Michael Saylor Proposes to ‘Neutralize” the National Debt With a Strategic Bitcoin Reserve

Bitcoin superbull Michael Saylor argues that a strategic Bitcoin reserve could bring in as much as $81 trillion for the U.S. Treasury.

The proposal comes as MicroStrategy bought another 5,262 BTC last week for $561 million, bringing its total to 444,262 BTC, Saylor said on X. The seventh consecutive week of buys, MicroStrategy spent an average of $106,662 per Bitcoin.

The company said in a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) that it spent about $27.7 billion on buying Bitcoin at an average of $62,257.

MicroStrategy stock entered the NASDAQ 100 index on Dec. 23. MSTR fell almost 9% on its first day on the exchange.

Meanwhile, Tokyo-based Metaplanet bought almost 620 BTC for about $61 million last week, increasing its holdings by more than 50%.

Paying Off the National Debt

As for a strategic reserve, Saylor said on X.com, it has the potential to “neutralize the national debt.” That currently stands at $36.1 trillion.

He did not provide any details on how those numbers would be reached.

Van Eck was a little more forthcoming on details in its own Bitcoin strategic reserve proposal on Dec. 20.

The asset manager, which runs Bitcoin and Ether ETFs, proposed putting a one million BTC reserve in place by 2029, saying it could reach a value of $42.4 trillion by 2049, or $42.4 million per bitcoin. The low end of the prediction was $16 trillion.

That assumes a staggering compound annual growth rate of 25% over those 20 years. It would put the value of Bitcoin as a whole at 18% of global financial assets, Van Eck said

One of Saylor’s stated ambitions is to turn MicroStrategy into the largest Bitcoin merchant bank, meaning it wouldn’t lend to the general public.

Bringing Brooks Aboard

MicroStrategy also revealed that it has added former Acting Comptroller of the Currency Brian Brooks to its board of directors. The position comes with a $2 million payday in MSTR options.

A former Coinbase chief legal officer, Brooks used his position as the U.S.’s top banking regulator to institute a number of pro-crypto policies. These included allowing banks to use stablecoins to make payments and other transactions on behalf of customers and ordering them not to discriminate against any class of business.

That latter one was widely seen as directed at the cryptocurrency industry, which was having a great deal of trouble finding banks that would deal with them.

A number of Brooks’ reforms were cancelled by the next Comptroller, however.

MicroStrategy also added Galaxy Digital board member Jane Dietze to its board.