Bitcoin (BTC-USD) has been on a hot streak, hitting new highs and gaining retail investor interest thanks to the new spot bitcoin ETFs. Longtime crypto bull Michael Saylor, the Executive Chairman of MicroStrategy (MSTR), expects it to go even higher.
Saylor compares owning bitcoin to owning an apartment in New York City, saying people buy apartments there because of the long-term value it holds. He simplifies it like this "New York City is the endgame for people that want to live in the greatest city in North America. Bitcoin is the endgame for anybody that wants to own the greatest property in the 21st century."
Saylor goes on to say that bitcoin "is the apex property of the human race."
Click here to watch the full interview with Michael Saylor or you can watch this full episode of Yahoo Finance Live here.
Editor's note: This article was written by Stephanie Mikulich.
Video Transcript
JULIE HYMAN: So if I think of it as digital property, and I think of analogies, I think of a real estate company that buys property and holds on to other kinds of property. They may not be the apex. But whatever kinds of property.
I think of an asset manager that buys all kinds of different assets. Eventually, they sell those assets in order to make profits. But I don't think that is your end game.
You're not planning to sell the Bitcoin at any point. So what is the purpose of it over time?
MICHAEL SAYLOR: Well, let's keep in mind the fundamental principle. What's the use case of Bitcoin? Its capital preservation.
So if you have a billion and you live in South America, or you live in Asia, or you live in Africa, and you want the capital loss for 100 years, you're not going to want to buy $1 billion company, or $1 billion building, or $1 billion of land in any place in Africa. You're going to have to find some other form of property that you can hold for a long period of time.
Let's take New York City. Developers of New York City in 1776 didn't have an end game. They've been raising capital to invest in New York City real estate at the all-time high for 300 years.
If you went and talked to them today, and you said, what's your end game? They would say, well, we're going to keep investing in New York City. If you've ever talked to a person that owned an apartment in New York City, no one aspires to hold the apartment for a few years, sell the apartment, and move out of New York City.
They put it in their will. They give it to their children. And if you ask them why, they say there's no better place on Earth to live than New York? There is no place up from there.
So New York City is the end game for people that want to live in the greatest city in North America. Bitcoin is the end game for anybody that wants to own the greatest property in the 21st century.
JULIE HYMAN: Well, I guess, that is the case. But is there a price at which you would consider selling some of the Bitcoin pulling out? I mean, because you can do something with New York City.
You can live in New York City. You can have a business in New York City. What do you do with the Bitcoin besides it just gather value?
MICHAEL SAYLOR: Well, the real estate developers in New York City, they're not buying the real estate because they want to live in it. They're buying the real estate because they expect--
JULIE HYMAN: Because they want to sell it eventually, Michael. I mean, let's be honest. Most of the people who are-- yes, sure some people pass it on to their children. But like most of the people who are buying assets at some point want to sell the assets at a profit.
MICHAEL SAYLOR: Let me say it a different way. People that use Fiat currency as a store of value, there's a name for them. We call them poor. OK.
Anybody that's rich in the world, they own property. They own large swathes of land. The royal family of England, it didn't sell all of its property in Central London in order to buy currency or paper money.
Nor did the Royal family of Japan. Nor did the Royal family in the Middle East. In fact, they want to own the property forever.
I want you to imagine Bitcoin is it's a city in cyberspace the 276 blocks wide, 276 blocks high, 276 blocks deep, about 21 million blocks. Now, imagine, all 8 billion people in the world want to live there one day. They want to put their capital there.
There's $900 trillion of wealth in the world. As people migrate from every other form of property, and they've assets into cyberspace, you're going to see the Bitcoin network go from $1 trillion network to a 10x that to 100x.
And there really is nowhere else to go. It is the apex property of the human race.
