoin and is buying between $500 million and $1 billion of bitcoin each week.

Saylor described a $1 instrument that would “trade like a stablecoin” and could offer “an 8% tax deferred yield.” The article explains why such a product would fall outside the US GENIUS Act, compares the concentration of reserves and credit in one company with historical examples such as the British East India Company, and contrasts the plan with the self-custody and individual sovereignty themes of Saylor’s early bitcoin advocacy.