I have to call BS on this claim Michael Saylor is now the overlord of Bitcoin and can single-handedly decide its fate. That’s just ridiculous.
During drama over whether MicroStrategy’s valuation makes sense, Vinny Lingham declared Saylor is the most powerful person in Bitcoin after Satoshi Nakamoto. He argued that Saylor can dictate terms by threatening to dump MicroStrategy’s massive bitcoin stash if he doesn’t get his way.
While you ask MicroStrategy is fair game, the idea that Saylor controls the fate of Bitcoin is intellectually dishonest drama-baiting. Vinnie knows best.
Bitcoin is decentralized, permissionless, and consensus-based. No entity, not even the largest holder, can dictate the terms.
If influence were correlated with Bitcoin ownership, the asset would have gone bankrupt long ago. Governments could easily acquire 10% of the supply with their printing presses and control Bitcoin – but that’s not how it works.
Saylor cannot force protocol changes on Bitcoin. Even if he demands certain functions, node operators have the real power by enforcing consensus rules. If Saylor forks Bitcoin to make unilateral changes, the main chain will continue to exist while his fork dies, assuming it would be a worse version.
We’ve already seen this happen when early influencers like Roger Ver disagreed with the community. Bitcoin continued to ride while Ver’s alternative chain became irrelevant.
Bitcoin’s entire value comes from the fact that no single party has control over it. If whales could centralize decision-making by purchasing large portions, the entire experiment would fail. Fortunately, that’s impossible by design.
So while Saylor offers a valuable perspective, his influence has limits. He cannot force developers, miners, or nodes to follow his preferred roadmap. His Bitcoin stack gives him a voice at the table, not absolute authority.
No matter how many satoshis Saylor collects, he cannot unilaterally impose change on a decentralized, leaderless network. Bitcoin derives its resilience precisely from preventing such dominance.
So enough with this fake story that Michael Saylor is now the dictator of Bitcoin. He is certainly an influential figure, but he has no more control over the fate of Bitcoin than you and I. That power remains dispersed.
This article is a To take. The opinions expressed are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect those of BTC Inc or Bitcoin Magazine.