'Bitcoin Is Going to Eat Gold': MicroStrategy’s Michael Saylor (2024)

Appearing on CNBC after his company on Monday announced the purchase of an additional 12,000 bitcoins (BTC), MicroStrategy (MSTR) Executive Chairman Michael Saylor said the crypto will be a much more valuable asset than gold in the future.

“Bitcoin is certainly at least digital gold, it’s going to eat gold,” Saylor said, “It’s got all of the great attributes of gold and it’s got none of the defects of gold.”

As one well-worn example, Saylor said that gold can’t easily be moved from New York to Tokyo in a few minutes, unlike bitcoin. He also expects bitcoin to divert money away from other risk assets, including the giant SPDR S&P 500 ETF (SPY), and for bitcoin to begin showing up in other funds similar to the BlackRock setting plans to acquire spot BTC ETFs in its Global Allocation Fund.

Bitcoin on Monday became the world’s eighth most valuable asset, surpassing silver as its market cap rose above $1.4 trillion. It has a long way to go before it reaches the value of gold, which stands at a whopping $14.7 trillion valuation.

Saylor reminded of the upcoming Bitcoin halving in April, which will reduce the crypto's block reward by 50%, meaning just 450 new bitcoins hitting the market each day from the current 900. “The price of bitcoin is going to have to adjust up in order to meet that investor demand.”

Saylor's MicroStrategy (MSTR) on Monday announced that it had bought 12,000 more bitcoin for just over $800 million, bringing its holdings to 205,000 tokens. Asset manager BlackRock's iShares Bitcoin ETF (IBIT) had briefly surpassed MSTR's stack on Friday when its holdings rose to about 196,000 coins.