Strategy CEO Lifts The Curtain On Bitcoin Talks With Largest US Banks

Strategy CEO Phong Le has been on the highway with Michael Saylor, and the message from the conferences is much less about “orange-pilling” bankers than watching giant establishments dash to shut a Bitcoin product hole they will not ignore.

In a Dec. 23 interview with CoinStories host Nathalie Brunell, Le stated the conversations begin with probably the most fundamental constructing blocks, custody and change as a result of banks have already watched significant flows transfer to crypto-native and quasi-crypto incumbents.

“They’re all attempting to meet up with simply the bottom of custodying Bitcoin and offering change providers,” Le stated. “They’ve seen, for instance, Coinbase or Fidelity, and what they’re doing. And they need to have the ability to supply their prospects native providers with BTC in order that they don’t take the cash off the platform out to some place else.”

Large US Banks Begin Bitcoin Conversations

Le described this baseline in acquainted banking language, positioning BTC as an account-type object inside present distribution quite than an exterior asset purchasers self-custody elsewhere. “So I’ll simply begin that as a baseline. I name it a checking account and a financial savings account for Bitcoin, proper?” he stated. “And then on prime of that, what do they wish to do?”

His reply was a laddered product roadmap that more and more resembles the capital-markets “stack” Strategy has spent the final a number of years industrializing: credit score, yield, structured publicity, and ultimately one thing near money-like devices backed by BTC collateral.

“Then they wish to supply issues just like the coin lending, which implies you get loans in opposition to Bitcoin,” Le stated. “And we all know lots of of us are doing that on a one-to-one personal mortgage foundation, however they need to present it generally. Perhaps providing devices that offer you yield off of Bitcoin. That would be the subsequent type of step above that.”

From there, Le stated, banks begin converging on Strategy’s own playbook, not essentially copying it line-by-line, however arriving on the similar conclusion that Bitcoin can be utilized as balance-sheet collateral to fabricate investable merchandise.

“And then a set of Bitcoin-backed merchandise, not an excessive amount of completely different than what we do,” he stated. “An funding financial institution would need to have the ability to underwrite Bitcoin-backed securities like MSTR or like every of our preferreds. That can be the subsequent step.”

The “underwrite” remark is the inform. This just isn’t merely about giving wealth purchasers a custody button. It is about turning publicity into fundable, tradable paper that sits comfortably inside present financial institution distribution: preferreds, structured notes, and credit score devices that appear like what purchasers already purchase, simply with BTC because the collateral story.

Le then moved into what he known as “digital credit score,” explicitly tying it to preferred-style issuance and bank-native variants of the identical thought.

“And you then get into providing digital credit score, proper? Which can be our preferreds or a financial institution most popular based mostly off of Bitcoin,” he stated. “And then the very last thing, which is what Mike talked about at Bitcoin within the Middle East, which is digital cash, proper? How do you give someone primarily entry to one thing that appears like cash backed by Bitcoin that offers them a gentle yield that’s higher than what they might get in any other case known as eight, 9 p.c?”

That “digital cash” framing is aligned with what Saylor has been signaling on stage: BTC as collateral that may assist a broader credit score superstructure. At Bitcoin MENA 2025 in Abu Dhabi, Saylor argued the shift is already underway and, in his telling, the most important names in US finance are not holding their distance, as Bitcoinist reported.

“In the previous six months I’ve famous and been approached by BNY Mellon, by Wells Fargo, by Bank of America, by Charles Schwab, by JP Morgan, by Citi,” Saylor stated. “They are all beginning to challenge credit score in opposition to both Bitcoin or in opposition to derivatives like IBIT.”

At press time, BTC traded at