The two rich Bitcoiners that have the attention of the crypto world
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Jack Dorsey, left, and Michael Saylor. Photo illustration: Shoshana Gordon/Axios. Photos: Marco Bello/AFP, Jason Koerner/Getty Images for Bitcoin Magazine
The best known Bitcoin converts among America's very rich, MicroStrategy's Michael Saylor and Block, Inc's, Jack Dorsey, represent very different reasons for being a Bitcoiner.
Why it matters: With powerful brands and lots of bitcoin, both have the attention of the cryptocurrency world.
In recent talks, Dorsey, formerly the CEO at Twitter, presented a vision of bitcoin freeing people from mechanisms of control. Saylor, meanwhile, presented it as enriching people who bet on a paradigmatic shift in finance.
Zoom in: Dorsey spoke at a private gathering last month organized by recording legend Rick Rubin.
- His talk is all about the ways in which people are less free than they think, because everything they use (such as money and platforms), they use at the pleasure of faceless authorities.
- And, as he notes, their access to those things can be taken away at any time. But then he explains how Bitcoin — and technology based on it — give people an alternative, where access is permissionless and uncensorable.
Saylor, instead, recently argued how bitcoin is the best thing ever created, with the greatest potential for price appreciation.
- The language of his talk, given at at a May conference he put together in Las Vegas, is very much focused on a winner-take-all perspective, that there will be no second place in the future. Bitcoin, in his view, is the best form capital has ever taken.
Friction point: Saylor predicted that no asset besides bitcoin would ever get wrapped in a spot ETF in the U.S., which was a swing and a miss.
- He made the point to argue that BTC will be the only crypto asset ever adopted by institutional investors. It may still be true that such investors strongly favor it going forward, however.
Dorsey tends to stay quiet. Even when he speaks, he's soft spoken, but he's put a lot into Bitcoin.
- Most recently, he's pledged $21 million to its open source development. And he's invested in Bitcoin startups, such as Lightning Labs.
- Cash App, launched by Block in 2013, was one of the first mainstream apps to give normal people an easy way to get bitcoin. Now the company is devoting part of its bitcoin profits to buying bitcoin.
- Block also contributes a lot to building new products to expand the reach of bitcoin, such as its hardware wallet.
- Block holds 8,027 BTC.
Saylor is mainly known for buying and holding lots of bitcoin, mainly through his company, MicroStrategy.
- Also for posting things like this — a lot.
- MicroStrategy holds 214,278 BTC, over 1% of the total supply.
The intrigue: Unlike other famous rich guys in tech, Saylor and Dorsey aren't into crypto in general. They are only interested in Bitcoin.
- Saylor compares his journey to Dorsey's in a recent podcast, saying Dorsey found it on a spiritual path, whereas Saylor says he needed to save his company.
The bottom line: Dorsey and Saylor may have become converted for different reasons, but they are fundamentally aligned.
