Media report Michael Saylor is going to burn his private keys as he dies. See what he actually said

On Feb. 9, 2025, Cointelegraph published a clip of a January interview with Strategy chair Michael Saylor on Fox. According to the caption, in the video, Saylor hints he is going to burn his BTC keys as he dies to ensure the coins will never be sold. Let’s see what Saylor said, is there a hint, and what is the purpose of burning the keys.

Several media channels reposted the clip from Cointelegraph, with various headlines, from which one could conclude the Strategy exec is indeed going to pull his stashes into the grave as he dies. However, that’s not what he said in the clip.

In the video, Saylor says that it would be good for someone who has a lot of bitcoins to burn the keys to make a “pro rata contribution” to all the BTC holders across the world “based on their contribution and their knowledge of Bitcoin.”

The idea is simple – due to the deflationary nature of Bitcoin, as a large amount of BTC leaves the circulation forever, the remaining bitcoins get more valuable. It means that the rest of the BTC holders may get richer as a result of the move.

In this regard, Saylor’s idea is similar to Donald Trump’s urge not to sell bitcoins and accumulate them strategically. Various proposals for Bitcoin reserves have a clause forbidding the sale of BTC for years in order to ensure market stability and consistent demand.

Although Saylor is definitely a person who accumulated much BTC, the way he put his idea doesn’t oblige him to follow the script he described.

He didn’t add a single word that could be seen as a hint that he himself is going to lock his bitcoins forever. Rather, he shared the idea with others. And yes, there is a chance that Saylor is considering doing something like this. However, Saylor can come up with another decision in the future.

He concluded that he sees himself as a person who took Satoshi’s torch and continues to commercialize Bitcoin with corporations and governments.

How good is this idea?

At least, the idea correlates with the vision of Satoshi Nakamoto, who created Bitcoin scarcity on purpose. When Saylor speaks about how great Bitcoin is, he often emphasizes its scarcity as the prime driver of its price.

During the PBD Podcast episode in 2024, he said that he could create more real estate in New York City, create more watches, create more gold (sic!), and any kind of commodity if he had enough time and money. But Bitcoin has an absolute cap which is 21 million, said Saylor. As the commodity price goes up, the producers are incentivized to produce more, which is not the case with Bitcoin. That’s why Bitcoin is a great store of value, according to Saylor.

He claims that the American dollar will be de facto-backed by Bitcoin as soon as the government starts to invest in it. In Saylor’s opinion, this will make the dollar more powerful, not less, as some experts warn. The reason is the same–as long as the country owns a huge chunk of the world’s BTC, its national currency will be strong.

Nevertheless, it’s worth noting that scarcity drives the value of Bitcoin as long as demand for BTC stays strong. Let’s say someone draws a self-portrait, creating an extremely scarce item. Will it be extremely valuable? Not necessarily. Bitcoin is driven by demand. The growing scarcity of the asset boosts the demand further, increasing the urge of multiple entities (including corporations and governments) to acquire some.

Let’s say someone with 450,000 BTC (an approximate amount in Saylor’s control as of January 2025) dies before the 2028 Bitcoin halving. In the 2024–2028 cycle, 450 BTC is produced every day. So, removing 450k bitcoins from circulation in one day eliminates the result of almost three years of mining between 2024 and 2028 or nearly everything that will be mined between 2028 and 2033.

Some even compare this probable case to halving. However, unlike halving, a whale burning the keys is a different case. First off, unlike halving, it decreases the amount in circulation and second, it doesn’t involve miners having to raise BTC prices to keep mining profitability. However, the BTC buyers will have to compete for much fewer remaining bitcoins, which is a good climate for price growth.

Generally, it seems that Saylor is right about the possible effect of such a move. However, there are some factors that may play his “plan” around.

The future of lost bitcoins

As of February 2025, over three million of the 20 million bitcoins that are already mined are considered “lost” due to forgotten or lost keys, coins sent to wrong addresses, and other reasons. According to other estimations, there are over 6 million lost bitcoins out there.

Although so many lost coins make Bitcoin even scarcer, the fate of these coins is not that conclusive.

The very concept of a 21 million hard cap is not something unchangeable. The same mechanism that is used to improve the Bitcoin network can change the total supply of bitcoins or remove it altogether.

This possibly was mentioned in an educational video on Bitcoin released by BlackRock, a company that has the largest amount of BTC. This unorthodox fact was met with anger and disapproval from the community, however, it doesn’t change the very fact that the hard cap can be changed if enough miners see this idea favorably, for any reason.

If the hard cap goes away or the total supply increases, the value of lost bitcoins may drop and Saylor’s vision turns out to be false.

Another concern is quantum computers. Quantum computers are one of the concerning technologies that are expected to drastically change the game as soon as they enter the scope.

Their computational abilities may be strong enough to break BTC wallets. The Bitcoin community is preparing to prevent this but the outcome is not known as of now. There is a possibility that “lost” bitcoins will be freed or stolen via quantum computers.