Strategy President Michael Saylor said that Bitcoin is moving away from the classic four-year cycle shaped around halving and individual investor demand. According to Saylor, the market is now driven by large corporate money inflows and Bitcoin is increasingly gaining the status of “digital capital”.
Corporate demand comes to the fore
Saylor argued that the decrease in the amount of new coins produced by miners has lost its decisive power compared to previous periods. According to him, the main emphasis in Bitcoin’s pricing dynamics has now shifted to new and large-scale demand sources.
These sources of demand include spot Bitcoin ETFs, equity market-linked derivatives, balance sheets of publicly traded companies, sovereign wealth funds, government reserves, and interbank credit and collateral instruments. Saylor thinks the market has become more liquid than past individual investor cycles could sustain.
Michael Saylor emphasizes that the new phase in Bitcoin adoption is not just about more buyers, but is shaped by more balance sheets being included in the system.
Strategy stands out as the company formerly known as MicroStrategy, which has been holding a large amount of Bitcoin on its balance sheet for a long time. For this reason, Saylor’s evaluations are closely watched in the market from an institutional investment perspective.
Expectation of a more conservative period in Bitcoin’s network structure
Saylor positions Bitcoin’s role differently than technology companies developing rapid products. According to him, the main task of the network will be to provide stability at the base layer. Over the next decade, the protocol is expected to become even more conservative, laying the groundwork for large-scale final settlement transactions.
Stating that code changes will become less frequent in this context, Saylor attributes this to the need for strict consensus among the participants. He predicts that technological solutions such as Lightning Network and sidechain will be located in the environmental layers of the system over time.
Mini dictionary: Sidechain refers to the auxiliary network structure that operates connected to the main blockchain but has separate rules from it. Proof of reserves, on the other hand, is verifiable evidence of reserves shared by a custodial institution to show that it actually holds assets.
New credit structure and key risk warning
Saylor also compares the structure developing around Bitcoin with gold and real estate markets. Reminding that the financial potential of these two assets has expanded with the development of credit markets, Saylor states that a similar digital credit ecosystem is now formed around Bitcoin and this strengthens the bond with the traditional economy.
However, Saylor warns that one of the biggest risks of the next decade may be the “paper Bitcoin” structure. In this scenario, brokers may generate debit receivables that exceed the actual amount of coins they hold. According to Saylor, in such an environment, the transparency of depository institutions and reserve proof practices will be of decisive importance in terms of investor security.
Michael Saylor notes that the main risk will arise if brokerage firms produce a large number of receivables that are not fully supported by real coins, which is why a transparent custody structure is critical.
