US Banking Giants Are Quietly Piling Into Bitcoin Credit, Claims Michael Saylor

At Bitcoin MENA 2025 in Abu Dhabi, Michael Saylor used his keynote to deliver a clear message: major US banks have quietly pivoted from excluding Bitcoin to actively building products on top of it – and they are now coming directly to him.

“In the past six months I have noted and been approached by BNY Mellon, by Wells Fargo, by Bank of America, by Charles Schwab, by JP Morgan, by Citi,” the Strategy (MSTR) executive chairman said. “They are all starting to issue credit against either Bitcoin or against Bitcoin derivatives like IBIT.”

Big Banks Now Want Bitcoin Exposure

Saylor contrasted that with the situation a year earlier, when “all of the large banks in the United States” still refused to bank Bitcoin. Now, he said, the sector is moving toward custody and credit. “Wells Fargo and Citi have both public announced intent to allow the custody of Bitcoin within the banks and in the year 2026 they’ll start to extend credit,” he told the audience.

Saylor framed this as the institutional expression of a broader policy shift in Washington, which he described as treating BTC as “digital gold” and, more broadly, “digital capital.” He claimed there is now “a profound consensus amongst everyone running the United States” – from the president and vice president to the Treasury, SEC and other top officials – that Bitcoin is a strategic digital asset.

“The United States is the most influential financial regulator in the world,” he said. “Whatever the US banking system does and the US security market does ripples through South America […] Europe […] the Middle East […] even Hong Kong. Even the Chinese will copy what the US is doing.”

Against that backdrop, Saylor positioned Strategy as “the world’s first digital treasury company,” whose business model is to industrialize BTC-backed credit. He reported that the company now holds 660,624 BTC, including 10,600 BTC acquired “yesterday,” and is currently buying “in the range of $500 million to a billion a week” in Bitcoin. “We’re not stopping,” he said. “I think that we can buy more Bitcoin than the sellers can sell. And we’re going to take it all. And we’re going to take it out of circulation.”

The core of his argument is the conversion of volatile “digital capital” into more stable “digital credit.” Strategy over-collateralizes its credit instruments “five-to-one or ten-to-one,” aiming to protect principal even if BTC falls 90%. In return, it targets yields around 8–12.5% in its preferred and note structures, funded by BTC’s expected long-term appreciation.

Saylor presented MSTR equity as “amplified Bitcoin” because issuing credit and reinvesting in BTC can, in his model, double BTC-per-share roughly every seven years. For investors who “don’t trust anybody,” he argued, holding BTC directly remains rational; for those wanting yield and lower volatility, he pitched BTC-backed credit as the superior choice.

He then extended the logic further, outlining a path from digital credit to “digital money.” By constructing a fund that is mostly composed of short-duration BTC-backed credit (such as his “Stretch” structure), buffered with fiat instruments and cash, Saylor claimed one can create a $1 instrument with near-zero volatility and an estimated yield around 8%, distributed as tax-deferred dividends. “I could create what looks like a stablecoin […] a $1 stablecoin stable to six significant digits that pays you 8% yield tax-deferred but powered by Bitcoin,” he said, adding that banks, asset managers or crypto firms could wrap this into coins, funds or deposit-like accounts.

The speech ended as a direct appeal to sovereign wealth funds and regulators in the region. Saylor urged nations that “want to be the Switzerland of the 21st century” to let banks custody Bitcoin, extend BTC-backed credit and ultimately offer digital-money accounts that pay several hundred basis points above the risk-free rate. “If you give people money that’s better than every other bank on Earth, all of the capital in the world will flow into that country, that bank,” he said.

At press time, BTC traded at $92,700.