‘Bitcoin is no longer a speculative channel waiting for price increases’

This view was stated by Mr. Michael Saylor, Chairman of the company that owns the most Bitcoin (BTC) globally, Strategy, in his opening speech of Blockchain Week 2025 organized by the Binance exchange in the United Arab Emirates (UAE).

According to the cryptocurrency billionaire, Bitcoin is not just a speculative asset, but is becoming a new capital infrastructure, paving the way for unprecedented payment, investment and credit models. He sees BTC as transforming into “digital capital”, similar to gold or Treasury bonds a generation ago, but in a purely digital form, protected by encryption and distributed globally.

Acceptance by major organizations and institutions is creating a solid foundation. Over the past year, the United States has recorded support for cryptocurrency from politics and the ruling class. The media recorded the head of the country calling himself “Bitcoin president”, a cabinet full of digital asset supporters and agencies such as the Ministry of Finance, the US Federal Reserve (Fed), and bank regulators simultaneously sending out messages that digital currency or Bitcoin are not bad assets.

In the following roundtable discussion, Mr. Brad Garlinghouse – CEO of global payment system Ripple – said that the US government’s change in attitude was a turning point. Bitcoin now has a relatively clear legal framework in the world’s largest economy, which accounts for 22% of global GDP. “A market that was hostile to cryptocurrency for 4-5 years in a row but everything has changed in less than a year,” he compared.

This change quickly triggered large capital flows, first of all at the largest global banks. Michael Saylor recalled how in the past 12 months, Citi, JP Morgan, Wells Fargo, Bank of America or Vanguard all shifted from being hostile, negative or skeptical to a more positive attitude when approaching cryptocurrencies. At the same time, Bitcoin ETFs are approved.

“Bitcoin has gone from being considered a fringe asset to becoming an asset that banks, investment funds or listed companies are willing to accept as collateral, reserve assets and mainstream financial products,” he said.

Similarly in his presentation, Binance CEO Richard Teng said that cryptocurrency is not a niche investment product. They are becoming the “global value transport infrastructure” layer. If we compare the economy to a living organism, digital currency is getting very close to the role of a new “blood vessel”.

If only at Binance, this is shown through notable numbers such as nearly 300 million users, nearly 21 million payment acceptance points, and more than 272 billion USD in transactions mainly from payments for actual goods and services. “This is real money flow, not just speculative trading on the floor,” he emphasized.

A strong driver of the spread of cryptocurrencies is stablecoins – tokens pegged to fiat currency. According to Teng, capitalization and the number of wallets holding stablecoins have both increased by about 50% in the past year alone. Legal clarity in the US, Europe and many other markets has given stablecoins the green light to enter the mainstream financial mainstream.

Not only individual users, institutional capital flows of financial “sharks” are also moving in this direction. Many countries have also begun implementing digital currency payment systems on a nationwide scale such as El Salvador, UAE, Argentina or Bhutan.

However, Bitcoin’s journey from primarily a speculative asset to a “digital capital” in Michael Saylor’s eyes is not enough. According to him, digital currency needs to move toward becoming a type of credit. The world may hoard assets, but everything from payroll, borrowing, corporate investment to daily spending, requires a flow of credit.

Saylor’s Strategy company is doing what traditionally only banks or large financial institutions can do, including raising capital from the market, using that capital to buy BTC and then turning them into collateral, creating digital credit products with interest rates of 10-12%. Last year, they mobilized 22 billion USD of “fresh money, real rice” to pour into Bitcoin. This year, the company expects the mobilized amount to reach a similar level.

“Cryptocurrency and blockchain technology can change the global credit market worth 300,000 billion USD from the way it is created, distributed and traded,” the billionaire stated.

However, many observers from the perspective of traditional finance groups believe that Bitcoin and digital currencies are too volatile. This becomes a major obstacle in the psychology of many parties before entering new markets. However, Ms. Lily Liu – president of the Solana Foundation, the organization backing the cryptocurrency network of the same name – said that volatility is the nature of any ambition.

In fact, from April to the end of September, the market went through a period of “excessive excitement”, so the current correction is easy to explain, similar to the movement of many other asset types. Despite fluctuations, ETF trading volume is still at billions of USD, showing that capital flows do not leave the ecosystem but are only reallocated.