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Saylor Will ‘Burn’ His Bitcoin Keys for the Good of Humanity

Estimates are Michael Saylor owns over 17,000 Bitcoin, and yet he plans to ‘destroy’ them all...

Author

Adam Atlantic
January 09, 2025 • Estimated Reading Time: 4 minutes

The creator of Bitcoin is Satoshi Nakamoto.

Sixteen years later and no one knows who Satoshi is.

But research into Bitcoin’s blockchain early in 2013 was able to estimate Satoshi owned through various wallets, around 1,148,800 Bitcoin[1] (about $100 million at the time, around $112.5 billion today).

These Bitcoin have never moved. The expectation is they will never move. And that we’ll never know who Satoshi is. That means those 1,148,800 BTC are ‘lost’ forever.

In total, only 20,999,999.9769 Bitcoin (just short of 21 million, but we say 21 million for ease) will ever exist. But if 1,148,800 of those are Satoshi’s ‘lost’ Bitcoin, then the actual total available supply of Bitcoin will only be 19,851,199.9769.

Satoshi’s Bitcoin aren’t the only ones ‘lost’ forever. We know that over the years, Bitcoin were lost due to owners losing hardware devices, losing hard drives, losing the ‘keys’ needed to access Bitcoin wallets.

Estimates are as many as another 3.8 million[2] Bitcoin are lost forever. That means the actual total available supply of Bitcoin will only be 16,051,199.9769.

In the future that number is likely to decrease as people continue to lose their Bitcoin. And in some (rarer) cases, altruism kicks in and people like Michael Saylor, founder and Chairman of MicroStrategy just ‘burn’ their Bitcoin, like Satoshi, for the greater good of civilization.

Saylor Will Give Away Billions for All the Hodlers

According to Saylor, one of the ‘wonderful’ things about Bitcoin is the ability to add a humanitarian effect to supporting the protocol.[3]

As he recently explained on Fox Business, ‘If you accumulate a lot of wealth in Bitcoin and you just burn the keys when you “leave” you’re making a pro rata contribution to everybody that owns Bitcoin in the world…’

His view is when his time is up, it’s best to, ‘…take the Bitcoin with you.’

Estimates are he owns over 17,732 Bitcoin: at current prices around $1.7 billion. Saylor is only 59, so when his time is up, it’s likely a more valuable stash by then.

But can he truly mean it?

Burning potentially tens or hundreds of billions of dollars in Bitcoin for the good of other Bitcoin hodlers?

Our take is that yes, he really is going to just ‘burn’ his stash.

Is Saylor, Satoshi 2.0?

In October 2024 in another interview, he said,[4] ‘I’m a single guy, I have no children. When I’m gone, I’m gone. Just like Satoshi left a million Bitcoin to the universe, so I’m leaving whatever I’ve got to the civilization.’

It’s worth noting at the Bitcoin 2024 conference he said, ‘When I’m gone, my stock, my shares, my assets flow into a public charity whose mission is to support #Bitcoin and the adoption of BTC forever.’[5] 

That doesn’t sound like he’ll burn his keys. But our take is that by supporting Bitcoin in this way, like Satoshi, he’ll leave his Bitcoin inaccessible forever.

Of course, in doing this, it further cuts the future total available supply of Bitcoin. And as the available supply falls, and the ongoing demand for Bitcoin rises, the expectation of all hodlers is the price per Bitcoin soars towards $13 million (and beyond) as Saylor himself has predicted.[6]

If this is Saylor’s strategy, and his forecasts come true, the only question that remains is, are you bullish enough on Bitcoin?

Trust in crypto,
Adam Atlantic