Michael Saylor: Bitcoin enters the "digital capital" era, accelerating the embrace of institutionalization and financialization

The founder of Strategy, Michael Saylor, stated that Bitcoin is gradually transitioning from an early "peer-to-peer electronic cash" experiment to a global digital capital infrastructure. As Bitcoin is widely adopted by individuals, funds, publicly listed companies, banks, custodians, trading platforms, and governments, some of the early Bitcoin culture has evolved from a risk defense mechanism into a form of "orthodoxy," which includes viewing self-custody as the only legitimate way to hold Bitcoin and categorizing financial products related to Bitcoin, such as ETFs, bonds, preferred stocks, and derivatives, as "paper Bitcoin." These views played an important role in the early development of Bitcoin, but are now insufficient to explain its expanding economic ecosystem.

The more important role of Bitcoin in the future may not be to replace fiat currency as a daily payment tool, but rather to become a scarce, globally liquid, programmable "digital capital" that does not rely on an issuer. Fiat currency will still play a core role in taxes, wages, contracts, and everyday business, while Bitcoin can form a new layered financial system with banks, securities, credit, insurance, and corporations. Self-custody should be viewed as a right rather than an obligation, and professional custody, multi-signature, institutional custody, and trading platform products can all play a role based on different users' risk tolerance and actual needs. What truly needs to be vigilant is not all counterparties, but those counterparties lacking transparency, isolation mechanisms, governance capabilities, and risk control; "do not trust any institution" should shift to risk identification of different institutions.

The next phase of the Bitcoin ecosystem will be the expansion of the "digital capital market," rather than a return to a closed pure Bitcoin economy. With the continuous development of spot Bitcoin ETFs, publicly listed companies' Bitcoin reserves, bonds, preferred stocks, and other financial products, Bitcoin is becoming a new underlying asset that connects stocks, debt, credit, currency, derivatives, and even the machine economy. This trend can be termed the "Bitcoin Reformation," with core principles including "protocol minimalism, economic maximization," "replacing founder worship with first principles," "self-custody as a right rather than a ritual," "judging security by evidence rather than brand," "replacing counterparty nihilism with counterparty identification," and allowing fiat currency and Bitcoin to coexist in the long term. Bitcoin is not abandoning its early core principles but is breaking free from its cultural limitations: it is transitioning from electronic cash to digital gold and further becoming a digital capital network that encompasses capital, credit, equity, debt, currency, and the machine economy.