Source: "The Diary Of A CEO"

Compiled by: Felix, PANews

Michael Saylor, founder and executive chairman of Bitcoin treasury company Strategy, recently shared his experience of utilizing AI for financial innovation and raising $15 billion in an interview on "The Diary Of A CEO." He advises young people to learn to drive machines instead of competing with them. By comparing fiat currency with physical assets, he explained the inevitability of currency depreciation and firmly stated that Bitcoin is a superior long-term store of value compared to gold and real estate.

Additionally, Michael Saylor emphasized the importance of seeking business opportunities at the "S curve" outbreak point during technological iterations. Finally, he proposed ten principles for building a solid life foundation, encouraging people to cope with future uncertainties through continuous learning, thinking, and integrity.

PANews has summarized the highlights of the interview.

Host: Michael, you have achieved tremendous success in the tech startup field. But I want to ask a question first: I heard you raised $15 billion utilizing AI last year, is that true?

Michael: Yes, that's absolutely true. Because AI helped us solve a problem that no one in human history has ever encountered. So I always advise young people: never try to outwork robots; what you should do is guide AI to help you do things that no one has ever done before. If you want to achieve unbelievable success in today's era, you must定位那个“magical opportunity”.

Host: How exactly did this happen?

Michael: In early 2025. At that time, Strategy held Bitcoin worth tens of billions of dollars. To raise more funds to buy more Bitcoin, we tried all traditional financing methods: we exhausted the financing limits on the equity market and became the world's largest issuer of convertible bonds, even pushing the convertible bond market to its limits. In other words, if we couldn't create a new type of security or credit tool, our growth would stagnate.

So, I turned to AI and began to explore how to design a Bitcoin-backed preferred stock. Preferred stock is a hybrid security for ordinary people, where you can freely assign any terms; you can add redemption rights to make it look like debt, or add conversion rights to make it appear like equity.

Host: What was the reaction from those Wall Street lawyers and bankers?

Michael: Their answer was always the same: "No one has ever done this before, no one else is doing it, so we don't think you should either." But to survive, we must think outside the box. Our goal was to create a short-term credit tool, with a trading price stabilized around $100 (face value), not fluctuating with interest rates and market volatility, similar to a money market tool that allows investors to safely earn returns. The only way to achieve price stability was to adjust the dividend rate every month.

No one in human history has ever created a preferred stock with a variable dividend rate. Is this illegal? No. It's just that no one thought of it before, nor did they have the reason to do so. We asked ChatGPT: "Can we do this?" AI confirmed we could and gave us extremely detailed specific terms and design paths.

Ultimately, we brought this design (called the STRK preferred stock) to market, completing a $250 million IPO (the largest IPO this year), and subsequently issued an additional $8 billion. Including other tools, we sold a total of $15 billion worth of credit assets. This is the story of creating $15 billion in capital from scratch using AI.

Host: This is an extremely astonishing "smart arbitrage" opportunity. Currently, only 2% of households have a subscription to ChatGPT or AI, does that mean ordinary people also have huge business arbitrage space?

Michael: If you are an aspiring entrepreneur, you must be proficient in using one or more AI tools. They are foundational tools, just like computers, reading, or writing. On that basis, you need to combine specific industry expertise to completely reshape existing products or services or create something new.

Host: What is your core mission now? For ordinary people, what is the most misunderstood "essence of money"?

Michael: My mission is to advocate for digital empowerment and Bitcoin. Bitcoin is digital currency and will be the best capital asset in the long run. Its greatness lies in: you can truly own it, and no force in the world stronger than you can take it away.

Let's take a look at traditional fiat currency (cash). If you try to go through airport security with a stack of dollar bills, as soon as they question you and discover it, they can directly confiscate it. If you store the money in the bank for safety, then the bank (as the counterparty) will decide whether you can keep it and whether you can withdraw it. If you try to withdraw too much cash in a short period, they will report to the Treasury, and someone might even come knocking on your door. Not only that, if you want to transfer money to someone in another country, it might need to go through your bank, the other person's bank, two central banks, and seven different banks for approval. This is "license currency," strictly controlled by the state and bureaucracy.

Host: And what about inflation and currency depreciation?

Michael: This is exactly where 99% of ordinary people don't realize. About 100 years ago (in 1926), an acre of land by the beach in Miami Beach sold for $10,000 (I have a house there, keeping the transaction contract from that time, two acres sold for $20,000, and the whole house for $100,000). And today, in the same Miami Beach, that acre of land is worth $10 million or even $20 million.

It's the same dollar, but the price has risen 1,000 times. This means that, over the past 100 years, as the strongest and best fiat currency in the world: the dollar, its purchasing power has been losing about 7% every year. If you lose 7% of value every year, your wealth will roughly be halved every 10 years. And this is the best-case scenario! If you go to other developing countries, fiat currencies can depreciate by up to 14% annually, and will completely collapse in about 30 years (like Brazil, Argentina, Mexico, and other places with hyperinflation). So, storing your wealth in cash or a bank is equivalent to losing all your savings in 10 to 30 years.

Host: So, the traditional notion we are ingrained with: "Get a nine-to-five job after college and save money to buy a house," isn't a good strategy for accumulating wealth? Should we buy a house?

Michael: Only in a few places with very low property taxes and proper management might buying a house be a feasible wealth strategy. In most places, due to needing to bear mortgage rates up to 7%, along with high taxes and insurance, buying a house could directly destroy you.

For example, in Florida, there is a 2% property tax. This means that every 36 years, you need to fully repay the cost of the house to the government in the form of property tax. Additionally, you also bear high maintenance costs. So residential property is not a good medium for storing value. In comparison, commercial real estate is slightly better since you can pass taxes, insurance, and maintenance costs through rent; even if the rent itself doesn't make a profit, the underlying land will appreciate 7% per year. But all of this is too complicated for ordinary people; why should you be forced to become a real estate expert, tax expert, or stock-picking master?

Host: What about gold and the S&P 500 index?

Michael: In the past six years, gold has had an annualized return of about 12%, the S&P 500 index around 15%, the NASDAQ index about 18%, while Bitcoin reached as high as 33%.

Gold and the S&P 500 are not terrible options. The S&P 500 index (via ETFs like SPY) has an annualized return of about 10% over the past 100 years, which can help you offset the dollar's annual 7% invisible depreciation and provide an additional 2% to 3% appreciation. But the issue is that these are just privileged assets of the Western world. If you live in Turkey, Argentina, Brazil, or Africa, you cannot easily purchase the S&P 500, QQQ index, or quality real estate in the United States.

Therefore, Bitcoin is the only universal capital asset globally. More importantly, you should not invest family wealth in non-capital assets, such as soybeans, crude oil, or cotton, because robots and AI can infinitely produce these things. You must invest in those scarce assets that AI, robots, and large factories cannot infinitely replicate or manufacture out of thin air: like an ounce of gold, shares in the world's best 500 companies, and the only 21 million Bitcoins in existence.

Host: Elon Musk once proposed a viewpoint about the "Age of Abundance." He said, in the future, AI and robots will satisfy all human material needs, work will become purely voluntary out of interest, and the importance of currency as a database for labor distribution will rapidly decline. Do you agree with this view?

Michael: He is only half right. Consumer goods, consumables, and utility items (such as clean water, electricity, basic healthcare, free entertainment, and food) will indeed become extremely cheap and abundant due to technological advancements.

However, scarce, sought-after assets will never become cheap and abundant. Technology can allow everyone to afford water, chocolate, and ice cream. But technology cannot allow everyone to own a luxurious mansion in the Hamptons or have private jets and super yachts. Humans are essentially socially status-oriented animals, and there will always be a hierarchy pursuit of social status, exclusivity, and the wealthy class.

For instance, in a restaurant, water is a free commonplace drink, but if you have money, you will spend $5 on a cola; if you have a bit more, you will order vodka or premium tequila, until eventually people are willing to pay $38 for a special cocktail. If the state provides everyone with basic housing, some will inevitably want a house twice the size. If everyone goes skiing, people will fight to occupy the slope with the best snow quality and the least traffic. Therefore, currency will never disappear, because humans' desire for exclusive scarce resources is infinite.

Host: Since knowledge jobs will all be replaced by AI and robots in the future, if an 18-year-old young person asks you, “What should I study in college? What shouldn't I study?” how would you respond?

Michael: One of the most important concepts in the history of science is the S curve. In the initial stages of the S curve, a technology may show no progress for hundreds or thousands of years (like humans being unable to fly until 1903). But once it breaks past the tipping point, it will experience explosive growth; in just over 60 years, humans evolved from planes flying at 20 miles per hour to manned rockets landing on the moon. However, by the mid-1970s, when Boeing designed the 737 and 747, aviation technology hit the ceiling of physics and propulsion technology. Fifty years later, today's planes have only improved efficiency by 15% compared to 1975.

The biggest mistake in going to school is starting to learn a technology just as the S curve is at its end and entering the phase of diminishing marginal returns. Once a technology enters a stagnation period, there may not be significant breakthroughs for the next 100 years. For example, smartphones (like the iPhone) have seen little real change in form, thickness, or battery technology since the iPhone 6 or 7; it is already at the end of the S curve. Thus, you should learn digital intelligence and digital assets.

Host: What about traditional professions? For example, doctors, lawyers, accountants?

Michael: Don't become a surgeon, don't become a lawyer, don't become an accountant, and don't become a driver. Because these jobs can essentially be easily replaced by AI. You don't need to learn skills that AI can already do; instead, you should learn how to ask AI edge questions that have never been answered in human history.

For content creators and ordinary workers, the only moat they can build is to pursue extremely difficult and scarce things. For example, using AI to accurately translate and distribute content into 100 languages. In an era of technological explosions, there will always be a group of geniuses who push technology to its limit in the first 10 years of its birth, making lasting history (like Beethoven with the piano or Zuckerberg with the Internet). What you need to do is precisely identify that "0 to 1" opportunity the moment technology just becomes commercially viable and give it your all.

Host: The current young generation often feels extremely anxious and frustrated because they haven't struck it rich, even frequently changing careers. But Strategy has been operating for nearly 40 years. In today's instant-gratification era, can long-termism still bring competitive advantages?

Michael: Absolutely. Look at Musk; all his businesses are intertwined and layered: he solved rocket launches and low orbital costs, then gained an absolute advantage in launching Starlink satellites, subsequently meeting global satellite Internet demand through Starlink while also applying battery and supercharging networks to Tesla.

Nature has a very beautiful growth model called the nautilus; it grows outward along the Fibonacci spiral, with each growth extending on the previous shell structure. This is the most stable and perfect solution in nature for growing under pressure.

The healthiest growth strategy is to always naturally extend and expand functions on your existing stable foundation. When your second business is entirely unrelated to the first, merely because they both belong to you, you are essentially building a tower on the beach, which is extremely unstable. All the great companies in the world (Standard Oil, Ford, Boeing, Microsoft) are built on existing loyal customers, distribution networks, or financial assets.

Take Amazon (Amazon Prime) as an example; it persisted for a solid ten years building a free and fast logistics distribution system while facing overwhelming "loss" skepticism from the outside. Once the moat was completely established, they created $12 billion in net cash flow overnight just by sending out a simple price increase notice (charging an additional $10 per month), instantly releasing $250 billion in market value.

Host: I heard you have a "10 golden rules" for young people to establish a strong foundation in life and career in today's society. Is there a story behind this?

Michael: Yes. I was invited to a cocktail party on a billionaire's yacht in the French Riviera. During the event, another billionaire, who had just welcomed twins, approached me and said, "Michael, I'm collecting advice from my best friends to give to my kids as a birthday gift for their 21st birthday; please write some too." So, I sat down and carefully distilled the following 10 principles:

Focus your Mind: Concentrate your energy; don't blindly chase every good idea when you're young, as it will dilute and ruin your core competitiveness.

Value Time: Time is your most precious and non-renewable asset.

Train Your Mind: Strive to learn foundational knowledge, read widely, and build a deep and diverse cultural and knowledge base.

Exercise Your Body: If you are physically weak, you will not survive in a brutal competition.

Learn to Think Independently: Everyone in this world, including people, media, and machines, tries to brainwash you into believing what they want you to believe. You must always remain alert and discerning.

Select Friends Wisely: You become who you associate with. Surround yourself with positive, talented, and inspiring people; keep away from those who are negative, defeatist, and unsuccessful.

Create a Positive Environment: Build a joyful and sunny work and living space for yourself; don't let yourself be trapped in dark, ugly, and oppressive environments.

Keep Promises: Breaking trust once makes it hard to regain. People will only allocate resources to those who are absolutely trustworthy; whether you keep your word often determines your success or failure at critical moments.

Stay Optimistic and Constructive: No matter how bad things get, stay optimistic. Because everyone desires to work or socialize with joyful and constructive people.

Transform the World: Wake up with a sense of mission to change the world. Satoshi Nakamoto has empowered 8 billion people globally with true economic sovereignty and perfect digital assets through Bitcoin; this is the greatest transformation.

Host: Michael, I want to ask a sharp question on behalf of all the viewers, which is a concern in the comments: You once passionately urged everyone to "even sell a kidney to hold onto Bitcoin if necessary." But recently, you sold part of your Bitcoin on the market, which has made many believers waver. Why did you not sell a kidney but sold Bitcoin instead?

Michael: That's an excellent question, and I’m happy to clarify. First, let me make one thing clear: in all of human history, besides the inactive Satoshi (who holds over a million Bitcoins), no one, no entity holds more Bitcoin than our company. Our company holds up to 847,000 Bitcoins.

The reason we chose to sell a small amount of Bitcoin a few weeks ago was to crush a very dangerous, almost collective delusion of negative narratives in the market.

At that time, short sellers and skeptics had created a rumor: because Strategy holds 4% of Bitcoin's global supply, we had become so deeply bound to the Bitcoin system that we "could never sell." They claimed that if Strategy sold any Bitcoin, both Bitcoin and Strategy’s stock price would immediately plummet to zero. Based on this absurd logic, short sellers deemed our $55 billion worth of Bitcoin assets worthless, and Strategy would be unable to pay preferred dividend, which would lead to a comprehensive collapse of debt, credit, and equity in a "death spiral."

Host: It sounds like someone was trying to extort your credit.

Michael: Exactly. If someone firmly believes that you cannot complete a "backflip" and threatens to send you to jail because of it, the most effective way to counterattack is to successfully perform a perfect backflip in front of them.

Bitcoin trades more than $20 billion daily, and our $55 billion assets, even if we sell a tiny portion, will not produce any significant fluctuation in market price. To break this "death spiral", we sold enough Bitcoin to pay preferred dividends when Bitcoin was around $59,000 to $60,000. The result? Bitcoin's price not only did not drop but increased, and the rumor fell apart instantly.

This demonstrated to the market and credit investors that our breakeven point is about a 3.2% appreciation. As long as Bitcoin appreciates more than 3.2% annually, we can fully pay dividends by selling a tiny amount of Bitcoin without needing to issue more or dilute MicroStrategy's common stock equity. This ensured that our equity and debt both achieved rational and high premium trading performance, successfully protecting all shareholders and credit investors. Selling Bitcoin is by no means our primary strategy; we merely used it to commercialize the operational mechanism of the digital credit market.

Host: So, where do you see the ultimate future of Bitcoin? For a 25-year-old with only a few hundred dollars to invest, apart from purchasing an AI subscription, how should they face the future wealth shift?

Michael: I predict that Bitcoin will maintain an appreciation rate of about 30% annually for the next 20 years, then slow to 20% annually. Its performance will be 1.5 to 2 times that of the S&P 500 index. If you have a little extra money, aside from consistently spending $20 a month on the best AI subscription to arm your brain, any surplus long-term funds should be firmly invested in digital capital (i.e., Bitcoin).

Host: In accordance with our tradition, the previous guest left an anonymous question for you: "What is something you firmly believe in but may never have spoken much about publicly, and that 99% of the world does not believe?"

Michael: This is a very touching question. Reflecting on my life, after completing my college education, the most significant and impactful thing, which 99% of people overlook, is that I deeply studied two subjects alone after becoming an adult:

The first is practical "applied statistics." Especially the complete works of Nassim Taleb: "Fooled by Randomness," "The Black Swan," and "Anti-Fragile." These books thoroughly taught me how to differentiate between truly meaningful data and misleading random noise. Today, this is a decision that AI cannot make for you.

The second is the importance of taking time to read Will Durant's monumental work "The Story of Civilization." The history taught in schools is mostly a condensed version of out-of-context excerpts. When you, as a mentally mature adult, read through this 14,000-page tome encompassing art, culture, politics, military, and technology in a complete synthesized manner, you will develop an unparalleled admiration and wisdom about human civilization.

You will be astonished to discover: everything you consider great, new, and profound today has already been discovered and reiterated hundreds or thousands of times in civilizations as early as the 15th century in Russia. For example, people exclaimed that Nixon’s abandonment of the gold standard in 1971 was the beginning of currency depreciation for humanity, but history will coldly remind you: in all of human history, every country, every fiat currency ultimately leads to endless depreciation and self-destruction.

Relearning history and mathematics in adulthood will thoroughly shatter the arrogance of young people, making them realize they are not the first in human history to encounter these pains and challenges. Those before us have long pointed to the path to breakthroughs, and that is the most powerful spiritual nourishment.

Related Reading: Michael Saylor's latest long article: Bitcoin is not money, it is digital capital, and money must be built on it.

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