Michael Saylor Can’t Keep His $61.5 Billion Bitcoin Stash Secret

Michael Saylor wants to keep the Bitcoin wallet addresses holding his $61.5 billion hoard a secret. Blockchain analytics firm Arkham Intelligence is intent on seeing that he doesn’t.

Speaking at the Bitcoin 2025 event in Las Vegas on May 26, Saylor detailed why he doesn’t intend to publish a proof of reserves listing the wallets of his Bitcoin treasury firm, Strategy, saying it would expose his firm to attacks by bad actors.

A few days later, Arkham did it for him, saying, “SAYLOR SAID HE WOULD NEVER REVEAL HIS ADDRESSES ... SO WE DID,” in an X post.

Arkham announced that it had discovered another 70,816 BTC belonging to the company’s current stash of 580,250 BTC. In all, it said it has now publicly identified 87.5% of Strategy’s Bitcoin holdings.

The thinking goes that publishing proof of reserves demonstrates transparency and accountability. It’s a practice followed by major crypto exchanges like Binance, ByBit, Crypto.com, Kraken, and OKX to demonstrate they have sufficient reserves to cover customers’ deposits in the wake of the collapse of FTX, Sam Bankman-Fried’s exchange.

“A lot of people learned stuff from FTX and Mt. Gox, but I'm not sure they learned the things that the institutional community needs to learn going forward,” Saylor said on stage in response to a question from the audience. He continued:

James Toledano, the COO of self-custodial crypto wallet Unity Wallet, said he agrees with Saylor's arguments, telling The Defiant: “it is bizarre that people feel the need to be transparent in this regard. For example, I would not post my bank statements on X. It’s not a wise move — nor is it virtuous and our love affair with transparency must be tempered by common sense and self-preservation instincts."

Leaving aside the gift to hackers, Saylor continued that proof of reserves only answers half the question, without disclosing the liabilities the company has.

“So you own $63 billion worth of Bitcoin, do you have $100 billion of liabilities?” he asked rhetorically.

Public companies like his have a far better solution, Saylor said. They are required to undergo exhaustive audits regularly, typically conducted by Big Four auditing firms. These have to be signed by the officers and directors of the company and filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). And the signatories are both civilly and criminally liable for the accuracy of those audits, he pointed out. These cover both assets and liabilities.

“Publishing a simple wallet that you can track is really just a crypto parlor trick,” Saylor concluded. “I get why people like it [...] So I would just say don't fall in love with your proof of reserves thing, like somehow that's God’s gift or the solution, it isn't. It won't protect you from a meltdown. [...] and I think people give too much credence to it on X.”

There are privacy-preserving on-chain alternatives, Toledano added, pointing to zero-knowledge proofs that “can verify reserves without revealing specific addresses or balances." He concluded, "I believe this should be the new standard, because it offers a compromise between transparency and operational security."

Disclaimer: This article has been updated to include commentary from James Toledano.