Speaking at Bitcoin 2025, MicroStrategy chair Michael Saylor refused to disclose his firm’s wallet addresses.
While he cited security-driven justification, the refusal has drawn harsh backlash from industry critics.
Michael Saylor Defends Privacy Over Transparency at Bitcoin 2025
At the Bitcoin 2025 conference on May 26, MicroStrategy Executive Chairman Michael Saylor firmly dismissed publishing the firm’s Bitcoin wallet address. This stance triggered a wave of criticism from transparency advocates and crypto influencers.
Saylor likened publishing the company’s wallet to “publicizing your bank account and your kids’ phone numbers.” He argues that this would expose MicroStrategy to hackers and “every type of troll imaginable.”
During a lengthy on-stage response, he framed proof-of-reserves (PoR) as a “crypto parlor trick” that fails to account for liabilities and opens institutional holders to unnecessary risks.
“The current conventional way to publish proof-of-reserves is an insecure proof-of-reserves. No institutional-grade or enterprise security analyst would think that publishing wallets is a great idea,” Saylor argued.
Instead, Saylor advocated for US regulatory compliance and traditional corporate audits as the gold standard.
“The best practice is to have a Big Four auditor verify holdings, subject to Sarbanes-Oxley, with criminal liability for executives if they lie. That’s what my company is,” he said.
MicroStrategy currently holds 576,230 BTC, valued at approximately $62.84 billion. Yet despite this massive exposure, the company has never revealed its wallet address, sparking skepticism across the crypto community.
Analysts Bash Saylors’ Claims That Publishing Wallets Dilutes Security
Some crypto commentators praised Saylor’s stance, claiming “his answer silences all haters.” However, not everyone agrees.
Duo Nine, founder of Your Crypto Community (YCC), blasted Saylor’s remarks as “a huge red flag.”
“His excuse sounds more like he’s buying paper Bitcoin…Calling proof-of-reserves a bad idea starts to sound like Saylor is hiding something,” Duo Nine wrote on X.
Duo compared MicroStrategy’s leveraged Bitcoin buying strategy to the now-defunct Terra Luna model in a separate thread. Notably, Strategy finances the model by issuing more MSTR and preferred shares,
“Saylor is leverage looping BTC to the tune of billions. At some point, he’ll either sell Bitcoin or default. That’s how you create a death spiral,” Duo Nine warned.
Jacob King, CEO of WhaleWire, also doubted Saylor’s motivations. The analyst articulated that Bitcoin’s whole premise is built on transparency, security, and traceable ownership.
“They’re hiding their wallets because they don’t want the public to see when they offload their bags after luring in retail sheep,” King stated.
The backlash mirrors a growing divide within the Bitcoin community between institutional-grade security practices and grassroots demands for on-chain transparency.
On the one hand, some investors accept third-party audits and SEC filings as sufficient. Meanwhile, others see the refusal to publish on-chain data as a betrayal of Bitcoin’s core principles. Saylor, for his part, remains steadfast.
“…if you’re a crypto person, hold your own crypto. And if you are an institutional investor, let me tell you, I have had this social vest or since 1998…What is absolutely critical on the security market is that the CFO, the CEO, the outside directors, the outside auditors, and the risk managers all be trusted,” Saylor emphasized.
But with over half a million BTC under MicroStrategy’s control and critics drawing parallels to past collapses, pressure may continue to mount.
With the debate over transparency versus security unlikely to fade, MicroStrategy’s (now Strategy) opaque stance could become an enduring flashpoint.
Meanwhile, Saylor’s bold stance aligns with Paolo Ardoino’s, who stated in an April 2024 interview that the company relies on attestations for its reserves.
This followed a letter from Consumers’ Research, addressed to Washington Governor Jay Inslee, which intended to protect consumers.
The letter criticized Tether for failing to conduct an audit to prove that its USDT stablecoin is backed 1:1 by the US dollar, despite promises dating back nearly 10 years.
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