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Michael Saylor
Michael Saylor MSTR
Executive Chairman, MicroStrategy Inc.
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Strategy's Michael Saylor: We expect bitcoin to go up more than the S&P 500 over time

📅 May 21, 2026 CNBC Television 9 MIN 95153 VIEWS 39 SEGMENTS · 2 SPEAKERS
Michael Saylor, Strategy executive chairman and founder, joins 'Squawk Box' to discuss the state of crypto, bitcoin price trends, possible macro tailwinds, Strategy's digital credit, and more.

What Michael Saylor said

Written from the verified transcript and checked against it. Every figure links to the moment it was said.

Michael Saylor said bitcoin bottomed at $60,000 and is entering a spring rally, supported by macro tailwinds like the Clarity Act and SEC tokenization guidance. He argued that digital credit, exemplified by Strategy's STRK preferred stock, converts bitcoin's expected capital gains into tax-deferred credit dividends, offering 11.5% yield versus 3.5% taxable money market returns. Saylor noted STRK grew from $0 to $10.5 billion in ten months, with $2 billion sold last month and a $24 billion annual run rate. He said Strategy bought more bitcoin than miners produced this year and expects to buy all mined bitcoin until 2140. Saylor claimed MSTR outperformed bitcoin over six years, with common stock absorbing volatility (70 vol) while credit has lower volatility (3 vol). He dismissed quantum computing risks, citing network upgrades, and called bitcoin's rise inevitable, predicting it will outperform the S&P 500.

Key takeaways

  1. Bitcoin bottomed at $60,000 and will rally from current levels, with October 2025 peak at $125,000
  2. STRK preferred stock pays 11.5% tax-deferred dividend versus 3.5% taxable money market yield
  3. STRK grew to $10.5 billion in ten months, with $2 billion sold in the last month alone
  4. Strategy will likely buy all bitcoin produced by miners between now and 2140
  5. MSTR has outperformed bitcoin over the past six years, annualized near 60% versus bitcoin's 40%

Numbers and commitments

FigureWhat it refers toTypeAt
11.5% STRK preferred stock dividend yield commitment 2:46
3.5% Money market yield for comparison metric 2:46
$10.5 billion STRK total size after ten months metric 6:12
$2 billion STRK sales in the last month metric 6:12
$24 billion STRK annual run rate growth metric 6:12
$65 billion Strategy's current bitcoin holdings metric 6:31
40% Bitcoin's six-year annualized return metric 6:31
60% MSTR's six-year annualized return metric 6:31

Chapters

  1. 0:00Bitcoin price outlook and rally
  2. 1:14Clarity Act and SEC guidance
  3. 1:47Bitcoin supply and ETF absorption
  4. 2:46Digital credit and STRK mechanics
  5. 6:12STRK growth and adoption
  6. 6:31Strategy's bitcoin holdings and performance
  7. 7:23Skeptics and retail adoption
  8. 7:56Quantum computing risks
  9. 8:31Tokenization and credit markets
  10. 9:05Bitcoin's long-term trajectory

Questions asked in this interview

11
  1. 0:09And my first question was, orange, are you going to ask me about why you wear orange ties? You got how many?
  2. 0:40Are we closer to the end or do you even care at this point?
  3. 1:10What macro tailwinds are possible? What about Congress?
  4. 1:32But where are we out of the 21 million? Are we yet?
  5. 1:49And we're at what, right now?
  6. 4:18would you have even more upside than the 11.5%?
  7. 5:16So what if it is 30?
  8. 6:20And then for your company, what you keep doing this, is this going to be one of your main vehicles?
  9. 6:59Do you think any rational person has taken that off the table at this point?
  10. 7:56What happens to retirees that have all their money in the 11.5% credit?
  11. 8:20Watching all of the tokenization and everything that we're seeing happen, it just sort of bolsters the case that this is not a tulip bulb phenomenon, doesn't it?
Joe Kernen 0:09 ↗
Let's talk digital credit and crypto prices. Joining us, Mike Saylor, Michael Saylor, Strategy Executive Chairman and Founder. And my first question was, orange, are you going to ask me about why you wear orange ties? You got how many?
Michael Saylor 0:27 ↗
I got a few dozen.
Joe Kernen 0:29 ↗
You do? Actually, a few dozen. And that is a, I guess, a salute to what you do for a living. And Bitcoin.
Michael Saylor 0:37 ↗
Every day is a good day for an orange tie. Joe.
Joe Kernen 0:40 ↗
Do you overall have a feeling about whether this... would you call this a crypto winter or crypto pseudo winter that we've been through for a while? Are we closer to the end or do you even care at this point?
Michael Saylor 0:54 ↗
I think so. I mean, I think we were at the top in October about 125. I think we bottomed at 60. I think we're moving into the spring phase. We've got decent support here in these levels. I think we'll rally from here. We're just working against a few macro headwinds right now.
Joe Kernen 1:10 ↗
What macro tailwinds are possible? What about Congress?
Michael Saylor 1:14 ↗
Well, I think the passage of the Clarity Act will be a big deal. I think even in the absence of that, the release of guidance that lets you tokenize securities and supports digital assets out of the SEC, the innovation exemption, that would be a big deal as well.
Joe Kernen 1:32 ↗
For people that don't follow it that closely, I mean, there are halvings that happen. Then it gets harder and harder to mine at some point, even though we're getting close to maximum number. But where are we out of the 21 million? Are we yet?
Michael Saylor 1:47 ↗
I mean, the next halving's in two years.
Joe Kernen 1:49 ↗
And we're at what, right now? Like it's like asymptotic, we get towards the end, it gets harder and harder to mine any. And it'll be a couple hundred years before we get to 21 million.
Michael Saylor 2:01 ↗
Not much Bitcoin left because at this point, all of the organic supply of Bitcoin being produced by the miners is being taken up by the Bitcoin ETFs.
Joe Kernen 2:08 ↗
You bought more than was mined this year for Strategy.
Michael Saylor 2:11 ↗
Yeah, we have. The formation of digital credit means that the credit market itself is absorbing all of the organic supply of Bitcoin from now to forever. Our company will probably buy all of the Bitcoin gets produced by the miners between here and the year 2140. Then there's no more Bitcoin.
Joe Kernen 2:28 ↗
2140, yeah. That's correct. You have to leave that theoretically for your successors to orchestrate. So talk about the credit side of things. And you've talked about it here before and my eyes kind of glaze over, but I'm getting it a little bit.
Michael Saylor 2:46 ↗
Well, you know, Wall Street firms have been creating structured products forever. They take a big stack of S&P securities and they strip the downside. They give you part of the upside, and they sell it to high net worth individuals that would like upside with downside protection. What we've done is taken a capital asset, Bitcoin, and we're converting those capital gains into credit dividends. So we think Bitcoin's going up more than the S&P index over time, we expect 30%. But it doesn't matter if it's 10 or 20%. We can pay 11.5% dividend on a preferred stock, a credit dividend, because that represents a fraction of the long-term capital gain that we're expecting. And so if you're disciplined about the way that you convert a capital gain into a credit dividend, the capital gain's unrealized, the credit dividend becomes return of capital and is tax deferred. So digital credit is really synthetic yield where we're extracting the first 11.5% of our expected capital appreciation of Bitcoin. We're remitting it to the credit investors via an overcollateralized preferred stock. If you've got money you don't need or you need it in the next four years, you either put it in a money market and you get 3.5% taxable, or you put it in digital credit, you get 11.5% tax deferred. So if you're a crypto believer and you have working capital, you want to buy digital credit because you get paid four times as much after tax.
Joe Kernen 4:14 ↗
And it's a preferred.
Michael Saylor 4:15 ↗
It is a preferred stock, convertible. It is.
Joe Kernen 4:18 ↗
Just a premium. I'm sorry, is there... would you have even more upside than the 11.5%? In other words, no.

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Cite this transcript

APA, MLA, BibTeX
APA

Saylor, M. (2026, May 21). Strategy's Michael Saylor: We expect bitcoin to go up more than the S&P 500 over time [Interview transcript]. CNBC Television. CEOInterviews.AI. https://ceointerviews.ai/interview/927932/

MLA

Michael Saylor. "Strategy's Michael Saylor: We expect bitcoin to go up more than the S&P 500 over time." CNBC Television, 21 May. 2026. Transcript, CEOInterviews.AI, https://ceointerviews.ai/interview/927932/.

BibTeX 
@misc{saylor2026_927932,
  author       = {Michael Saylor},
  title        = {Strategy's Michael Saylor: We expect bitcoin to go up more than the S\&P 500 over time},
  howpublished = {Interview transcript, CNBC Television. CEOInterviews.AI},
  year         = {2026},
  month        = {may},
  url          = {https://ceointerviews.ai/interview/927932/},
  note         = {Speaker-attributed transcript with timestamps}
}