Hearing Michael Saylor talk about building $200 trillion in credit on top of Bitcoin, I’ll be honest, it just didn’t sit right. He said it at a conference yesterday. The idea is that once Bitcoin’s market cap hits $100 trillion, we could see a mountain of debt layered on top of it. And then, this morning, Coinbase’s Brian Armstrong said something similar on CNBC. It all started to feel a bit… off.
A System Born From Crisis
You have to remember where Bitcoin came from. It wasn’t created in a vacuum. It was a direct response to the 2008 financial meltdown—a crisis built on a shaky, over-leveraged system full of risky debt. The whole point was to offer an escape from that. When I imagine Satoshi coding this thing, I don’t picture someone asking, “How can we create the perfect new collateral for even more debt?” That seems to miss the mark entirely.
The original idea felt more like, “Here’s a way for people to save their money without it losing value, so they aren’t forced to play risky games with banks and complex financial products.” It was supposed to be a way out, not a new entrance back into the same casino.
The Vision Versus The Proposal
Now, I’m not sure we’ll ever see a world where Bitcoin is the only money. That might be a stretch. But the future these executives are painting—where Bitcoin becomes “digital capital” supporting a massive new credit system—feels like a different path altogether. It risks turning Bitcoin into just another asset for the existing financial machine to use, rather than a replacement for it.
What I’ve seen, what feels closer to the spirit of Bitcoin, are the circular economies. I’ve visited a few. These are places where people actually use bitcoin as money every day. For many there, a bank account isn’t even an option. They’ve been left out. But with Bitcoin, they can save. They can build something. They can start small businesses without needing permission from a broken system.
Losing the Plot?
That’s the magic of it. It empowers people who’ve been ignored and protects the rest of us from becoming slaves to debt. It’s fine if we never fully get rid of the old financial world. But to start talking about rebuilding that same world on top of Bitcoin, before we’ve even succeeded in getting it adopted as simple, honest money? It feels like we’re getting ahead of ourselves.
Maybe it’s too much to ask, but it would be nice to see the big names in the industry championing that original vision first. Before we start talking about using Bitcoin as collateral for a system that desperately needs changing, not just repackaging.
