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Ethereum founder Vitalik Buterin has taken a swing at MicroStrategy chairman, Michael Saylor for his remarks on Bitcoin custody.
In an interview on Markets with Madison, Saylor discussed his long-term vision for Bitcoin and how he sees the community evolving.
"I think that when the Bitcoin is held by a bunch of crypto-anarchists who aren’t regulated entities — who don’t acknowledge government or don’t acknowledge taxes or don’t acknowledge reporting requirements — that increases the risk of seizure,” he said.
His words might be a bit hypocritical however, as the crypto mogul is also known to have paid $40 million to settle claims that he evaded tax payments and $8.5 million to settle claims of accounting fraud.
Saylor went on to say that self-custody might be more of a fantasy than reality. “You have an OG crypto community that’s very hardcore about it, but if you look at where all the money is — 99.9% of the money — is actually in the traditional economy,” he said.
“It’s a myth and a trope that goes on over and over again,” he continued, adding that “too big to fail” banks offer safer custody solutions than hardware wallets.
Buterin, who responded to Jameson Lopp, the Co-founder & Chief Security Officer of Bitcoin self-custody firm, Casa, described Saylor's comments as "batshit crazy."
"[Saylor] seems to be explicitly arguing for a regulatory capture approach to protecting crypto... There's plenty of precedent for how this strategy can fail, and for me it's not what crypto is about," Buterin critiqued.
I probably did more than most to spread the "mountain man" trope (btw I consider those remarks of mine outdated; snarks and AA changed the tradeoff space completely), and I'll happily say that I think @saylor's comments are batshit insane.
— vitalik.eth (@VitalikButerin) October 22, 2024
He seems to be explicitly arguing for a…
Elsewhere in the interview, Saylor highlighted that he is a single man with no children and thus has no obvious successor to hand down his Bitcoin empire to, other than humanity itself.
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“When I’m gone, I’m gone. Just like Satoshi left a million Bitcoin to the universal, I’m leaving whatever I’ve got to the civilization,” he said, comparing Bitcoin and "the recipe for civilization" based on its strong foundations.
“Build on a solid granite foundation... that’s the recipe for civilization, that’s what Bitcoin is,” he said, referencing the Bible.
As of last month, MicroStrategy holds 252,220 BTC, making it the largest Bitcoin reserve owned by a corporation. Saylor himself owns more than $1 billion worth of Bitcoin, approximately 17,857 BTC, as of August 2024.
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