Strategy Founder Michael Saylor Wants US to Buy 20% of the Bitcoin Supply

Strategy co-founder Michael Saylor has suggested that the U.S. could purchase 20% of the Bitcoin supply “for free,” and that owning 4 to 6 million BTC would “pay off the entire national debt.”

Appearing at the annual CPAC conference, Saylor spoke in favor of a strategic Bitcoin reserve, arguing that “the dollar would strengthen” if the U.S. federal government created such a stockpile.

He also warned that not pursuing such a policy would risk the U.S. falling behind other nations, claiming that “there’s only room for one nation-state to buy up 20% of the network.”

He said, “you wouldn’t want the Saudis buying it first, or the Russians, or the Chinese or the Europeans.”

Saylor’s remarks come as several U.S. states move closer to mandating their own Bitcoin reserves, with one bill in Utah most recently receiving a favorable recommendation from the state’s Senate Revenue and Taxation Committee.

The remarks also come a month after President Donald Trump signed an order creating a working group that will consider the possibility of a federal Bitcoin reserve.

Saylor emphasized that the U.S. government could buy up 20% of Bitcoin’s supply “like that,” with his comment about buying BTC “for free” presumably a reference to the U.S. government’s ability to issue an indefinite supply of dollars via Treasuries.

Currently, the U.S. government holds around 183,422 BTC (nearly 1% of the cryptocurrency’s supply), while the British government owns 61,245 BTC (and the German government sold around $2.8 billion in BTC last year).

Meanwhile, Saylor’s firm – the recently rebranded Strategy – holds over 430,000 BTC, giving it the largest Bitcoin holdings of any publicly traded company anywhere in the world.

Saylor had previously pitched a Bitcoin reserve strategy to Microsoft’s board of directors, suggesting in a December presentation that the tech giant could create as much as $5 trillion in shareholder value (by 2034) by accumulating BTC.

So far, neither Microsoft nor any other Big Tech firm has taken Saylor’s advice, and while certain lawmakers in the U.S. and elsewhere have made noises about BTC reserves, some observers are skeptical that such noises will ever become a meaningful reality.

Asked whether he agrees with Saylor’s claims that the U.S. could easily buy up 20% of all Bitcoin, and that it would benefit the U.S. dollar, longtime crypto skeptic and author David Gerard takes a much less bullish stance.

“There is no plausible reason why either of these would be true or how the U.S. would benefit from all that Bitcoin,” he tells Decrypt. “Saylor is advocating for U.S. government price support for Bitcoin and that’s all.”

Other, more sympathetic voices have also begun expressing doubt as to whether a national Bitcoin reserve would ever happen or be prudent.

On Wednesday, MIT Cryptoeconomics Lab founder Christian Catalini penned a blog for the OMFIF think tank in which he argues that Bitcoin doesn’t meet the necessary criteria for a reserve asset.

“Strategic reserves are meant to ensure stability and provide immediate access during a crisis,” he writes. “Countries store dollars or oil because they need them to repay debts, settle cross-border obligations and keep essential systems running when supply chains falter.”

Perhaps more fatally, he also argues against Saylor by suggesting that stockpiling Bitcoin would harm the U.S. dollar’s status as the world’s reserve currency.

“If the U.S. began amassing Bitcoin on a large scale, it might be seen as a hedge against the dollar itself – raising alarms and giving rivals like China or Russia an opening to claim that the U.S. no longer trusts its own currency,” he says.

Such concerns cast a shadow over the recent championing of BTC reserves by evangelists such as Saylor and Strategy, which continues to accumulate Bitcoin on a regular basis.

And for David Gerard, Saylor’s comments yesterday are less about trying to find a big buyer for his firm’s own Bitcoin reserves, and more about providing further credibility for its current business strategy.

He tells Decrypt, “Microstrategy’s deal seems to be leveraging Bitcoin into a proxy for dollars so insiders can sell company stock in scheduled sales.”

Last month, Strategy’s shareholders voted to increase the company’s Class A shares from 330 million to 10.3 billion, coming as part of efforts to raise $46 billion by selling a mix of equities and bonds.

Such an alleged strategy has precedent within the cryptocurrency industry, although Gerard warns that it doesn’t always end well.

He says, “The same process happened with Bitcoin miners in the 2021-2022 bubble: the companies would talk Bitcoin slogans, but if you looked at the flows of cash it was about insiders making money from [stock] investors who should have known better, with the exit being bankruptcy or at the least restructuring.”

Edited by Stacy Elliott.