đ¨đ¨đ¨MICHAEL SAYLOR CALLS ONCHAIN PROOF-OF-RESERVES A âBAD IDEA,â RULES IT OUT FOR STRATEGY OVER SECURITY CONCERNS
Responding to a question on whether Strategy (formerly MicroStrategy) has any plans to publish onchain proof-of-reserves during a sideline event ahead of Bitcoin
BTC -0.09%
2025 in Las Vegas on Monday night, the company's co-founder and executive chairman, Michael Saylor, said it posed security threats.
Many crypto firms broadly adopted proof-of-reserve measures after FTX's collapse to demonstrate onchain holdings for transparency. However, critics argue the approach falls short â often omitting audited fiat reserves, liabilities, and other key data needed to assess a firm's full financial health.
Saylor said that while the crypto industry learned from FTX's failure, he was unsure it had learned the things that the institutional community needs going forward, arguing that the current way to publish proof of reserves is insecure. "It actually dilutes the security of the issuer, the custodians, the exchanges, and the investors. It's not a good idea. It's a bad idea," he said. "It's like publishing the address and the bank accounts of all your kids and your phone numbers of all your kids, and then thinking somehow that makes your family better. It doesn't make your family better."
Saylor suggested that no institutional grade or enterprise security analyst would recommend publicly sharing wallet addresses, as it enables full traceability of past and future transactions. Ask any AI to list the risks, and you'll get a book's worth of vulnerabilities, he claimed.
"You publish your wallet, that's an attack vector for hackers, nation-state actors, every type of troll imaginable," Saylor said. "And it creates so much liability that you should think twice before you do it. It's okay at a small level, but really, it isn't God's gift. I think people give too much credence to it on X.
