Saylor outlines four-part bitcoin-backed digital money stack

Michael Saylor presented a four-layer digital money framework anchored in bitcoin on Aug. 13 via X and discussed the concept with institutional investors at a late-June digital-assets conference in London. The plan assigns distinct roles to bitcoin, Strategy Inc.’s STRC preferred stock, Solstice Finance’s SR-strcUSX yield token and the USDT stablecoin.

Saylor described the framework using an oil-refining analogy to explain how raw bitcoin capital could be engineered into credit, savings and payment instruments.

In the diagram Saylor shared, assets are arranged from higher-return, higher-volatility instruments toward more stable, transactional tools. Bitcoin occupies the capital layer as a bearer asset that holds potential for price appreciation and requires custody and exposes holders to price swings.

Above bitcoin, STRC serves as a digital-credit layer. STRC is a perpetual preferred stock issued by Strategy Inc. and traded on Nasdaq. Strategy describes STRC as a short-duration, high-yield credit instrument. For August, STRC carried a variable annualized dividend rate of about 12 percent; the company sets the rate monthly and pays dividends only if declared by the board and supported by legally available funds.

Solstice Finance introduced SR-strcUSX on Aug. 10 on Solana. The token is the senior tranche of a structured product that accepts USX deposits into a vault holding exposure to STRC. SR-strcUSX receives income before the junior tranche and targets an annual yield near 7 percent. The junior token in the structure is designed to absorb losses from declines in STRC value before senior holders face principal losses.

At the transactional end of the stack, Saylor placed USDT as a dollar-linked stablecoin for transfers and settlement. USDT offers a stable unit of account relative to bitcoin and STRC but carries issuer, reserve, redemption, counterparty and regulatory risks tied to the stablecoin issuer’s practices.

Under Saylor’s model, investors could select exposure to capital appreciation, income or payment utility without holding bitcoin directly. Each layer in the framework keeps distinct risk features linked to price volatility, corporate balance sheets, tranche structure or issuer practices.