At first glance, it’s a daring outing. On August 24, 2026, Michael Saylor published a 14-section essay titled “The Bitcoin Reformation.” Bitcoin is currently trading around $80,360, and now the boss of MicroStrategy is directly attacking the founding dogmas of the network. Satoshi is no longer presented as an infallible oracle. Self-custody is no longer an absolute duty. Institutions are no longer seen as systematic enemies. Obviously, this made the crypto community react, and not just a little.
In brief
- Michael Saylor publishes a 14-section essay titled “The Bitcoin Reformation” on August 24, 2026.
- He challenges the oracle status attributed to Satoshi Nakamoto and the ideological immobility of the network.
- Self-custody becomes a right, no longer a duty, based on the Coldcard incident.
- The failure of the BIP-110 proposal, closed on August 9, 2026, serves as a central example: conviction does not create consensus.
- The essay divides the community between supporters of a reform deemed necessary and detractors who denounce a dilution of the founding principles.
Satoshi is no longer an oracle: Saylor’s exit that makes people cringe
Questioning the status of Satoshi Nakamoto, not many people dare to confront it head-on. Saylor, for his part, risks it without complexes. Satoshi was a founder, not an oracle, he writes in black and white, in English in the text: “ Satoshi was a founder, not an oracle “.
The white paper is not a constitution set in stone, according to him. This quasi-religious veneration would have ended up freezing the network. Instead of moving it forward, precisely. He traces the trajectory of bitcoin from the beginning: “peer-to-peer electronic cash” initially, then “digital gold” for years, and now “digital capital” in his own words, the basis of a new generation of credit and economic organization, no less.
Honoring Satoshi does not mean preserving 2008 under cover, he says in substance. Well, obviously not everyone agrees. Bitcoin purists see it more as a dilution than an evolution, and the debate is clearly not settled.
Bitcoin: self-custody, a right and not a duty
Michael Saylor also affirms that self-custody is a right, not an obligatory ritual. He relies on the Coldcard incident to support his point, where a flaw in wallets marked “Bitcoin-only” cost their users more than 100 million dollars.
Enough to call into question the idea that ideological purity protects everything. It doesn’t actually protect against anything, in this specific case. No ideological pedigree would have prevented these weak keys from being released at Coldcard, he roughly sums up. He distinguishes institutional custody, which reduces operational errors, from the risks specific to self-custody: theft, loss of keys, inheritance issues never resolved in time due to lack of anticipation, a classic.
Rather than a total rejection of institutions, he calls for sorting on a case-by-case basis. Reactions remain divided on this, as is often the case with Saylor. Some see it as a drift towards traditional finance, the very one that bitcoin was originally intended to replace.
Others simply believe that bitcoin is for everyone, with or without a hardware wallet in a drawer.
BIP-110: the failure which proves that conviction does not create consensus
Michael Saylor also uses the failure of BIP-110 to illustrate his vision of governance. This proposal aimed to restrict the data embedded in bitcoin transactions. The network simply rejected it, without much public debate.
It was marked closed on August 9, 2026. Belief is not consensus, he writes. This is perhaps the most repeated sentence in the entire essay since its release, on X in any case. According to him, no one can force the network to follow a particular vision, even his own.
Anyone can fork Bitcoin. No one can force the economy to follow, he adds. Governance is based on consent between actors who clearly do not bear the same costs. And the failure of BIP-110 shows this well: orthodoxy is not imposed by conviction, however sincere it may be.
The reactions on
L’essay obviously caused a debate on X, as it does every time someone touches on the fundamentals of bitcoin. Some welcome a position that frees the network from ambient dogmatism, finally. Others outright accuse Michael Saylor of wanting to dilute the essence of bitcoin.
It is not up to you to declare a reform, you are a charlatan, writes a user, rather cash on the subject. Another adds a layer: the anti-BIP110 crowd slowly realizes that they have been had, bitcoin as a currency is dead according to them, just that.
More moderate voices still speak of a useful reformulation of the network’s issues. Some compare Michael Saylor to a Martin Luther of Bitcoin, sorry. Others, like Caged Bird, rather evoke mental gymnastics to justify an institutional shift that has already been well underway at MicroStrategy for several years now.
Saylor himself responded that bitcoin does not abandon its principles, it transcends its prejudices, he said soberly for once. Will this convince the skeptics? Nothing is less certain.
Key figures from Saylor’s essay
- BTC price at time of publication: $80,360
- Number of essay sections: 14
- Losses linked to the Coldcard incident: more than $100 million
- BIP-110 closing date: August 9, 2026
- Americans deeming crypto risky for their retirement: 77%
And to conclude, the road to widespread adoption of bitcoin remains long, very long in fact. Even in the United States, 77% of people still consider crypto too risky for retirement. The battle of ideas has clearly only just begun, and it is far from won for Saylor.
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