Strategy has repeatedly rejected the idea of releasing proof of reserves, citing various reasons for this stance. Recently, Strategy chairman Michael Saylor, the company CEO Phong Le, and Executive Vice President Andrew Kang provided new comments on why Strategy is so reluctant about releasing proof of reserves and outlined that increasing transparency is not impossible.
Summary
- During the earnings call, Strategy’s execs expressed reluctance to release proof of reserves
- They cited security issues, a desire not to stir markets with routine custody reshuffles, decent third-party audits, and a shortage of employees as the reasons for the lack of on-chain transparency
- Michael Saylor and Phong Le stated that they think about proof of reserves if only they find a way to make it “responsible”
“We’re working on responsible ways that we could provide that transparency”
On Jul. 31, 2025, as part of the Q2 earnings call, Strategy was conducting a Q&A session. Benchmark’s Mark Palmer asked Strategy if proof of reserves could be “an element that would make sense for the company at this point.” He suggested that trustlessness is one of the elements of Bitcoin that makes it attractive and mentioned that one of the big asset management crypto companies has already released proof of reserves.
Michael Saylor said that the company is studying the possibility of getting more transparent. “We’re working on responsible ways that we could provide that transparency,” he said. By “responsible ways,” Saylor means not only the Strategy’s safety, which can be jeopardized by proof of reserves, as he suggests, but the overall crypto market’s state. He brought up the case when the news of Galaxy Digital’s 80,000 BTC sale made headlines and, according to Saylor, triggered “chaos” on crypto X and the market.
Saylor does not want to scare people while doing “routine custody reshuffling” and disturb the market, so he thinks it is responsible not to disclose Strategy’s wallet addresses. As people on X pay too much attention to every single movement between wallets, Saylor believes it’s better to keep Strategy’s transactions concealed.
Strategy CEO, Phong Le, put out a different card. He said that Strategy is an American public company that provides “high dividend yields” and “superior performance through intelligent leverage.” And if the team had to dedicate more time to the proof of reserves hassle, they would not be able to offer so many benefits to Strategy clients.
Here’s what he said:
“We have 15 people working on this. Could you imagine if we had to take two away to work on proof of reserves, you wouldn’t get Stretch, you wouldn’t get Strike, you wouldn’t get Strife, you wouldn’t get all this other product innovation that’s where we’re focusing our energy right now.”
Just like Saylor, Le added that as soon as Strategy finds a good way to increase transparency, they will do it.
The last to comment on Strategy’s reluctance to release proof of reserves was Andrew Kang, an Executive Vice President of the company. He reminded Palmer and all the listeners that Strategy’s reserves are subjected to audits through two audit companies from the Big Four. They do audits once a quarter or at least once a year.
Michael Saylor had reservations about transparency before
People in the crypto community have been pushing Strategy to release proof of reserves for quite a while. As of Aug. 4, 2025, Strategy claims to hold 628,791 bitcoins; however, not everyone is convinced that the company actually owns that many bitcoins.
Others believe that Strategy may really have these bitcoins, but warn that the lack of proof of reserves creates the possibility that at some point Strategy will be able to sell some of its BTC silently. As independent audits take place only once in a quarter at best, gaps between them leave room for uncertainty.
Although not many people demand that Strategy release proof of reserves, from time to time, Saylor has to explain why Strategy doesn’t embrace transparency.
In a clip that emerged on X in May, Saylor says that posting Strategy’s wallets’ addresses would be as reckless as publishing addresses and phone numbers of one’s kids, hoping it would make the family’s life better.
As for the impact of huge transactions mentioned by Saylor, the very case with 80,000 BTC sold by Galaxy Digital triggered only a short-term volatility, and overall reaction to the event was rather moderate, as people are aware of Bitcoin’s sustainability, something that Saylor promotes actively himself.
Does Michael Saylor have the duty to disclose Strategy’s Bitcoin wallets publicly?
The founder of VTrader exchange, Steve Gregory, provided a deep reflection on whether Saylor should disclose Strategy’s wallet address. Here’s what he is saying:
I think the issue here really is: does Michael Saylor of MicroStrategy have the duty to publicly disclose Strategy’s Bitcoin wallets?
Before we do this, a few thoughts. As of the end of July, he holds over 629,000 Bitcoin valued at over $46 billion — roughly 3% of all mined Bitcoin. They are by far the largest Bitcoin treasury company, by a magnitude of 10x. Clearly, any movement in the Strategy wallets could send shockwaves through the markets. Something as simple as a wallet rebalancing could have the market in panic-sell mode.
As many in crypto know, it’s possible to set alerts for known wallet activity, so the second they move, any interested party could be immediately alerted. This is unlike traditional markets, where the notification for such action would occur after the fact. Even if an insider at the company chose to sell off shares, it would be only weeks later that the public would find out.
Further, in traditional markets, there are circuit breakers to curb massive swings in volatility, or the “limit down” rule. For example, if Strategy shares somehow plummeted at the opening bell on the Nasdaq by, say, 20%, trading would be halted at the first 7% for 15 minutes. Then, after a drop of 13%, it would be halted another 15 minutes. Finally, if it dropped 20%, trading for Strategy would be halted for the remainder of the day. These circuit breakers limit excessive whipsaws in the market and preserve market structure.
Now apply this to crypto markets. If, say, Strategy’s wallets all moved at the same time and sent their Bitcoin to spot market exchanges like Coinbase, VTrader, Gemini, Kraken — and the market saw these moves on-chain — it could cause a panic sell. There would be no guardrail in place to stop markets from crashing the price of Bitcoin down 50%, 70%, even 99% in extreme cases.
We saw something similar happen in March 2020. There was an isolated crash, and nothing stopped Bitcoin from dropping 50% in just a few hours.
My thinking is Michael Saylor has risked his whole company, reputation, and probably personal fortune to go all in on Bitcoin. He wants to protect the asset that he has made an unbelievably big bet on. The safest way to do that is to not publicly disclose the locations of his wallets.
As a counterpoint to this, Strategy is a public company. As such, public companies must go through audited financials annually. Moreover, the accounting standard for a public company is far more rigorous than a regular company’s audited financials. So much so that the controls in place for public companies are so great, it is one of the main reasons the U.S. has such robust capital markets. Rigorous standards bring trust.
Saylor and Strategy know that at least annually, every single wallet holding all the Bitcoin is audited, triple-checked, and corroborated by their Big Four accounting firm. Additionally, there are countless analysts on Wall Street and AI bots combing through absolutely every word in their public financials, public disclosures, and calls to Wall Street.
This is not to say that public companies can’t — or have not — engaged in fraud before, but the controls in place for a public company make it much harder.
Some may say that Saylor and Strategy’s stance of not publicly disclosing the wallets somewhat goes against the original ethos of crypto. However, this is a non sequitur, because it’s a public blockchain, and the wallets can be identified with the correct tools. Further, if you believe in preserving market integrity, this is the appropriate stance to avoid unintentionally spooking the market.
Proof of reserves is no trend
In 2024, asset management company Bitwise became the first cryptocurrency firm to release proof of reserves. It published the address of its spot Bitcoin ETF reserves in January 2024. In July 2025, Bitwise added third-party proof of reserves for both Bitcoin and Ethereum ETF holdings.
On the one hand, Bitwise didn’t become a role model, and no other big reputable company from the crypto space followed in its footsteps in terms of transparency. On the other hand, the company managed to keep its holdings safe, casting a shadow on Saylor’s remarks about safety issues associated with transparency.
More than that, it is actually possible to monitor most of the Strategy’s holdings via blockchain data gathered and arranged by Arkham Intelligence. The company has identified around 90% of Strategy’s holdings, and Saylor doesn’t seem to be bothered by this. So, his fear of identifying Strategy’s addresses doesn’t seem to be a big deal. It’s worth saying that Arkham may not be 100% accurate.
As Saylor said before, probably in the future, Strategy will implement some zero-knowledge solution to increase transparency, so no one will see its addresses but will have the ability to make sure they keep their bitcoins. It’s still not clear how critical it is, given the existence of platforms like Arkham.
