21 in 21: Michael Saylor on Bitcoin, AI, and Advice for Builders

Michael Saylor, welcome to Presidio Bitcoin and the 21 and 21 show. I'm so excited to have you here. It's an awesome day. Yes.

You hit like summer in San Francisco and it's beautiful out. Happy to be here. It's glorious place. Very inspiring.

Thank you. So I have some questions laid out. So we're going to try to get through as many as we can in 21 minutes. Are you ready?

Yeah, let's do it. Okay, let's do it. So the first question is, so you've been one of the most influential voices in bringing Bitcoin to mainstream audiences, both on the individual and the corporate level. So what's top of mind for you in 2026?

2026 is a great year, a transition year, where we're seeing the large banks embrace Bitcoin. We're launching all these digital credit products like stretch to retail investors and retirees and corporate treasurers and financiers. And that's a great new group of supporters for Bitcoin. We've got probably the most supportive set of financial regulators in the history of the industry going into the Fed at Treasury, at CFT, the SEC.

So and we've got the Clarity Act soon to be passed, which is just very enormously legitimizing for the entire industry. So I'm just looking forward to the advance and the expansion of the industry as it integrates into the mainstream financial world. It's great to see. Yes, there's so much going on this year.

Big year. My second question is, so you've labeled Bitcoin as digital property. What's your take on Bitcoin as spending money? I think that what's going to happen is we're going to use the first layer of Bitcoin as digital capital.

I think you're going to see an explosion of digital credit at the second layer. I think that you're going to see digital money or digital currency at the third layer. And the third layer is going to be called a Bitcoin back stable coin, or it's going to be a savings coin. It'll be like the dollar.

You'll be able to move it around as a medium exchange. It will be integrated into all of the trillions of products and services that are priced in dollars. and all of the hundreds of millions of companies that take and spend dollars, but it will offer a much stronger yield, more like a 6%, 7%, 8% yield, which outstrips the cost of inflation. And that'll be strong, high-powered money built on Bitcoin.

I mean, what do you think about merchants? Like how would you tell them that is a good way for them to accept that form of payment? I think that'll be, in essence, stablecoins. I think that everybody that takes the dollar anywhere in the world will have that.

You'll be able to convert that into dollars and pay for anything. Just auto-convert, yeah. Yeah, I think what we're saying is digital currency is primarily going to be the dollar. I think the dollar is spreading everywhere in the world, and it's replacing the euro, the pound, the yen.

Pretty much, in Europe, people don't want the euro, they want the dollar. So the dollar is actually emerging as the global currency. The dollar on digital rails is the crypto or digital version of it. But the big breakthrough now is the ability to create a digital currency that's backed by Bitcoin that offers yields that are two, three, or four times higher than currencies backed by fiat.

You think that as this happens and Bitcoin just becomes so much more normal and even as people as they buy Bitcoin in the form of equity, you think a lot of these investors or people are coming into it will still understand what the Bitcoin ethos are and like what it came to be or that'll just become more top of or kind of not top of mind? I think that there'll be a group. The people, the companies and the individuals and the large holders and the advocates and the developers will continue to carry forward the Bitcoin ideology.

And of course, any technician will understand the Bitcoin technology. but I think we're headed toward a world where there's a billion people that just want a bank account that pays them 8%. And I was like, six-year-old girl, 75-year-old retiree. What they're going to know is that digital money is powered by Bitcoin.

And it's kind of like your electricity came from a nuclear reactor and you don't really know how to create a nuclear reactor or you don't know how tricky it is, but you know it's like really good, cheap electricity. And so I really think that as Bitcoin spreads, what you're going to have is a group of people that understand very intricately the technology. But the great masses of people, it's like they don't want to know how the plane works. They don't want to know how the car works.

They don't want to know where the electricity comes from. They don't want to know how their food was prepared. Most people don't know how you create a Coca-Cola beverage or how do you create these things. Nobody knows how to make an iPhone.

All they know is that they've got this insanely good product that solves the problems in their life and it's based upon superior technology. I totally agree with you that as long as people know that they don't need to get into the weeds. And some of us here at Presidio Bitcoin always know, but yes. Okay I think both of us feel optimistic about Bitcoin future but maybe let think of a different type of future a grim one and Bitcoin has failed Why do you think that it failed Bitcoin's not going to fail.

It's going to succeed. Because Bitcoin represents economic empowerment to everybody on the planet. Bitcoin represents a protocol for economic prosperity. It's kind of like we're speaking English and you're saying, well, what if people stop speaking English or just stop speaking?

What if people stop speaking to each other? I don't think they're going to stop speaking to each other. If you had Arabic math or you had math, what if people stop using math? I think they'll keep using math.

I think they'll keep using English. I think they'll keep using Bitcoin because people need math to create machines that work and to engage in commerce. And they need language to coordinate with each other. And they need Bitcoin if they're going to engage in rational economic transactions.

So it won't fail. Love, strong optimism. And I agree. Okay, I have some fun questions for you.

Okay. So I know you went to MIT. Yeah. My dad did too.

So I've heard about kind of some of the famous, like, clever hacks and pranks that have happened at MIT. Do you have any stories that you like to tell? Let's see. Once our fraternity, we hijacked an elevator and then we set it up with the office of the dean.

We put all the furniture of the dean into the elevator and then we locked it off so that you had to have a special code in order to get the elevator. And in order to create the hack, we actually rigged the entire thing with its own chandelier and we lit up the chandelier. Oh my gosh. At some point, the elevator opens and it's like this strange guy sitting at a desk with a chandelier talking to the people.

That's a good one. That's a good one. Okay, another question. So I saw that you did play the guitar.

Do you still play the guitar? If so, what do you like to play? I used to play in high school and college. Sometimes I play for myself, mostly Beatles tunes.

Ooh, Beatles tunes. Okay, that's a good one. Okay, one more fun question for you. So your self-portrait images on Twitter have become iconic.

What AI tools, if any, are you using to generate these images? A whole mixture of them. Some of them came from MidJourney. Some of them come from Brock.

Some of them I don't generate at all. Other people generate them for me, and they use all sorts of other tools. And so a lot of times, most of them actually I didn't generate. So if you look at them, you'll see I tagged the people, the artists that does generate them.

You know, the most prolific, Atlas, Hodel, LaDosier, et cetera, Janice. You'll see they've done really good ones. And they use a variety of tools. Use a variety of tools.

Okay. Are there anything that you've learned from playing around with AI tools? Have you been vibe coding anything fun? In fact, all of the digital credit instruments were created.

We did $8 billion of issuance of digital credit last year, approximately. They were all created with AI. And so Stretch, which is the premier digital credit that I think will use to create all sorts of digital money and digital currency type instruments, that would not exist without AI. So we use AI a lot in designing securities and in capital market strategies.

You know, I use AI sometimes if I'm going to say something and I have it edit my syntax and check and make sure that I spelled everything correctly. Sometimes I'll take an image and I'll post it in AI and say, I think I want to say this, but do you agree? And it'll tell me, well, you could say it better this way. if you said it this way it's more like michael saylor so the ai will actually correct me and tell me how michael saylor would really say the thing that's what i find to be amusing is it right usually yeah oftentimes it's actually right it actually tells me how to be me better than i would be me it's a crazy world that's happening it sure is that's awesome that strategy is thinking a lot about like using ai tools um very cool to hear uh i'd love to hear your thoughts if you're thinking much about generally like the intersection of Bitcoin and AI and how you think that can maybe play out in a positive way?

Yeah, well, I think number one, AI is going to radically transform every product and service and every role in our civilization. And, you know, one of the more negatives is demonetizing human capital. It's like if your company had 15,000 trained professionals, It's more challenging because it's possible the AI might start to automate out 8,000 of those jobs. But on the other hand, as it demonetizes human capital, it accelerates the transition of capital to digital capital.

So it's monetizing digital capital, and that's what Bitcoin is. So broadly speaking, as you see this develop, it's driving a lot of wealth into digital capital. I think that's positive. I think there are a lot of interesting applications of AI.

You know in theory you can create an AI that transnational You can capitalize it with Bitcoin You can release it to the universe and it can become autonomous And you couldn capitalize an AI with fiat currency or any kind of conventional security portfolio. So you may see autonomous creatures or autonomous actors that are capitalize with Bitcoin going forward. That would be interesting. I think it's inevitable that the AIs will do things faster and more sophisticated.

So in a world of a billion AIs, talking to a billion AIs a billion times an hour on Saturday night, they're going to bypass conventional analog assets and they're going to bypass traditional financial systems. And they're going to want to move digital assets, digital currency, digital capital around on a digital standard. And of course, the two things that Bitcoin offers that are just really important are it offers an uncorruptible network of capital or source of capital. So it is that.

But also, it offers an immutable global source of truth and integrity. So I think the AIs will want to use that for authentication. I also think that if the AIs begin to imitate us in phishing attacks, then the importance of cryptographic verification will become more important. And so authentication and verification cryptographically will start to absorb its authenticity or derive its authenticity or veracity from the Bitcoin network underlying because the Bitcoin network and Bitcoin transactions are the gold standard of authentication and veracity.

So I think in this era, Bitcoin and all the underlying things it represents are going to grow more and more important to the digital economy. I totally agree. And it's honestly really cool to hear that you're thinking that, too, because we're thinking a lot about Bitcoin being spending money for these agents. And maybe like there's been, you know, Bitcoin as digital property.

We're doing stuff to make plushy, to make Bitcoin more spending money in retail. But there's maybe going to be this new wave where Bitcoin is spending money for agents. Yes, there's no telling what they'll do. But one thing we know is they're going to want to move money at the speed of light.

And they're going to want to engage in commerce at the speed of light. They'll want to move a million times faster than any kind of analog or human limited system would move. And so if you want all of these digital systems to reach their full potential, you need a digital network, digital capital, digital currency, digital authentication, digital networks. And you need to do it natively in cyberspace.

you can't have something which is not a native cyber asset that's a better instrument with final settlement. And so Bitcoin offers final settlement as opposed to conditional settlement. And so the difference between final settlement is the difference between an energy-rich environment in cyberspace or just the shadows or silhouettes of energy. If you want to do something that's real and substantial, you're going to need to move digital capital, digital property, digital currency that doesn't rely on a custodian in the real world for final settlement.

100%. I have one more AI question for you. So in this kind of world where we're seeing this big shift into AI, what kind of advice would you maybe give to people as they think about different unique ways to add value or maybe different career paths for young people to explore? I think I would allocate a lot of time to learning how to use AIs.

I would probably pick a few. I would cycle through them. I would test them. And I think I would be challenging them to do something very, very useful.

Push them. If you're a musician, try to compose a song, then try to compose an album, right? If you're an artist, you know, first try to compose the picture, then the comic book, then the book, then the television show, then the movie, then the TV series, right? Pushing harder and harder.

For us, you know, how do we compose a credit instrument that we can sell billions and billions of dollars of? How do we build the best one? How do we build the best one and make sure that there's massive global adoption? You want to do something with the AIs.

And if it almost does something, then it's not that interesting. But if you keep pushing and you find a way to get it to do the thing, it's a zero to one moment. And so right now you have to consider that pretty much every product and service and idea that's ever been implemented in the history of the world, you may be able to re-implement better. And a host of millions or tens of millions of ideas that have never been practical to implement are now practical And I think you want to be the first person to figure out how to do something new and useful And the only way to be the first person to figure out how to do something is try to do something, right?

You know, so I think, and if you can't do it this month, in four weeks, you might be able to do it. So we're at this very pivotal transition point where every few weeks, something that was not workable ever in the history of the world all of a sudden becomes technically practical. right i remember at mit 50 years ago 40 years ago the ai lab they were trying to get speech recognition to work and try to talk to computers because the computers talk like they spent 40 years and then they spent years and years and years and then all of a sudden you know a year ago click it started working and we're just about you know we're just about to get to the point where not only will it work it'll work instantly and the person that you talk to will will have like almost instant awareness of everything.

And so technology fails until it succeeds. My advice is attempt to do something that's really important to you and just keep trying. Use every possible tool and every possible mode and keep at it. At some point, you'll actually make a breakthrough.

Yeah, it's crazy how quick things are moving, especially I feel like Jan 1 happened and all this cool stuff is happening. We've been playing around a lot with AI here and on Spiral Team. So it's been really fun. Okay.

So if you could like have one thing or multiple things that you would love to see someone maybe build with AI that utilizes Bitcoin. Do you have any like dream products or things you would like to see someone do? You know, I think I'd love to see Bitcoin get embedded in more things. I'd love to see I'd love to see native Bitcoin support get embedded into every Android phone, into every iPhone.

I'd love to see native Bitcoin support get embedded into every operating system and corporate operating systems. I'd love to see it get embedded in every financial application. And then I think that there are some revolutionary ideas. What if you actually created a product that had Bitcoin embedded in it and it used the Bitcoin to power the product for a decade?

Like, you know, in theory, if I had a product that had a battery that lasted 10 years, that's really cool. So if Bitcoin is a financial battery, is there a way that you can create a product that's powered by Bitcoin? Oh, insurance. I'd love to see insurance get powered by Bitcoin because if insurance is powered by Bitcoin, then it would pay you five or 10 times as much money and it would cost you 10 times less and it would last longer.

That's so true. So a lot of things like that that can be improved if you just embed Bitcoin in them. 100%. Okay.

We got one minute left. So one quick last question. You could leave our listeners just like a single lasting thought on what you just said. What would it be?

You can remake the world for the better using digital capital, digital assets, digital intelligence, in digital technology this decade. And every single thing that we look around at, everything in our lives, whether it's a financial thing or it's an education thing or it's a logistics thing or it's a product or a service thing, every single thing can be dramatically improved, made better, made cheaper, made stronger, made faster. And I think probably this decade, this coming 10 years, presumably this is the decade of the greatest number of innovations that create the greatest amount of prosperity for the human race of any 10 years in the history of humanity.

So if you're sitting around thinking you missed it, you're too late, all the things have been invented, you wish you had done the iPhone or the Facebook or the whatever, you haven't missed it. You're not too late, right? The world has handed you all of these brilliant tools, an 18-year-old can go and they can grab any AI and they can grab any digital asset and they can try any idea and they'll probably find support for it somewhere. X lets you reach millions or tens or hundreds of millions of people.

You've got digital communication. You've got digital commerce. You've got digital assets. You've got digital intelligence.

It's a digital world and it's a better world. So I would encourage everybody just to go out and do something. That's a fantastic ending thought. Well, thank you so much for coming on the show.

Of course, our listeners probably already know where to follow you, but if there's any unique spot or things you want to shout or just go to X. You can find my handle on X, S-A-Y-L-O-R, sailor. My website's michael.com.

Go to michael.com. Everything that I know about Bitcoin, all my links about Bitcoin are hope.com.

Bitcoin is hope. So go check out hope.com or michael.com or Sailor on X.

And I appreciate your support. Look forward to continuing the journey together. Me too. Well, thank you so much.

I hope you have a wonderful day and see you in this gorgeous weather. It's going well so far. Great. Thank you.