The Middle East has the opportunity to become “the Switzerland of the 21st century” by embracing banking, credit and digital money backed by bitcoin, said Strategy (MSTR) CEO Michael Saylor.
In a wide-ranging presentation at Bitcoin MENA, Saylor urged the region to take advantage of what he described as a $200 trillion opportunity by allowing banks to custody bitcoin, offer BTC-backed credit, and eventually launch yield-generating digital money products.
“If you are interested in making your nation the digital banking capital of the world… if you want to be the Switzerland of the 21st century, then these are the three ideas: the big one, the biggest and the biggest,” Saylor told the audience.
A “great idea,” Saylor said, was for sovereign wealth funds to invest in bitcoin. A “broader idea” was to create banks that would hold bitcoins and grant credit on them. The “biggest” idea was to create digital money accounts backed by BTC credit instruments, offering a return of up to 8% without volatility.
“You won’t get a single bit of bitcoin out of it,” Saylor said. “In reality, you will extract billions and tens of billions and hundreds of billions and trillions of dollars of capital from people who don’t understand bitcoin.”
Saylor asserted that the United States is now leading the global regulatory shift toward bitcoin, pointing to what he described as near-unanimous support from government officials. “There is a deep consensus among everyone who runs the United States,” he said. “Donald J. Trump says he intends to make America the bitcoin superpower, the crypto capital of the world, the leader in digital assets.”
He added that he had personally spoken with the vice president, the Treasury secretary, the head of the SEC, the secretary of Commerce and other top officials, all of whom, Saylor claimed, view Bitcoin as a strategic asset.
Saylor also said that US banks that once refused to touch bitcoin are now actively moving to support it.
“All the big banks in the United States have gone from not storing bitcoin 12 months ago to, in the last six months, I have been approached by BNY Mellon, Wells Fargo, Bank of America, Charles Schwab, JPMorgan and Citi,” he said. “Everyone is starting to issue credits against Bitcoin or against Bitcoin derivatives like IBIT.”
Strategy owns more than 660,000 BTC and is now issuing a variety of BTC-backed credit instruments, including perpetual preferred shares and short-term notes that pay monthly dividends.
“We’re turning 120 months or 240 months of duration into one month,” he said. “Pay me now.”
Saylor proposed these innovations as the basis of a new type of financial system. “Digital capital creates digital credit and digital credit creates digital money,” he said. “That’s the killer app.”
