Saylor’s Strategy: Keep the Faith, No Proof

Blockware’s analyst recently asked Michael Saylor a pointed question about Strategy’s reserves, and Saylor responded with a seven-minute speech that said absolutely nothing.

It’s been clear for a long time that Strategy, which supposedly holds 580,000 BTC, has never published reports, attestations, audits, or any other form of verification. Every time Saylor announces another massive BTC purchase for Strategy, we’re left to take him purely at his word.

On stage at a major crypto conference, he was asked: “Do you have any plans to publish audits for your Bitcoin? Like an on-chain Proof of Reserves?”

The gist of Saylor’s meandering seven-minute answer was basically this: It’s a bad idea because disclosing addresses would jeopardize the security of the coins. Besides, Proof of Reserves alone doesn’t prove anything without a supporting audit from a Big Four firm.

To highlight the key points:

• Saylor claimed that CZ’s so-called “Proof of Reserves” standard proves nothing.
• Saylor showed a surprising misunderstanding of Bitcoin’s security model by suggesting that disclosing on-chain addresses somehow endangers the coins.
• And finally, Saylor believes it’s a “bad idea” to try to eliminate the biggest institutional risk currently hanging over the crypto market - aside from Tether’s reserves, which also remain murky.

I was reminded of the bargain prices in the crypto market when it turned out that billions trusted to FTX and Alameda had vanished. And I thought of that old front page from the 2000 Daily News, which Saylor’s critics love to resurface.

I suspect we’ll get another chance to buy Bitcoin at an even better price than we’re seeing now. In the meantime… it might be wise to sit out in a different asset. Just not in USDT!

Check out rabbit.io - we’ve got plenty of options.