Is Saylorism Dead? Microstrategy CEO Goes 180 On His Bitcoin Stance

Michael Saylor has turned into everything he swore to destroy.

Microstrategy’s Chairman and unequivocal Bitcoin permabull said in an Oct. 20 interview that bitcoiners don’t need to hold their own private keys, and should trust governments and financial institutions as those authorities would never confiscate Bitcoin held on centralized exchanges.

The icing on the cake was that anybody who thinks of the possibility of state-sanctioned seizure is a “paranoid crypto-anarchist.” Saylor called the potential repeat of Franklin D. Roosevelt’s executive order 6102 when the U.S. government seized Americans’ gold in an effort to stymie the Great Depression an “inflammatory trope.”

Saylor, in what was considered high treason among the Bitcoin maximalist community, went on to imply most entrepreneurs in the Bitcoin economy are solely after consumers’ money and will use any “inflammatory meme or trope” to sell hardware wallets or other products.

His words completely contradict what he has been saying for years. A notable video surfaced of him pointing to another “common trope” of Bitcoiners saying they lost their private keys in a boating accident. “Tax that,” he said.

Bitcoiners responded fast and furiously.

“Once again: Saylor is a fucking spook,” said Bitcoin Magazine technical editor, Shinobi, while Bitcoin OG Mandrik tweeted “Michael Saylor is an absolute knobhead.” Dozens of comments like these abound on Twitter today.

The Next Blocksize War

Several bitcoiners took to Twitter to highlight a potentially catastrophic conflict that is unfolding: a hard fork that would side with the interests of corporate holders of Bitcoin.

“The folks who are focused on TradFi adoption of Bitcoin don't care about improving the protocol and scaling the network because they don't care about self-custody,” wrote Jameson Lopp, CTO of crypto custodian company Casa. “The next battle for the future of Bitcoin is brewing.”

Samson Mow, CEO of Jan3, a company focused on nation-state adoption, echoed Lopp’s views and warned in a March 2024 interview about what would happen if Saylor decided to back a BlackRock hard fork.

Since BlackRock's appearance as the main driver for Bitcoin ETFs, bitcoins have sounded the alarms on what could be another contentious attempt at a hostile takeover like the 2015-2017 Bitcoin block size war. That schism split the Bitcoin community in half, with both sides vying for one of two outcomes: keeping the network’s blocks small or increasing their size.

Eventually, the “small blocker” camp won, and Bitcoin remained limited for transactions at the base layer with scaling occurring through layers like the Lightning Network.

BlackRock’s presence and unprecedented Bitcoin accumulation has sparked fear among the Bitcoin community that they would attempt to push through a hard fork that would consider any BTC outside their purview – or that of the regulators they work with – as blacklisted. This would create a dual-chain, with a large number of Bitcoin stuck in a sterile, custodied, and ultimately surveilled blockchain.

“Are you prepared to take Saylor down if he is on the wrong side of that battle?” asked Mow, highlighting how Bitcoin has one of the largest personality cults in history with Saylor at the center.

Rather than calling out Saylor, some bitcoiners argued that the community shouldn’t idolize individual personalities. “Don't simp. Don't have any heroes. This fixes all issues on this topic,” wrote the pseudonymous Hodlnaut.

The latest controversy with one of Bitcoin’s leading talking heads at the helm brings to mind a line from Batman’s dark night: “You either die a hero or you live long enough to become the villain.”