Coin World News Report:
Vitalik Buterin, the founder of Ethereum, seems to be wavering in his micro-strategy. Michael Saylor, the chairman of MicroStrategy, recently spoke about Bitcoin custody in an interview with Madison Market. Saylor discussed his long-term vision for Bitcoin and how he views the development of the community.
He said, “I think when Bitcoin is held by a group of unregulated crypto-anarchists who don’t recognize governments, don’t recognize taxes, or don’t recognize reporting requirements, that increases the risks of being confiscated.” However, his words may be somewhat hypocritical, as it is well known that this cryptocurrency tycoon paid $40 million to settle a tax evasion claim and $8.5 million to handle accounting fraud claims.
Saylor went on to say that self-custody may be more of a fantasy than a reality. He said, “You have a very hardcore OG crypto community, but if you look at where all the money is – 99.9% of the money – it’s actually in the traditional economy.” He continued, “It’s a myth and a recurring metaphor,” adding that “too big to fail” banks provide more secure custody solutions than hardware wallets.
Buterin responded to co-founder Jameson Lopp’s criticism. Casa’s chief security officer of self-custody company, called Saylor’s remarks “crazy to the extreme.” Buterin criticized, “[Saylor] seems to explicitly advocate for a regulatory capture approach to protect cryptocurrencies… There are plenty of precedents where this strategy fails, and to me, that’s not what cryptocurrency is about.”
“I may be much more aggressively pushing the analogy of ‘mountain man’ than most (by the way, I think my comments are outdated; snarks and AA completely change the tradeoff space), but I’m glad to say that I think @Saylor’s comments are downright insane,” he added.
In other parts of the interview, Saylor emphasized that he is a single man without children, so there are no apparent successors to inherit his Bitcoin empire besides humanity itself. “When I’m gone, I’m gone. Just like Satoshi left a million Bitcoins to the world, I leave everything I have to civilization,” he said, drawing a comparison between Bitcoin and “the secret of civilization” based on its solid foundation. “Built on a solid granite foundation… that’s the secret of civilization, that’s Bitcoin,” he quoted the Bible.
As of last month, MicroStrategy holds 252,220 BTC, making it the company’s largest Bitcoin reserve. As of August 2024, Saylor himself owns over $1 billion worth of Bitcoin, approximately 17,857 BTC.