Do you think Michael Saylor is a bit dodgy?

[brainactive]

On 19 December 2013, Michael Saylor tweets "Bitcoin's days are numbered. It seems like just a matter of time before it suffers the same fate as online gambling."

How does someone go from this to buying 100,000 bitcoin and starting a mining council?

I understand that anyone's entitled to change their views over time, but am I the only one who thinks he's a bit suspicious? This is not a high school student tweeting random things and then learning about the case for bitcoin a few years later. This is an educated, intelligent and high profile and long standing CEO basically doing a 180. How does that even happen?

In recent interviews, he makes the point that bitcoin is the "apex-predator asset" and that we should go all-in on bitcoin because diversification doesn't make sense when there is a clear winner. This just sounds so dodgy to me and makes in cringe a bit when I hear it. Michael isn't just saying bitcoin is a clear winner out of the cryptos but he is saying bitcoin is the clear winner out of all asset classes and therefore it makes sense to go 100% into bitcoin...

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[mk4]

How is doing a 180 on something suspicious? I personally have a lot more respect to those that realized that they're wrong and changed their mind, compared to those that stand strong to their obviously-wrong narrative just because of their ego.

With that said, I've already watched like more than a dozen interviews of Michael Saylor, and I have no doubt that he knows what he's talking about. Well, except the "borrow money and go all in on bitcoin" thing. That I'm quite against. It's either he's a delusional mega bitcoin bull, or he's trying a bit too hard into pumping bitcoin's price.

[NeuroticFish]

This is an educated, intelligent and high profile and long standing CEO basically doing a 180. How does that even happen?

How about JP Morgan's Jamie Dimon who wrote the bitcoin is a fraud and some years later he admitted that he was wrong? He's also a person with BMA at Harvard.
People can make mistakes in their judgement. Admitting them, learning further, ... and I'd say that educated people have better chances to learn and move forward.
So I don't see anything fishy there. When Saylor finally understood Bitcoin, he also understood that it can easily be a gold mine.

[brainactive]

How about JP Morgan's Jamie Dimon who wrote the bitcoin is a fraud and some years later he admitted that he was wrong? He's also a person with BMA at Harvard.
People can make mistakes in their judgement. Admitting them, learning further, ... and I'd say that educated people have better chances to learn and move forward.
So I don't see anything fishy there. When Saylor finally understood Bitcoin, he also understood that it can easily be a gold mine.

The overall idea of bitcoin is not particularly complicated to understand (the nitty gritties of bitcoin might complicated but not the general idea). Ideas such as governments printing money, devaluation of currency, bitcoin's fixed supply and incentive driven network aren't foreign concepts to someone like Michael. It's not something that will take years to finally understand.

There are FUD-slingers, flip-floppers and genuine people. I'd classify Jamie Dimon as a flip-flopper. He doesn't really have anything useful to say about bitcoin and he just changes his tune to confuse people. It won't surprise me that Jamie already understood bitcoin a decade ago or whenenver he came across it.

[pixie85]

How is doing a 180 on something suspicious?

We could make a list of people who said contradicting things over the years.

Mark Cuban, John McAfee, Elon Musk, Kevin O'Leary... Some were positive and turned negative, some the other way round.
I don't find Saylor to be dodgy at all. He saw real profits, Bitcoin helped him build his company, so he became bullish.

[brainactive]

We could make a list of people who said contradicting things over the years.

Mark Cuban, John McAfee, Elon Musk, Kevin O'Leary... Some were positive and turned negative, some the other way round.
I don't find Saylor to be dodgy at all. He saw real profits, Bitcoin helped him build his company, so he became bullish.

And what are your thoughts on Mark Cuban, John McAfee, Elon Musk, Kevin O'Leary?

Do you think they're dodgy?

Or do you think they just saw the potential for real losses and became bearish?

[bL4nkcode]

Give a person a chance, there are lots of huge names that changes their perspective after they realized they were wrong. He's one of the biggest asset on this community imo. Without his company investing bitcoin I doubt that bitcoin will reach such current price at this early. He really understood what bitcoin is.

[NeuroticFish]

The overall idea of bitcoin is not particularly complicated to understand (the nitty gritties of bitcoin might complicated but not the general idea). Ideas such as governments printing money, devaluation of currency, bitcoin's fixed supply and incentive driven network aren't foreign concepts to someone like Michael. It's not something that will take years to finally understand.

Yes and no.
Bitcoin is indeed scarce. Bitcoin has indeed limited supply. Indeed, as long as there's demand, with the supply remaining fixed, the price will rise. But imho it's not that easy to grasp why there's such demand for Bitcoin.
All in all, the internals are clearer than its economics, because the economics imply human reactions, which, as you noted, can change over time.

So while I expect him to understand (if he cares) the internals, it could have taken indeed some more time to digest its economics and understand its potential.

Elon Musk

Here's a difference. This guy is posting whatever suits him now, whatever he feels now and doesn't give a shit about the consequences.
Keep in mind that he's a billionaire hence he can live very well with or without Bitcoin ever existing. And he doesn't seem to take anything serious enough.


Edit: fixed typo

[brainactive]

Yes and no.
Bitcoin is indeed scarce. Bitcoin has indeed limited supply. Indeed, as long as there's demand, with the supply remaining fixed, the price will rise. But imho it's not that easy to gasp why there's such demand for Bitcoin.
All in all, the internals are clearer than its economics, because the economics imply human reactions, which, as you noted, can change over time.

So while I expect him to understand (if he cares) the internals, it could have taken indeed some more time to digest its economics and understand its potential.

Agreed that the economics are driven by human reactions and this isn't easy to grasp. Michael seems to believe that Bitcoin is basically a done deal, that it is guarateed to go to $1M. I think he's saying this publicly but he doesn't truly believe it. And it is precisely because the economics are driven by human reactions that make it impossible to have such a certain view on bitcoin's eventual outcome.

Here's a difference. This guy is posting whatever suits him now, whatever he feels now and doesn't give a shit about the consequences.
Keep in mind that he's a billionaire hence he can live very well with or without Bitcoin ever existing. And he doesn't seem to take anything serious enough.

Michael Saylor could potentially be no different, posting whatever suits him at the time. Just with a different time frame.

[electronicash]

We could make a list of people who said contradicting things over the years.

Mark Cuban, John McAfee, Elon Musk, Kevin O'Leary... Some were positive and turned negative, some the other way round.
I don't find Saylor to be dodgy at all. He saw real profits, Bitcoin helped him build his company, so he became bullish.

And what are your thoughts on Mark Cuban, John McAfee, Elon Musk, Kevin O'Leary?

Do you think they're dodgy?
Or do you think they just saw the potential for real losses and became bearish?

each of them had actually opened some doors for something to look at. Cuban was complaining about the Defu project that did the rug pull lately and now it seems regulators are checking what Defi has to offer. i wouldn't say dodgy like deceitful but at least these popular persons are opening the eyes of the government.

Micheal Saylor somewhat makes us now know that there can be negotiations to be done for BTC to be widely adopted and that could be environment friendly and green energy.  elon is something else.

[NeuroticFish]

Michael Saylor could potentially be no different, posting whatever suits him at the time. Just with a different time frame.

The change of optics has happened at some point and afterwards he started investing. The investment is what's to be followed. Posting, declarations, those are biased (and worthless). Of course that now his declarations will be bullish. I don't feel this being "dodgy".
I mean, I see it absolutely normal for the head of a company working with Bitcoin and investing into Bitcoin to declare "bitcoin is the "apex-predator asset" and that we should go all-in on bitcoin" as you said. But we know that such declarations are biased, but we're biased too, so we smile and move on.

[TIMBUCKTOOOOO]

People can change their mind on things without being dodgy...

[brainactive]

With that said, I've already watched like more than a dozen interviews of Michael Saylor, and I have no doubt that he knows what he's talking about. Well, except the "borrow money and go all in on bitcoin" thing. That I'm quite against. It's either he's a delusional mega bitcoin bull, or he's trying a bit too hard into pumping bitcoin's price.

Interviewer: "Do you have eggs for breakfast?"
Michael Saylor: "If dinner outperforms breakfast and lunch then breakfast is just a losing game. If your egg is radioactive and is about to spontaneously explode, you wouldn't eat it would you? The issue I see there is that toast has no purpose when unpaired with eggs.Imagine your a Venezuelan chicken in Nazi Germany..."

Saw this comment somewhere and it pretty much summaries Michael's interviews.

[worle1bm]

Many have changed their prespective about bitcoin as in early days Bitcoin transaction were limited and not much hype was there and silk road was busted and thousands of bitcoins were confiscated by the Feds.The decentralisation concept was new as they think fiat cannot be served as alternate to these coins with high volatility having no backed up assest.But with time their thinking changed and they came to know about these revolutionary and decentralised coin bitcoin and wanted to be part of it.The main enemy of bitcoin the central banks and government have came up with new statement making btc legal and providing crypto services to customers so this is how Saylor also come in this list and we might appreciate him for this investment although his main motive is profit.

[jesselui]

No rich man is stupid. No rich man loses money. Since Michael has announced that he has bought so many bitcoins, I think he wants to sell it. When he rises, he will sell what he has.

[Kittygalore]

No rich man is stupid. No rich man loses money. Since Michael has announced that he has bought so many bitcoins, I think he wants to sell it. When he rises, he will sell what he has.

You are right, the rich people get to where they are not because they are taking sides and having loyalty, what they are is opportunistic people that will easily change sides if it fits their interests. Pretty sure that Michael Saylor is any different from other businessmen out there.

[stompix]

No rich man is stupid. No rich man loses money.

Yeah right..

As for Michael Saylor, I don't think there is anything special about his change of views, he saw suddenly this can bring him money, he got interested in it, let's be honest, if bitcoin would be all about technology and freedom and not a bit about financial gains how many would be interested in right now? 2-3% of everyone here? Many times I doubt myself too, more or less depending on the mood.

What I feel is a bit disturbing about him is that he starts to look more and more like a salesman or a bitconnect promoter, he is all about money, borrowing and paying interest to buy more bitcoin and increasing his exposure days by day, if the price will drop once more below 30k, how does he plan on paying, a prolonged bear market will turn his company in a Ponzi scheme, trying to attract more capital to pay up for the sums he has borrowed, as selling coins is clearly a no since it would affect the price and dragging its value down.
A bit too much hype for my liking, I prefer more the approach guys like Silbert or Novogratz have.

[dkbit98]

I can't really be sure if Michael Saylor really cares about Bitcoin and decentralization or what are his intentions, but I can follow the money of his company Microstrategy and say that I am a bit worried that companies like BlackRock and Vanguard Group are currently owning over 23% of that company.
I never trust big corporations and we know that Microstrategy currently owns 105,085 BTC or 0.5% of total Bitcoin supply.

How does someone go from this to buying 100,000 bitcoin and starting a mining council?

He didn't buy 100,000 bitcoins with his own money, and mining council is probably his idea to tackle current global warming propaganda in main stream media.
We should however be very careful with forming any mining councils like this.

[Fundamentals Of]

With Bitcoin, it is not surprising for anybody to do a 360-degree turn. Only the highly technical persons who are very familiar with coding and cryptography that would probably love Bitcoin at the first sight during its very early days. Nobody outside who was just an onlooker would fall in love with Bitcoin immediately, unlike today when there is already a hype. Back during those days, Bitcoin was more or less treated with insignificance by mainstream individuals like Saylor.

[dothebeats]

I don't think so. Just because someone changed his ways and beliefs doesn't mean he's already dodgy. Some people make mistakes on their judgment, and that's perfectly normal—even if eventually they will also campaign for the very thing that they used to hate or go against. He's just someone following where the money is, and again it's completely normal. He's got a lot of people under him, and it wouldn't be a bad move for him to do a complete 180 and help his people with his decisions.