As Bitcoin (BTC) becomes increasingly popular among investors around the world, MicroStrategy co-founder and executive chairman Michael Saylor has pointed out the problems with self-custody and expressed his belief that there will come a time when all the major banks will offer Bitcoin custody services.
Indeed, Saylor explained that if Bitcoin was to become the solution for everyone on the planet, then it was inevitable that banks, corporations, governments, and non-profits all need Bitcoin, as he told Kitco News’ Michelle Makori in an interview published on May 22.
Problem of self-custody
According to him, “the City of New York is not going to allow the mayor to walk around with Bitcoin in personal custody, and it’s not really practical for the Defense Department of the United States of America to let one general have all the Bitcoin.”
With this in mind, Saylor believes that:
“Large institutions, churches, corporations, and the like, they’re going to need an infrastructure of custodians and banks, and so I do think there will be a time when all the big banks will custody Bitcoin.”
Furthermore, he argued that some groups of people simply could not be reasonably expected to self-custody Bitcoin, such as children who inherited it or elderly people with dementia, in which case an institution like a trust company would have to step in that would manage their Bitcoin possessions for them.
Bitcoin in traditional institutions
On top of that, Saylor highlighted that “if you believe nation-states will continue to exist, then you’re going to have Bitcoin held by institutional sources, they’re going to have to have a bank to hold it for them.” Therefore:
“I think that Bitcoin is inevitably going to permeate all of the traditional institutions in the world in different ways for different reasons – economic reasons, physical reasons, political reasons.”
As a reminder, enterprise business intelligence (BI) software vendor MicroStrategy has so far purchased over 140,000 BTC, which some, including Hal Press, the founder and CEO of the cryptocurrency-focused investment fund North Rock Digital, have criticized as a “comically stupid” strategy.
Meanwhile, the flagship decentralized finance (DeFi) asset was at press time changing hands at the price of $27,323, up 1.72% on the day and gaining 0.41% across the previous week, as it looks to reverse the losses of 1.70% accumulated over the past month, as per data retrieved by Finbold on May 23.
Featured image via Lex Fridman YouTube
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