Saylor Drops Digital Asset Bill of Rights, Banks Need to Learn to Hold Their Bitcoin 🏦

Strategy Executive Chairman Michael Saylor has called for a "bill of digital rights" covering individuals and companies using digital assets, setting out five core freedoms: the right to create, issue, custody, transfer, and use digital assets. Owners should be able to choose between self-custody and third-party custodians without surrendering control, Saylor said at the Bitcoin Policy Institute's Freedom Tech DC event, and tokens should be easier to move between wallets, providers, and companies. He also framed the proposal as a capital-formation tool, with a stated ambition for 10 million new companies to raise money through streamlined digital-asset procedures. "The age of Digital Assets and Digital Intelligence needs a bill of digital rights, not a bill of restrictions," he said.

The plan pushes for banks to custody $BTC for customers and to lend against it under clear rules, with Saylor urging regulators to treat custody, collateralized lending, and direct balance-sheet exposure as separate activities. He pointed to the Basel framework's 1,250% risk weight for Group 2b crypto exposures as an example of overly severe treatment. Strategy's own Bitcoin Banking Adoption Index put major-bank uptake at 32% in July, and Saylor has previously said JPMorgan CEO Jamie Dimon backs Bitcoin privately even while calling it a pet rock in public.

Saylor tied the industry's potential size to artificial intelligence, arguing that AI agents transacting around the clock need money that moves at software speed, and put the upper bound at $100 trillion in market value without giving a timeline. He also said digital dollars should be allowed to compete on yield and move at the speed of light, and that "where the law prevents it, the law should change."

The push comes after the Senate voted 49-50 on September 15 against advancing the CLARITY Act, a market-structure bill Saylor criticized as too restrictive. He now expects progress over the next two years to come from the SEC, the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, Treasury, and the White House rather than Congress. Meanwhile, Strategy resumed Bitcoin buying after a two-week pause, acquiring 950 $BTC for $75.7 million at an average price of $79,670 per coin, bringing holdings to 846,000 $BTC acquired for about $63.8 billion at an average cost of $75,416 per coin, with $BTC trading at about $84,523 at the time of publication.